blog use

Today I had to do a PMI on my year as part of my appraisal with my team leader. I did some writing but also printed out something from my blog which was about my reflections on my Rellco goals for 2009. However, the best part was being able to give my appraiser -D. the comments/questions that Lorraine (our ICT facilitator) had posted on my blog.

Next I thought why not go the whole hog and give D access to my blog (all 118 entries) so she can really see how much I reflect and how my learning journey with things like inquiry, new entrants, assessment etc has gone.

I hope she takes time to look at it - I know reflections are for me and my growth, but sometimes we are all too busy to stop and learn about each other and what we have been doing in our job.
I am glad I blog!

Week 8

We have a student from the Wananga -Whaea Janice working in room 2 until the end of the year. Already she looks like she'll be a real asset to our class.

We have a trip on friday to the Museum, where we will be looking at the Te Arawa display. Thanks to Whaea D. -what a wonderful story teller she is and her room 9 pupils were great chracters in the play. My kids were enthralled especially the part where the dog was howling in the man's tummy.
We will be travelling by bus and I hope lots of whanau will travel with us.

The last week before our school concert, so we have been having extra practices with Mr. P. Boy the junior kids sound great.
We are also keeping things as normal as possible with daily writing, reading and maths. The kids are enjoying the problem solving and there is some great thinking/strategies being used.

2010 again

Great news after our staff meeting tonight - I have new entrants next year and the R1/2 double room (with the walls down). Maybe we can give our room an interesting name next year? I will do it WITH the children

I will ask Pete to take the walls down in the holidays. I will probably keep them in the room and use as display walls by leaning them up by the non bench windows (if it can be done safely)? I can't wait to plan out the room and make it an exciting place for learning. I need to make sure I am really organised with the equipment we need/want.

We also had to put down what curriculum areas we are interested in - I picked e-learning/inquiry and science. I know literacy and numeracy (especially with the National Standards) are the most impotant , but I feel I am on track with them now and I want to learn new things. I am loving using inquiry and want to carry on with thhat and e learning is always going to a place to learn new things.

2010

More ramblings/brainstorming about 2010. Maybe I want to look at what some ECE centres do with ICT to help children's learning and build on that.

This time for my goal I am going to make sure that I keep the learning at the forefront. Also I know that to show any shifts in learning I must have good starting data so I will also need to factor that into my action plan.

2010

I want to start exploring my action inquiry/goal for 2010. What was written on the end of my 2009 sheet was me moaning about that because I couldn't prove what I had for goals this year actually helped my children's learning, I felt it was all a waste of my time----- so I want to be more ???? for the next one.

On second look at what I had put for my goal for 2010 (just a start), I already realise it is far too broad and once again unmeasurable. "HOW CAN I INFUSE ICT INTO MY NEW ENTRANT ROOM TO MAKE IT A MORE EFFECTIVE LEARNING PLACE." What does that actually mean and how on earth could I even show that to anyone?

I need to have another look at Lorraine's SMARTER Goals work and also consider what Jill H. said about it should be all about improving students learning (and I know that is the message I have been getting all along in this ICTPD we are in, but I think I just got it out of my view for a while.) Next time I might just brainstorm some ideas and try to put some 'measuring tools' alongside them.

Inquiry Conclusion and Teacher Reflection

I think we have finishe now - with a postive conclusion with some real action/change to happen and we have done a reflection. I would never have been 'brave' enough to ask for a double classroom for the new entrants if:
a) I had not gone to Wanganui and heard about Reggio Emilia (and got really interested in what pre-schools are doing) and seeing Kath Murdoch's Inquiry Model -this one works for me!!!
b) I did not have the 'power'of a classfull of 5 year olds with me on our inquiry journey - this was a real context not some pretend learning -so talk about this inquiry being rich, real and relevant.

What will be extra good is that (I think) some of 2009 young Yo will stay with me in 2010 so they will benefit from their inquiry work as well as new kids.

National Standards

We had an informative meeting with our literacy advisor Christine about NS. The more I learn about them the more I like them. I think they are ideal for NE especially with having good starting school data to inform next steps, letting the children know what they are learning, sharing with parents where their child is starting and looking at the ways parents can help.
I think this is the time to get the parents involved in their children's learning.
Next year I think I would like to meet with my parents after a month-6 weeks after the child starts school. Also on TKI there are helpful forms- but I had better wait and see what the school plans for 2010.

Soon the P. is meeting with us re 2010 and I am hoping I have NE but again I had better wait.
I am still thinking about what curriculum area(s) I want to be involved in.

