Term 1's over-So how did it go?

What went well?

• The children-All brand new 5 year olds starting school who settled in so well to a new situation and started learning straight away. A tribute perhaps to our pre-school visit programme that prepares them for the change. The class has nice feel to it with great attitudes from the children and some very supportive parents.
• The children's learning-Apart from a small group of 3 children who will need constant monitoring and some extra assistance as they move through the school the children are making good progress with their literacy and numeracy. There are some great artists and a few good thinkers who have interesting ideas and more than a few active children who enjoy the physical activity of movement and games.
• The Literacy PD and the outcomes that are coming from it, both in my own teaching and the learning and progress that the children are making.

Personal Highlights

• Seeing my small group of 3 who are making very slow progress begin to pick up some literacy knowledge (Identifying and saying letters and sounds/recognising some high frequency words). A long way to go but it's good to see things happening.
• Finding more ways to use a tablet in the classroom.
• Our class assembly-The children were great and did a very good job of presenting themselves to the school and their parents.

Could Be Better

• Parts of my maths programme. Need to identify and work with children who are not developing their number knowledge as well as the rest of the class. Also need to look further at developing authentic problems as a way of enhancing learning. 

Are We Making The Most Of Our ICT's?

I have come across this blog post by Derek Wenmouth that comments on a report detailing the results of 3,100 teacher surveys and 1,250 student surveys on the kinds of digital instruction tools that are useful and effective. It is an interesting report that outlines what teachers felt and concluded that a lot of what we have in our schools is not used as effectively as it could be. I feel that in our school this could also be the case (IWB's for example) for a number of reasons including one Derek outlined in his post-that the teachers are often not involved in the purchasing decisions and are at times not getting the most effective ICT tool for their use. The other point he makes about this report is that there is no emphasis on the student's use of ICT's and how this can be used to enhance and improve their learning. The questions then are as we move forward:

• What tools do we need to become more effective in our use of ICT and how do we go about acquiring them. 
• How much input should we give the staff and the students in our decision making?

2014-A New Year

2014, a new year, (my 37th teaching year), new children, new principal, new challenges.

No matter how long I've been teaching I don't know it all and am still learning and changing the things I do in the classroom. This is probably a good thing and along with a new principal come new ideas and ways of doing things which can be exciting.

Once again the year starts of in my classroom with a bunch of new 5 year olds, all with different needs and abilities. At times it feels like I'm herding cats. There are some talented kids and some with learning and behavioural needs but they all need my attention and support.

Our school focus this year is on Literacy and Numeracy and with support from within the school and some outside experts we should move forward.

And my own personal challenge? it's to master this beast!

Teacher Appraisal

It would appear that there is a shift happening in Teacher Appraisal with a section in this year's budget being devoted to something called a Quality Teacher Programme. The details set out a programme that aims to lift the quality of teaching and strengthen the teaching profession. 
This is what the budget statement looks like.

The Quality Teaching Agenda is a package of interconnected initiatives designed to lift the 

quality of teaching and strengthen the teaching profession. The Quality Teaching Agenda will 

be progressed by the following activities over the period of this plan:

• support the transition to a more effective professional body for teachers as identified in the recent Ministerial review of the New Zealand Teachers Council

• lift the entry standards and quality of initial teacher education, including Māori medium programmes, the quality of practicum support for trainee teachers and coaching and mentoring for beginning teachers

• improve principal and teacher appraisal linked to professional learning and development opportunities through a focus on evidence-based approaches and the provision of targeted intervention and support for principals, teachers and schools

• develop a framework for promoting and supporting potential professional leaders of teaching practice

• implement a strategy to strengthen the value and raise the status of teaching by exploring the nature of teaching in the 21st century. This strategy will also deliver a sustained, more effective approach to teacher supply issues while increasing diversity in the profession

• implement and support the use of PACT (Progress and Consistency Tool) in schools

 Implicit in this is the feeling that the quality of teaching needs improving and that we are not as professional as we could be. Political statements for sure but obviously we will need to be aware of this and explore how we can make this work for us. It is obvious that we are going to have to take responsibility for gathering and storing the evidence that  supports and informs our appraisal as teachers. This evidence will need to be assessed against the 12 Registered Teacher Criteria. An example of this is one teacher's blog where she has linked posts about her teaching practice and thinking to each of the criteria that applies to that practice. This could work well as a professional and structured way of exhibiting our learning and development as well as the showing the good teaching and learning that is happening in our class. Now it is just a matter of getting started.

