Reflecting on Leadership

I have nearly completed one year as team leader at Lynmore School and as the time came up to reapply for these positions, I thought it would be appropriate to reflect on all I have achieved, what I still want to achieve and my philosophy of leadership. 

When I think about what pushes me to do my best as a leader, I realise that I am influenced by wanting everyone to achieve at their personal best and know that I will do whatever I can to help them achieve it.  I was looking up quotes about leadership and this one rang true to my leadership style

"The greatest good you can do for another is not just share your riches but to reveal to them their own."

I have decided that the best way for me to do these reflections is by relating each aspect of my job description to this quote and to how I have achieved these in relation to this quote over the past year.

As both a teacher and a leader I believe in the importance of three way relationships for helping children to achieve success, both within my team and across the school.  As a result of this throughout the year I have personally kept in contact with the whanau of children within my class and have encouraged my team members to also.  We have done this in a variety of ways and these include: blogs, emails, phone contact and through meetings such as the parent evening for accelerating literacy learning.  In addition to making contact with these parents I have also valued the expertise that they can offer my team - whether this be on school trips, coming in to provide feedback/feed forward for students learning or through providing their children guidance through student led conferences.  Through these learning conversations with parents across the team there has been the development of parent led initiatives where they develop kits alongside their child's teacher that fully develops and supports what their child is learning within the classroom. 

In addition to this, across the team we have provided appropriate and engaging support for special needs students that allow them to become included within the everyday classroom programme whilst still having their educational needs met.  Individualised Educational Programmes have been discussed with parents, whanau, the special needs co-ordinator and teacher aides that work with these students to ensure that all students are provided with the opportunity to experience success. Through  working with family and whanau I have helped both students and whanau realise the riches they can and do bring to the educational journey.

In order to be a good leader I think that it is important that I first ensure that my classroom environment is representative of what I am asking others to do also.  As a teacher I consistently vary my teaching approaches and methods to ensure that I am meeting all of my students learning and cultural needs, this is done through providing students with an environment where they feel comfortable asking question about, and making suggestions to, their learning.  I provide learning opportunities that ensure children are intellectually engaged in challenging context and that all children have had appropriate modelling to help them achieve at the top level that they are able.  Within my classroom, there is a culture maintained where students encourage each other to step outside their comfort zones, knowing that they are in a psychologically safe environment in which to do so.  High expectations of all learners and relationships between student and student and each individual and myself ensure that this culture occurs.  Both within my classroom and across the classrooms of my team members there is consistently strong learner influence, engagement and achievement - this has occurred through students having input into their learning, and through providing learning opportunities that are relevant for students at the time that they are learning - sich as conducting a social studies integrated unit that aligned with the celebration of ANZAC 100 years and using the Rugby World Cup for students to do a statistical investigation on whilst it was being played out on the world stage.

I have in depth curriculum knowledge, sound pedagogies that influence the way I teach and why I teach that way and I consistently use formative assessment to enhance the learning opportunities provided to my students.  Formative assessment is used regularly in order to diagnose evidence of learning for individual students and this information is married seamlessly with existing planning.  In addition to formative assessment I also use summative assessment to evaluate where students are at as a cohort and to help myself articulate with clarity what each students needs are and how I can provide pathways that enable students to meet these.  In regards to my teaching, planning, reporting, classwork, classroom environment and attending extra curricular events I am a positive role model for my team.

As a leader, I have helped to ensure that all teachers in my team are clear about where their students are and can provide evidence about this also.  I have worked with members of my team consistently throughout the year in order to ensure that there are pathways in place for all learners across the team and that there are planned approaches to respond to the individual needs of these students.  Evidence of this is through assessment folders and analysis of all assessment, completed both as a class and as a team.  Through analysis and assessment, I have ensured that as a team we have identified out most pressing priority learners and addressed them with fast and best fit solutions - evidence of this is present in the ALL work that we undertook as a team when we identified that over 30% of our students were well below in their writing after our first team writing moderation.  This analysis of assessment is also supported by professional discussions at team meetings each week where teachers have the opportunity to engage in professional discussions about where children of concern are at and how we can continue to move them along.

