Back to school

  
  Why is it that every year we all return to school after the holidays and summer decides it wants to make an appearance, What's up with the weather? I'm not sure about others but summer in my neck of the woods was blowing a gale. More windy days then the hot relaxed days of summer. 
  I began thinking about the village and the sweltering hot and stuffy rooms that make it very uncomfortable for me and the students to stay focused in the hot afternoons .However the students returned, some ready, some not so sure, and some still taking time to settle into the routines of school and the classrooms are hot.

Inquiry Term 1 2017

Kaitīakitanga i nga wā katoa

My Class for 2017

I get to spend 2017 with this lovely group of students. There are some that I taught in the NewEntrant class and some who are the siblings of the students I taught in 2016.  I am excited and can't wait to take this journey with Room 26 2017.

My Gem Moment

'Writing Test'

"Room 26 you smashed it!" 

  After the shock of February's writing test results I decided to put a lot of work in this area.

The decision to have a whole class writing plan, which focused on repetition of alphabet sounds, beginning bends and vowels, saw an improvement in their attempt at spelling high frequency words along with their site words.

 Word games also helped to re-enforce the learning. 

However our focus was writing a sentence using a capital letter and a full stop.

Ok, this does need a bit more work. What am noticing is the students using connectives to make their sentences longer (this is what the student think) not more interesting, just longer using the same two words 'and den' (and then) (aargh)

Some of us have tried moving on from this with a lot of success. 

My Gem Moment

Our writing tests show, a beginning, middle and end, some kind of ending some not complete. One to two pages of writing, most of the writing has coherence. Really good spelling of high frequency words. 

The best thing about this was their enthusiasm to get started.

Inquiry

Term 3

This is what I tell the students everyday, and every day they  surprise me just that little bit and that little bit is OK with me.

The question in my new Inquiry group this term was, 

What would I see now in your class at writing time?

1. You will see a group of independent writers, which I didn't have last term.

2. You will see students using the word cards and word wall to support them in their writing.

3. You will see me working with a small group, and not whole class teaching.

4. Capital letters and full stops in the right place most of the time.

5. You will see a little less prompting from me.

6. You will see students that are excited to write.

7. You will see diversity

Inquiry Term 2

Observations

 I had the opportunity to observe 'Reading' in 2 different classrooms. One was a year 1 class and most of the students in this class were my students from last year. I was very happy to see them in their new class and doing well in reading. The other class a year 6 class in a shared learning space. Observing other classes is great I was very inspired and have some ideas to take back into my class and my teaching. 

Here are a few things I noticed:

Year 1 class

• Quiet and calm
• On task and engaged
• Independent 
• supportive
• Using Gwenneth Phillips reading prompts
• Orientation with the text first

Year 6 class

• Noisy (busy and on task noisy)
• Observed high level independent reading group (Kiwifruits)
• Lots of discussion
• Lots of questions, "what made you think that?" "where is your evidence?"
• WALT 'Knowledge from information from the text'
• patiences and taking turns to speak.
• Encouragement and praise.

Inquiry

Inquiry

My Planner

Inquiry Focus 2016

Our school wide inquiry focus is Formative Practice in reading/writing 

to improve student achievement.

  My 2016 teacher inquiry is to use formative practice to find out what my learners need to learn in writing and use these next learning steps as my teaching focus.