Term 3-Reflection

Class has 18 children. Most have settled into classroom routines and good learning is happening with most of the children. A few of the children have some behavioural issues mainly around manners, respect and honesty. It is hoped that these children can be part of the Pastoral Care programme during the term. We will also continue with our values programme with this term's topic focussing on honesty.

Reading
All but 3 of the class have moved beyond the emergent reading level. These 3 are some of the younger children in the class but there are gaps in their letter sound knowledge that need to be addressed, perhaps through work with a TA. One of these 3 has better letter sound and word knowledge than the others and will be ready to move onto L3 shortly. The other 2 children will need to be monitored and targeted for extra assistance when they move into Y 1 next year.
Other children are working at L4/L5-6/L8/L10. All are developing their word knowledge and starting to use letter sound knowledge as a strategy for solving unknown words. Some work needs to be done on monitoring and self correcting, fluency and for some children increasing their comprehension of their reading.
Of the children who have completed 1 year at school 1 will not achieve the NS. He will be 3-4 levels below and will be a prime candidate for Reading Recovery next year.

Writing
All but 3 of the class are able to write at least one sentence independently. One of these children is nearly at this stage and just needs some encouragement and support to make the move. The other 2 need help due to their low knowledge of letter sounds and high frequency words. 
Some children have problems retaining their ideas when writing and the use of talking tins may help this and I will be getting some of these this term to help these children.
Other areas that need some work with some children include finger spacing, punctuation, and expanding their ideas. These will be the focus of our shared writing sessions.

Term 1 - A Reflection

Term 1 started with a class of 8 New Entrant children and by the end there were 10. Not huge growth in numbers but it made for a good start. The remainder of my class will start in Term 2, mostly during May. Overall the children's  learning has progressed well, partly because of lower class numbers and partly due to their ability and attitude.

Literacy:
All but one of the children have good letter sound knowledge and they are starting to use this well in their writing and reading to help write and read unknown words. The same children have also begun to develop their knowledge of high frequency words. Apart from the one child all are reading at level 2 or 3 which is a good achievement for the short time some of them have had at school. The one child who is not making the same progress is having some difficulty learning letter names and sounds but has begun to learn some of the high frequency words. When reading he needs to focus carefully if he is read accurately. At present he is working daily in an early litetracy group. Early in the next term I will need to look at his learning and explore other ways to improve his progress. As for the rest of the class the focus will be not only on extending phonological and word knowledge but also on beginning to developing word solving and monitoring skills as well as greater understanding of what they read. 
Nost of the children are writing one or two sentences independently using known words and their letter sound knowledge. Most use spacing and some punctuation. The main focus for these children in term 2 will be on developing their ideas, exploring different ways of beginning their writing, extending the vocabularly they use and being focussed on the content/ideas in their writing.

Maths:
Most aprt from one child have a good knowledge of number to 10 easily and on to 20 and beyond. The one child who doesn't is not consistent counting 1-1 and does not know all the numbers to 10. Once again with this boy I will need to look at ways of improving this early in the term. The main numeracy focus in term2 now that their basic number knowledge is sound is to explore addition and subtraction. There are some in the class who have shown very good numeracy skills and these children will also need to be catered for.

Incoming Children:
Pre school visitors have been attending every Friday. Looking at some of the preliminary observations and how they work shows there may be some challenges here learning and behaviour wise. Most are coming from the same kindergarten and we have maintained a close relationship with them this term which hopefully helps the transition to school for these children.

PLN

As teachers we need to take more responsibility for our own Professional Development over and above that which is school directed and provided. This is where we need to develop our own Personal Learning Network.

A PLN consists of the people, places, and things that help you learn. These can be web based, print based or the network of people we interact with in our teaching and learning environment. This creates an active personal learning network.

A good overview on what makes a good PLN can be seen here.

My PLN

There are other components I could add to this such as Professional Organisations, Mentors and Newsletters/Publications that I could subscribe to. This is a start however.