When I consider professional dialogue and how I have and can continue to engage teachers in dialogue about their practice I reflect on the fact that each teacher I am working with has excellent knowledge, practice and capabilities and it is my job to ensure that they make the most of these.  I have done this in a variety of ways throughout the year.  Making observations of my colleagues and providing them with feedback and feed forward has allowed me to help them identify their key areas for development and next steps whilst still acknowledging what they are successful at.  Through minutes of meetings and notes of my observations I also pass these onto the senior leadership team so that they are able to support me in my role of supporting the teachers within my team and can provide me with advice and guidance.

In my role I ensure that I make time for my team and asking about what is working and what is not - based on the benchmarks from Tony Burkin.  This has been evident in 'Clarity in the Classroom' and ALL working on ideas together and where to for term planning, we discuss the way the planning is going, how we changed ideas and share resources to aid the learning in our classes.  Last term my team were all asked to share something they had learnt - and lead our own PD around it - items ranged from professional readings, sharing power points, using new resources to teach maths, interactive web 2.0 tools, and blog sharing.

Interlead Appraisal helped me to voice my awe of the expertise within my team and how they have the 'goods' and are making a difference for their children.  Speaking with the music teacher I commented on how he used his 'Measures of Success' - he was full of praise for the process from the 'Clarity in the Classroom' and how it was helping him to create WALTs and gives his teaching more purpose.  As part of the ERO process of auditing our school, ERO met with the other team leaders and myself.  We were asked how we are supported in our roles and what helps each of us - I discussed "That often we relied on each other for ideas and direction and as part of my leadership PD - with the collaborative futures academy that I felt that there was a need for an alignment of our curriculum across all the school."

Also this year, I have been enrolled in a course with Vikrum Murthy - Academy for Collaborative Futures and yesterday I worked with a group of leaders from around Rotorua. At the end of the day I always leave feeling positive and empowered ready to take on exciting new challenges and fantastic opportunities.

I am looking forward to next year still as a Year 5 Team Leader with a new team and 'the world is my oysters' as they say. Roll on 2016.

Appraisal and Self Review

This year as part of the Appraisal process at our school, we use the Interlead Appraisal System. As teachers we are required to self review our Teaching Practice and then our Team Leader appraises us within the same time deadline. Being a Team leader, my principal appraises me.

I was very honest in my self review - this is difficult as there were questions that I found that I was in the middle for some (between the questions). I found the whole activity very daunting in March (first self review) and in September much easier - probably due to our classroom observations in August and my increased confidence from my feed back sessions with my observer. As an experienced teacher, I had not had my teaching practice formally observed for quite a while.

There are areas I need to work on and I will use these as guidelines to develop my teaching practice. So here are the areas -

Instructional Practice & Formative Assessment

• Lessons demand students be cognitively and intellectually engaged.
• Provides succinct accurate answers to students’ questions
• Lessons have clear structure – a definitive beginning, middle and end.
• Uses assessment data to create a learning dominated classroom where the purpose of assessment is to improve the quality of teaching and learning rather than to assess and provide grades
• Students are enabled to develop as independent learners able to accurately evaluate their own learning needs.
• By carefully listening to students, is able to catch their meaning and provide enriching unplanned learning experiences through learning conversations.
• Engages in experimentation and innovation in order to create new and improved possibilities.

Truth to be Honest with Others & Self

• Contributes to shared understandings by voicing thoughts, even when these are potentially embarrassing or threatening to others.
• Demonstrates commitment to continual improvement by gathering evidence to substantiate contributions to raising standards and growing teaching practice.

The positives from my latest Appraisal is that my appraiser has placed me higher on the matrix and regards me as masterful in many areas in my practice as a teaching professional.

 

Inclusion

During one of our staff meeting last term, the RTLB Advisor ran 2 workshops one on behaviour and one on revisiting the Special Needs register at our school. While doing the holiday tidy up I discovered the hand out from the power point for behaviour and some of the notes I had made, this and the CORE Education article (Quite simply included ..by Fionna Wright) that I have just read, have encouraged me the change around my room seating plan.
 

