What is equitable may not be equal

As a parent of 2 children I battle with equality all the time. Making sure I spend equal amounts of time, energy (and money) with, and on, both children. Coming in to teaching I felt that children deserve equal amounts of my time and energy and so I would be torn when that small group of children were given all my attention, whilst the larger group got minimal.
I am beginning to realise that actually, the amount of time and energy I spend on a child should be based on their needs rather than some sort of tally, clocking in system that I have in my head.
This is hard for me, and whilst I do it, what I need to do is get rid of the guilt over the lack of attention some children may get from me. At the end of the day, over the course of a year, the tally chart in my head will probably look very similar for most children, with the odd outlier on either side - a bit of a bell curve. If I'm supporting the needs of those who demand more of me, and I design the learning to suit them, then in theory all children should benefit and be better of for it.
Here's hoping for a guilt free year!

Individual Behaviour Plan

Dominating the last couple of weeks has been the behaviour of one particular child. I have been in "the pit" several times feeling that i'm not doing enough for this child, or that perhaps i'm triggering the behaviour.... What I am beginning to realise is that he is 5, and a 5 year old child, even one as challenging as this one is, shouldn't play on my mind, or affect my home life.

Decision made, and whilst I may ponder on the day, I now don't let the day affect me (too much!). Our belief that "it takes a village to raise a child" and my realisation that this applies to this situation too has also been a load off my shoulders.

Putting together the IBP has been like the icing on the cake. We have documented what to do in various situation and even gone as far as detailing what language we use with him, his goals, our goals, and a check list of questions we ask ourselves before interacting with him.

This has been in place for 2 days and they have been 2 amazing days for this child. The positive language, clear expectations and clear consequences are hopefully having the affect we are all working so hard to achieve.

The other good thing about putting this in place during week 7 of term 4, is that next year, when we hopefully have him again, we can refer him early on, and we have a plan of attack that seems to work!!

Gathering Evidence

For Maths in Term 4 we are going to try and have a focus on add / sub as well as the number knowledge pebbles. As I want to make the learning as personalised as possible I have used the diagnostic snapshots from NumPA book 5 and taken the blue pebbles through the questions. I did multiple questions to give me the best chance of finding our what they can do and what strategies they use. Looking at the results I need 3 groups - one with a focus on addition, another on subtraction and the third needs to look at groups of 10. To help the team I'm going to group the basic Add/ Sub together and do an on-line lesson support for the 2 children who need to work on Key Idea 4. This will free up some Owl time to help bring the Yellow Pebbles up to speed. Everyone's a winner!

Still harping on about writing!

Literacy is still the main focus and the discussions this week centered around writing as it is still an area I feel I need to work on.

We introduced Pebbles to the children and a mistake I think I made was that I focused my attention on writing in 1 or 2 progress pebble goals for each child with them so they had ownership (which I believe was a good thing) but it meant my attention wasn’t on what they were writing so I don’t think the actual writing lesson was a particularly good one.

One point Claire made was that I’m spreading the writing focus across too many genre and that perhaps I should focus. This for me was a bit of a lightbulb moment. Instead of trying to link each concept experience to a writing task I have now planned the next week (and the subsequent 2 weeks with the next concept group) with just one writing focus – that of writing instructions. The goal is that at the end of their time with me, each child should be able to write a set of instructions.

To aid this I created a set of pebbles just based around writing instructions plus a template to support everyone. The set of books “First Steps” was really helpful in identifying the skills that need to be taught and also in managing my expectations!

Fingers crossed that this has the desired effect, and that I feel I am actually teaching them some technical skills.

As an aside, the BINGO sheets are working well and children are really enthusiastic about some of the activities, others I need to promote a wee bit more!

BINGO

Having been grappling with how to let children self direct their learning in Maths, Ben's, now imfamous words - "From structure comes freedom" came to mind. Muireann had suggested making BINGO sheets for Maths as she had used them and they had worked great, so I set about creating a sheet for the blue pebbles group. Once this was done, my struggle with how to manage writing came to mind, and so I did another BINGO sheet.

And I'm happy to say that both are working really well (day 2!).

 

Writing with the Starwars Concept Group

The Starwars Concept group has lots of early writers. All have great ideas, most struggle to get the ideas on to paper. I have had various discussions over the last two weeks surrounding this, and it is only now that they are about to move on that I think I have a good understanding of their needs. Some can write by themselves but need help to stay on track, others won't write unless you are with them, some try, try and try and make mistakes and it doesn't worry them and others can't make a mistake. For some the challenge is holding the pencil and writing "on the line" - this was solved by highlighting the lines to write between, using the initial sounds in the words to try the words... all are emerging writers and whilst I believe in setting high expectations I think mine were too high.

