Analogy

You are only as "good" as the environment you're in lets you be. Plant a flower in sand and it won't grow and flower. Plant the same flower in decent soil and it will flourish, bloom and it's seeds will keep the flower blooming year after year.

I've got something to say by Gail Loane

Having read chapter 1 which is all about the teacher of writing becoming joyfully literate Claire recommended that I read chapter 2 of this book which is about the writing classroom and creating conditions to help writers flourish.

Some of my takeouts from this chapter are;

• build on knowledge and skills that the students already have
• share the writing
• sharing circle ("helping circle" Ken Macrorie)
• share the writing
• teaching points
• modelling
• teacher models how to be a learner
• all comment on each others writing - firstly positive, then a "next step"
• partner conferences
• with a specific goal
• peer response group
• after the first draft and then through the process
• comments
• on post its?
• writers club where mini lessons are taught with small, specific goals
• linking this to KA this could be looking at full stops
• edit together
• scaffold
• model
• prompt
• explain
• have displays of words and examples
• provide a variety of texts
• make links between reading and writing
• give students think time
• this enables the words and ideas to be spoken before being written
• feedback to each other
• It's a partnership

One quote that has struck me as relevant across the board is "every word uttered ......has an effect on students and their learning".

Piecing it altogether...

I'm just preparing our next professional learning meeting based around the learning model in maths, the place of materials, imaging and number properties and I re-found this Think Board. I have used think boards with kids but never as a tool to help me reflect/ plan. 

I thought this fitted nicely with a discussion you and I recently based around your maths group and ways to extend their understandings and knowledge to real application. 

From the Add/Sub and Place Value booklet

Relationships

I'm just writing this post to remind me to be kind to myself. I find it very easy to be critical and quite hard to pat myself on the back. An example of this is when Claire asked me how I felt my relationship building with the children was going - one of my main goals for the term.
I had to dig deep to say that I thought it was going well and that I had forged some great relationships. I would have found it much easier to identify the relationships that still need work and whilst it's good to be aware of this I need to be proud of what I have achieved in my first 6 weeks at the amazing school that is SPS.

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.