The child in my class has Simpson Golabi Behemel Syndrome - it is a rare disorder with only approximately 130 people in the world have been diagnosed. One of the side effects is that is very big for his age - very large hands, head and feet. I have also discovered that part of the disorder is a very large tongue. He is identified on the special needs register and has a computer and printer, and his very own set of tote trays for his books and pencil case.

 

He struggles to hold a pen correctly and has difficulty write on and between the lines, so his computer is essential. The student is working on his self management, being ready to learn can be a problem. He has learnt many avoidance behaviours - pencil sharpening, lost books, annoying others, reading in the corner (not at the correct time) and no completing the set task. This has all improved since the beginning of the year, still developing too.

 

Being overly large he has a chair that is build for him, I did have a desk placed to one side of the class and all his gear was located there as the power point to charge his computer was there too. But after reading the article and hand out I have rearranged the furniture so that he has his chair located within the class and his gear located near the other children's tote trays. By doing this I have created a very large space for our mat area and my teaching base is now more solid.

 

I am quite excited and looking forward to how the children react to the changes. My main aim is to create a more inclusive and a positive learning environment for all. 

New Inquiry - How can encourage children to reflect on what they have learnt?

My next inquiry has come from my own reflections from my feedback session for my READING OBSERVATION. The children now understand what they are learning, why they are learning it and how they be successful with this learning. Also as part of my own self appraisal, I have realised that I need to focus on my lessons having a beginning, middle and an end.

This is part of my research into improving my teaching - I found a blog with the title
Top 10 Evidence Based Teaching Strategies for Those Who Care About Student Results.
This unpacked is what I need to do to in my class. Number 6 particularly struck a chord with me - Feedback is the breakfast of champions, and it is the breakfast served by extraordinary teachers around the world.

Evidence Based Teaching Strategy 1 : Clear Lesson Goals
I need to be clear about what I want my students to learn during each lesson. The research says that such clarity effect on student results is 32% greater than the effect of holding high expectations for every student (and holding high expectations has a sizeable effect). "If you cannot quickly and easily state what you want your students to know and be able to do at the end of a given lesson, the goal of your lesson will be unclear." Clear lesson goals will help me (and my children) to focus every other aspect of the lesson and on what matters most.

Evidence Based Teaching Strategy 2 : Show & Tell

Start my lessons with show and tell. Put simply, telling involves sharing information or knowledge with my students while showing involves modelling how to do something. I need to be clear about what I want my students to know and be able to do by the end of the lesson, I need to tell them what they need to know and show them how to do the tasks I want them to be able to do. Concise lesson goals!

Evidence Based Teaching Strategy 3 : Questioning to Check for Understanding

Use questions to check for understanding during the lesson. Making sure to check for understanding before moving onto the next part of the lesson. By using techniques such as random questioning of group, children showing answers on whiteboards and think-pair-share will help me to check for understanding before moving on from the show and tell part of the lesson, and thinking about what other questions I could possibly ask within the lesson.

Evidenced Based Teaching 4 : Summarise New Learning In A Graphical Way

 Graphic organisers have their place to help my children to summarise what they have learned and to understand the connections between the aspects of what I have taught them. Studies show that it doesn’t seem to matter who makes the summary graphic, be it you or your students, provided the graphic is accurate. Discussing a graphic organiser is a way to finish off your show and tell. I can use this tip to help the children reflect on what has been taught throughout the lesson.

Evidence Based Teaching Strategy 5 : Plenty of Practice

Practice will help my children to retain the knowledge and skills that they have learned while also allowing me another opportunity to check for understanding. I must ensure that my students are practicing the right things. My children need to be practicing what they learnt during my modelling, that will hopefully reflect my lesson goals - WALTs. I need to be mindful that the practice is not about mindless busy work. Nor is it about giving them independent tasks that I haven’t previously modelled and taught. Finally, research shows that students do better when their teacher has them practice the same things over a spaced-out period of time.

