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.