Thursday, July 21, 2011

I Love Teaching Conference

We had an inspiring time at the conference. It's good to go and fill up on some new ideas and to extend your understanding of the familiar ones.
At a conference like this it would be very easy to become overwhelmed and not to know where to begin. The risk with this is nothing gets changed. I decided before the conference that I would choose 4 points to work on.
Points from James Nottingham
Children have no control over the intelligence they were born with. Therefore do not tell them they are clever but
praise the process and the progress e.g "Wow that's a really good score. You must have tried really hard." Instead of, "Wow, that's a really good score. You must be smart at this."
We need to teach children to think. To do this they need to have conflicting ideas and struggle with these so that they can construct an understanding. When that understanding comes, it is called the Eureka moment.
Point from Allison Mooney
There are four personality types. Each of these types have different needs. Teachers should try to address each groups needs in some way each day.
Personality types and needs:
Playful's need to have fun. They are great discussion starters.
Powerful's like to lead and make decisions.
Precise's like things to be structured and organised. They don't like change.
Peaceful's work steadily and don't like stress. They like group work.
Point from Wilson McCaskill
When we are challenged and are outside of our comfort zone we need to know how to sooth ourselves (things you say to yourself or do e.g laugh). Some children need to be taught how to do this.


Friday, May 27, 2011

Google Docs in Plain English


Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Spelling Inquiry Reflection

The children have enjoyed playing the spelling games that I introduced in the first term. There are a few management things I need to change. Instead of the whole class working on the same activity I will have a rotation system that is similar to the reading activities system. It is important that there is an expectation and accountability that the children complete their spelling tasks.


Kath Murdoch Day

For my schools Teacher's Only Day we attended Kath Murdoch. She shared ideas about how to lead children through a successful inquiry. It was great day of being challenged and inspired. One idea that stood out to our school was how valuable it is for the children to have a 'tool box' of thinking strategies. I have taken some time over these school holidays to reflect and think about how I can develop the children's 'tool box'. In the classroom I will display a 'tool box' sign and as we try a strategy I will add a picture and word prompt that matches the tool under our tool box. The first tool is; See, Think, Wonder. We will use this to explore kiwiana pictures and how they relate to our culture.

Another thing I want to try is her idea about goal setting. I always struggle with managing to keep the children's individual goals up to date. Kath's idea was to display a set of goals on the wall. Mine will be about our school learner profile characteristics. These will be displayed with a bullet point criteria developed with the children. The children will place their name beside a goal they need to work on for the week. During the week we will discuss and reflect on how they are managing to meet that goal.


Saturday, March 26, 2011

Our school is part of the ICT contract and we are all doing an inquiry. My inquiry is about how to improve memory retention when spelling. I have found that children know a word for a short while and then don't know it any more. Also I have noticed that when repeating the same spelling test the children make the same mistakes (Even after teaching spelling). I searched the net to gather ideas and research proven ways to improve memory retention in spelling. These are some ideas that I have decided to trial in my year one and two class.
-For tricky words use a mnemonic. We call them spelling cheats. The children brain storm ways to remember how to spell a word ( e.g. To spell 'they' write the and add y, 'Was' -Wally And Sam, . We record their ideas on a spelling cheat sheet that is displayed in the classroom. I take every opportunity to model using these cheats.
-I am teaching letter sound knowledge. We stretch sounds out like bubble gum to hear sounds and record them as we say them. Also we play sound around. This is where I say a word like bat and ask the children to say or write bat without the 't' or to replace the 't' with a 'p' etc.
-The children learn words with the same pattern e.g. would, could, should
- I make links to the meanings of words two, twin, twice
-We build word families starting with a base word e.g. back backs backing, backwards, quarterback
- I have the children's spelling lists displayed. The children play a game called mindreader where they choose a word from their list and give glues so that the other children can work out which word it is. The clues are -it rhymes with..., a strategy you could use to learn this word is..., It begins with..., It has ...letters/blend.
-We play pocket spelling. This is when the children write their spelling words onto a piece of paper that they keep it in their pocket. They pocket challenge each other throughout the day.
- They rainbow write their words using a spelling strategy.
-They draw a picture to show the meaning of their spelling words.


Tuesday, February 22, 2011


Monday, February 14, 2011

Hi,

Kiri and I had our first ICT Cluster meeting today. We were asked to think about why the ICT contract is viewed as necessary. Why change the way we teach???? Why use ICT??? What do I think? I think children need to have the skills to keep up with the ever changing technology. I believe that inquiry learning helps children to develop the skills they will need to do this. Also children learn best when they are engaged and ICT is an excellent tool to motivate and inquiry allows for many levels of thinking. I look forward to having my thinking challenged and developed as I learn more.







Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Today Kiri and I met with Mark and had a great time learning how to create a blog and find and use blogger templates. He advised us to choose a plain template and to flash it up ourselves. We learnt how to use Comic Life to create headers. I used Comic Life to create my heading on this page. What do you think of it???
We also learnt how to- make a blog your home page, add pages to your blog and how to add items into the toolbar e.g. a new tab. Kiri and I have written up instructions for these things so if you would like a copy just ask.