Evidence Based Teaching Strategy 6 : Provide Your Students With Feedback

Giving feedback involves letting my children know how they have performed on a particular task along with next steps to help  them improve. Unlike praise, which focuses on the student rather than the task, feedback provides a tangible understanding of what they did well, of where they are at, and of how they can improve. In John Hattie’s view, any teachers who seriously want to boost their children’s results should start by giving them dollops and dollops of feedback.

Evidence Based Teaching Strategy 7 : Be Flexible About How Long It Takes to Learn

The idea that given enough time, every student can learn is not as revolutionary as it sounds. It underpins the way we teach martial arts, swimming and dancing. It is also the central premise behind mastery learning, a technique that has the same effect on student results as socio-economic status and other aspects of home life. By adopting mastery learning, I need to differentiate in a different way. I can keep the learning intentions (WALT) the same, but varying the time I give each child a chance to succeed. This could be a struggle with the time framework for timetables and weeks but very much worth thinking about.

Evidence Based Teaching Strategy 8 : Get Students Working Together (in productive ways)

Encouraging productive group work within the class. When working in groups, my children tend to rely on the child they believe is most willing and able to the task at hand. Psychologists call this phenomenon social loafing. To increase the productivity of my groups, I need to be more selective about the tasks I assign and the individual roles for each group member and ensure each group member personally responsible for one step in the task.

Evidence Based Teaching Strategy 9 : Teach Strategies Not Just Content

By explicitly teaching the children how to use the relevant strategies. There are strategies underpinning the effective execution of many tasks that I ask my children to do at school. And, just as with content, I need to tell students about these strategies, to show them how to use them and to give them guided practice before asking them to use them independently.

Evidence Based Teaching Strategy 10 : Nurture Meta-Cognition

Meta-cognition involves thinking about your options, your choices and your results – and it has an even larger effect on children's results than teaching strategies. By using meta-cognition  my children need to think about what strategies they could use before choosing one, and  think about how effective their choice was (after reflecting on their success or lack thereof) before continuing with or changing their chosen strategy. The Teacher Support Materials with the School Journals have a mega-cognition aspect of each possible learning experience.

Hopefully by actioning some of these aspects I can encourage the reflective practice for my children.

Final Data for ALL

The children in the ALL invention group have had their final "official" assessment marked and moderated and now I have to analyse the results.

THE GOOD
There has been movement in some areas of writing with the most achievement being 9 sub levels for one child in the area of structure and language features. The children have all had different areas of success. Confidence has grown, they now are wanting to write and record their ideas - where there was a reluctance before. They are more willing to plan and think about the sequence of their writing.

THE BAD
Some of the group did not make any movement in some areas at all. Some of the children went backwards in the areas of ideas. I was very disappointed with the children's attitude rating as we had really worked on this area - the videos I recorded earlier in the month were very positive.

THE UGLY
The results for the spelling component of eAsTTle  were very discouraging. There were not any changes in their results - the mark before the intervention being <2B and then at the end of the intervention <2B. I was very alarmed until I looked at the individual papers, before and after. Initially the children's results were very low, some words had only initial and ending sounds. For the second sample the children had made some improvements but still not enough to move them above <2B. I did try using a spelling programme as a component of the intervention but to no avail. In this group 4 out of the 6 children have been diagnosed with dyslexia, I need to do more to support these children with their processing of words.

Literacy Circles - Clarity In The Classrrom

This term we are working on writing and illustrating a picture book.  During reading I have been using narratives and articles from the School Journal to give the children background and scaffolding to assist their understanding how a narrative "works". The articles were about two New Zealand illustrations and what they do to illustrate - their inspiration, how their day works, what process is needed to get their drawings approved to use in books.

I can sometimes struggle to use the correct WALT - what do I want them to learn? Yes, they need to know the structure of a narrative, but what are the skills needed to identify that structure? From the PD I took part in earlier in the year with Jeff Anderson, the phrase "What do you notice about what the author has written?" - helps me to redefine this. I am asking the children to understand the author's purpose, finding the evidence within the text, using inference to understand the 'hidden message', make connections with they know, ask questions, use clues to work out unfamiliar words as well as skimming and scanning to identify the main idea. So do I need a WALT? Should it be WDYN - What do you notice? and How did you do that? Helping the children identify the skills they used is very important to improve their own understanding.