Travel Buddy

The swapping of Kikorangi the little blue penguin and Mario the leather back turtle from the Isle of Man has not worked like our 2008 Travel Buddy experience as I can't get our blog going properly BUT.....

the room 2 kids know so much about turtles and this has really helped their oral language and writing. Sometimes when things don't work out as planned other great things happen.

Inquiry

We have just received an e- mail from Mr. S and he has said YES. Mr. C thinks its a great idea also and has kindly said he will move for 2010.
The kids said they were happy, excited, glad and proud - so was I.

inquiry

I hear a little rumour that we MAY have r1/2. I want to check with the P. if we need to present our inquiry to the teacher involved. I won't get too excited yet (and I won't tell the class until its 100%.

My daughter - in -law's childcare is getting a new centre built and its been great to look at the plans to see what they are getting. The staff and children have had a big input into what is going to be there.

What would I like to have in a big NE room??? Spaces for a writing table that could be left set up with the materials writers need, painting and craft areas left set up. Spaces to keep works in progress so children can return to them, areas for the children's modelling and construction. How about a nice reading area with a couch and big cushions? Would we have room for a pet? Where would we put plants and flowers? Books and equipment stored where it is easy to access......

Would our class look like the one in the photo above??

Inquiry

I am going to make a powerpoint of our inquiry as I think its a quite a good inquiry and I am pleased that we have followed it thru. We are just waiting for the final stage -the reflection part.

Inquiry

Today we did our Taking Action part. We invited our Principal Mr. Stiles in to hear our presentation. Here he is listening to us. We will post some of the children's stories about it soon.

Inquiry - Taking Action

We have done the tuning in -with first idea, finding out, sorting out second idea and now conclusion stages on our inquiry on "What makes a great New Entrant Room?"

The conclusion is that if we want to have all the things, we think we need ,to have this NE class we need a bigger space to fit it all in. R7 sprang to the children's mind as being bigger and we spent quite a lot of time "measuring ' that and our room to see which was the biggest. At the prediction stage before the measuring most thought R7 (which has very little furniture was the biggest. R was brave enough to say that he thought they were the same size. The look on his face when later on he was proved right ,was a joy to see.

I told the class about the secret wall hooks between R1 and R2 and so we are onto the Taking Action stage this week ,where we are going to ask our Principal "If R1 teacher was willing to move to one of the classes that are going to be spare in 2010, could the New Entrant room be a double classroom please?"
We need to work out our presentation and involve several children in it.

blogging

I have just been on our class blog where we are using this as the means to communicate with our travel buddy class in the Isle of Man. I am finding using that blog hard and have made the comment that its the teacher (me ) having trouble with my learning - I can't work out some things even though I have done it once before and have notes on how to do it.

Being a 21century learner (especially for a teacher) is finding more and more things to learn about.

Last staff meeting

After last meeting where we had to evaluate our RELLCO goals with a buddy, I was very disappointed in myself and I started to wonder if all the work I had done this year for the contract was a waste of time. I felt, at this stage, that I could not say if it had all made a difference to my children's literacy levels. I THINK it has but I can't prove it.

Why do I think it has?
Things like the oral language levels according to the RTLB KLST results have improved a lot. But have other things caused that?
For the children who started school before July (ie the Y1 children -not Y0) only 4 are still low with their reading and they have oral language/speech issues and have been identified as such. How has my work on travel buddies, blogging, inquiry helped this?
Our term 4 inquiry on What makes a great New Entrant Room? has helped me to reflect about my own practice. One of the follow ups has been looking for more opportunities for whanau involvement with the children's learning. I absolutely feel that whanau involvement has been an important factor in the children's literacy learning successes. (There, I have found one positive.) Surely the oral language, writing, research skills involved with our travel buddy must have helped with literacy. How many 5 year olds even know there is a place called The Isle of Man, or can tell you about leatherback turtles, or why they were eating jellyfish in the waters around the IOM, or writing on the class blog to explain what whanau means????---there some more answers.
In hindsight I must have been having a bad day last Monday because when I take the time to relect properly, I THINK all the exciting learning we have been doing is a big help with our literacy and when 5 year olds say "Whaea Tric I just love learning" I KNOW it does.

week 5 overview

tuesday - Life Education at 11am - make sure I have done pre work
After school SLT meeting
wednesday-Lynmore RTLB day and Rellco cluster share afterwards
More Inquiry
More Travel Buddy work
Sort out blue books with summary data

From week 4 the readiong evening went well.