What I realise now is that they still needs lots of learning around the technicalities of writing, such as forming the letters, using letter sounds, using high frequency words, planning what to write, lots of repetition, and lots of support (using tools such as word cards etc). More modelling and exemplars so they know what they need to do. I don't think I was explicit enough - lesson learned, and I'll have to track how I go with Sharkspikes for the next 2 weeks.

Focus on Literacy – writing

With a focus on Immersion to gain interest from students, a trip up the gondola to immerse ourselves into observing our surroundings was great. I’m actually quite proud of my drawing, and what a fantastic place for a team meeting.

Writing hasn’t been going that well, trying to teach all 15 children at once with their varying needs and demands. Muireann suggested breaking them in to smaller groups and then giving them rotating writing tasks such as hand writing, spelling, group writing…. anything that helps with the basic skills whilst intensively working with the others. Emma tried this on my CRT day and she said it worked really well, although the sentence I chose for them to piece together was too hard. Must try and make sure it includes lots of high frequency words so the children can succeed with this.

We looked at the writing cycle and applying this to 5 year olds. The biggest reflection has been to ensure there is a purpose for the writing – whether this is writing for our blog http://kimiakau.blogspot.co.nz/ or to publish and share with the family, or Skippers children, or to have on the screen in reception… once the purpose has been established then the motivation to write should be enhanced. This will be really interesting to monitor as the Starwars Concept group has some very reluctant writers with limited ability at the moment. Hopefully, with a clear purpose their writing will improve. Whilst there is plenty more in the cycle – drafting, crafting, and sharing I’m choosing to focus on just picking an audience and with only 4 days of writing left with this group it will be a challenge!

Hands on learning

Thermometers…who would have thought that such a simple piece of equipment could show change in action in a way that children can see. Watching the little red line drop as we moved from inside to outside, and then from in the sun to in the shade. Very hard to actually read the numbers – a bigger 5 year old specific version of the thermometer would have been clearer to read, but the children all did well and could see and feel the change that occurred, and could talk about why. This was a deliberate act as I believe that hands on experiences aid the development and retention of understanding and repeating the exercise for a couple of day lead to the children predicting what the thermometers might say.

Another visible change was that of drawing around shadows. First drawing completed at 11:00am and measured and then another done at 12:15pm. Not only had the shadows change size but also changed position “they are diagonal” from Bella M. “Why?”, an explanation from Calder about the Sun moving and so the shadow will move too. Great observing and seeing change. Also great inspiration for writing.

Hoping for a day of cloudy or rainy weather so we can use more measures on our weather stations!

Planning

I’m a BT (or should I now say PCT!), and I understand that to become fully registered I have to” prove my worth”, that I’ve morphed from a new graduate with lots of academic thoughts to a somewhat experienced practitioner. One of my current concerns is whether I’ll have enough evidence of planning to prove this transformation.

As we plan as a habitat for the week and then we each have individual responsibilities I’m concerned about my “lack” of visible planning. However trying to be adaptive and responsive to the children’s needs means that a plan isn’t always followed anyway….so the plans I did for a writing group might not be used as a learning opportunity might have appeared, and likewise I might not use a plan devised by someone else for a number of reasons.

Working in such an open, collaborative environment means that learning conversations between mentors don’t just happen at staff meetings or in the staff room over morning tea. I’ve found that the ability to ask for advice “on the fly” from another mentor has been invaluable. A 2 minute conversation has sparked a change in a planned lesson to the benefit of the students. These quick chats before, or during, a lesson aren’t something that could have happened in a single cell classroom but at SPS we’re able to adapt our lessons to the needs of the students. As a BT this is great, to have 3 other mentors experience right there, but it is also means that I have to step outside of my comfort zone at times and put down the plan. I’m begin to realise that the plan is more like a road map and you can take a detour and still end up in the same place with added valuable experiences, and that this is OK!

Another concern is that I’m not confident or experienced enough to be able to adapt on the fly to ensure I’m meeting children’s needs. I don’t have a kete of learning activities or experiences so I want to plan more to ensure I don’t have an occasion with nothing to do (unlikely….but you never know!). Because of this I’m still slightly obsessed with the when and what “things” are happening but I’m also beginning to incorporate more of the why and find that the 2 minute chats with others can sometimes shed light on something that leads to an ah-ha moment.