To teach reading when the children can 'decode', is all about the understanding/comprehension of the message. This can be fiction or non-fiction, the skills needed are the same and the children need to use a range of skills and strategies to fully understand what they are reading. They need to practice reading - ask questions when they don't understand and think - How can I understand this better? Good readers will use strategies confidently and without thought. How can I make my good readers more mindful of what they are doing?

I have chosen to use novels with my more able readers to motivate them to read with more intent and to extend them more with fictional genre. While discussing the progress so far with a colleague, I mentioned that one child was relying on his knowledge of the movie based on the book. She asked if I had used Literacy Circles before and she would send me the labels for the jobs to do this. So tonight I needed to do some research on what a Literacy Circle was and how it worked. I was quite excited when I realised that this just what I needed to make these children be more mindful of what they were reading and to take more ownership of their learning. So to make this work I will work with this group to teach them the skills for each role, use my guided sessions to gather them together and unpack their success.

The difference intervention can make

One of the children in my ALL group has been part of my Inquiry - how can I make writing more successful for her with her dyslexia and elins glasses. I discovered that using different coloured pens would make her feel "special" and that she can write. Often her ideas have been over shadowed by her ability to write.
So here's the proof :-)

Student Lead Conferences

The weeks have flown and now Student Lead Conferences are here! This year I made the decision to let the children share "their" learning with their parents. This meant that I did not give them the graphic organiser with boxes to fill in, or teach them what to say during my guided sessions or put markers (stickie notes) in their books.

This was because a couple of weeks ago, a child in my class was going to be away for these conferences and her parents wanted to book in a Student Lead Conference, and because I had deadlines for reports and other school stuff I hadn't set her up as before. So one Friday, she came with her parents after school, sat down with her books, a whiteboard and proceeded to tell her Mum and Dad what she had been learning! Not the doing... She was confident and very clear about her achievements and what she needed to learn next. She even showed them the strategy she was learning in Mathematics and taught them how to do it.

The most surprising thing about all this was this was a child at the beginning of the year who used to drive me crazy asking for clarification every time after instructions were given. I taught a unit at the beginning of the year about how we learn best - she had great understanding of herself and now knows how to she can best learn.

So this week all I asked the children was to share their learning - and they are!  I have empowered them to share with their parents and anyone listening what they now know. It was refreshing to hear parents saying that they had learnt from their children, and were actually surprised by what the children could tell them.

I did mark their books vigorously and made sure that they had all work up to date. My style for teaching in my guided sessions has changed too. I now make sure I discuss the why and the success criteria - how do you know you can do this? The children help with the setting up of task boards and constructing the WALTs. I have tried very hard to give  the children a variety of perspectives and cross over ideas/concepts through curriculum areas to build a deeper understanding. THis has been most successful.

How will I run Student Lead Conferences in the future? I think that the children need to tell me.

Managing all the areas of need in the class

At the moment I am struggling to make time for the other children in my class with needs.
This morning before school after discussing Mathletics with a colleague, a couple of the children asked me to show them how they are going on Mathletics - certificates, points etc.
One of the child asked if I could help her tell the time as she could pass the measurement activity I had set for them. I spent nearly half an hour with 2 children learning to tell the time.

My question to myself then was _ "Am I doing for those in need or just those who asked?"
"What do I need to do to ensure that they get it? Mathletics?"

Then just before I received an email from our SENCO asking about a Maori boy in my class who sent alarm bells ringing at the beginning of the year, with his data. He is well below in all areas - reading, writing and maths. He had been in radar, but nothing had been done for him last year (2014) as far as we could find in the records. So I was able to have a Teacher Aide for him, covering Reading Mileage and another Teacher Aide for Mathematics knowledge  (Stage 4) for the first Term. This was such a boost for him and the other child failing.

But for this term there hasn't been any intervention for him - just me. He is improving and progressing as he is part of my ALL group and is having an intensive guided session for writing everyday and the language is flowing - such an improvement. So when the SENCO asked should he be on an IEP - Yes because he has slipped through the gaps before and No, because he is responding to the class environment and he beginning to share his ideas.

So what next? I need to make time to really look at my data and pinpoint those children who need a "lift" and explicitly teach so that they don't fall behind.

ALL - What's working? What's not!

After today's sharing of blogs and the Team Leader's meeting, I realise that I need to make time to reflect, make changes, records those changes and try something new/different.

So to do this I will try to begin with questions.

What's working for my struggling writers?

Because I am working with them each day for guided writing (20 -25 minutes) and then an extra 45mins over 3 slots, the children are feeling much more confident.  They are now following aspects of the writing process - planning, drafting, revising and in some cases publishing.

The children are using a range of sentence starters and structures - moving away from simple sentences and adding depth to their writing. Ideas generally haven't been a problem for this group and orally their language is quite good. Now the children are stretching out the sounds they hear within words and are beginning to use tools - exemplars, essential lists and try/spell notebooks.

When the children are working in their independent writing books I have noticed some changes in the amount and the content for some of these children. The most noticeable change is their willingness to write - actually seeing themselves as writers, not as a subject.

What's not working for my struggling writers?

Mileage! I don't seem to be able to get through as much as I plan to do with this group. By the time we discuss what we are writing about, include everyone's ideas and plan, the actual writing in their books isn't being done in a timely fashion.  I need to build in some urgency - but this has been the problem for these children in the past, the pressure to get pieces of work completed.

Independently planning - As part of our experience I have recorded the words for use later, and then we have planned as a group together in our first session. generally I scribe and the children tell me their ideas, some children are asking if they can use other words in their planner.

Verbalising the learning - the children reflect and evaluate at the end of each piece. This gives them their next steps for their next writing piece. While the children are doing this, they are animated and can easily tell me what they need to work on.  I feel that when I'm not there beside them that this not at 'the front of their brain' helping them make decisions while they are writing. Could they tell someone else what their next steps are? Some, but not all!

What next?
I need to discuss with the children what 'we' can do to write within our time, more writing. What would help them? I will try to use Jeff Anderson - 5/7/10, write for 5 minutes, read and discuss your ideas/ improve it from feedback (spelling, editing) for 7 minutes, continue writing for another 10!

Encourage those who want to be independent in the planning stage to try to get the main ideas down and then to come back to the group and share. Give the graphic organiser (large copy) to pairs of children and get them to record what they want. Use sticky notes ( I do now - I scribe them) with more independence - children to write on them.

Before writing the children will be asked to share what they are working on in this session - I will write this onto the top the page for them to look at during this piece. Hopefully they will tell each other before  they start writing if I make "verbalising their next step" part of the practice!

How will I know if I'm successful?

My struggling writers will be able to tell me what their steps are, there will be more independence for the planning stage and there should be more writing.

Learning Te Reo

This year as part of my PD I am learning about Maori culture and the language through the Open Wananga. I have completed the first module and have started the 2nd one. I have found this interesting and empowering especially as far as the speaking of Te Reo. I have begun to use some of the kupu in my classroom. My class now says a karakia to start the day, working on a karakia to end the day next.

Reading - Purposed Based Writing

What struck a chord with me was that "Good writers use text  features ( anything from elaboration, to description, to opening general statements, text connectives, figures of speech such as metaphor, commas for embedded clauses, and even spelling) to serve its purpose."

From this Reading - I sort of got that the basics are the same - take time to analyse good exemplars in depth, deconstruct and reconstruct to find how they work and extend of their purpose with your writers.

As Teachers we need to provide exemplars text to unpack and draw ideas from (scaffolding) so that they can get the writing done. This is still as important as the writing. The basics of planning, drafting, does the writing work? ( meet the purpose) rewriting and rewriting again - make writing, writing.

Taking the time to listen

Every Friday I have special time to work with just the children in my intervention group. This morning due to some miscommunication I didn't get to my experience off to the flying start I would have liked. The plan today was to celebrate their writing and to put it in the published work folders and cover their draft books making them more personal.

I decided to put a STAR on a piece of blank paper and the children to get words and letters that describe themselves from magazines. I will put a photo on each start and cover seal them onto their draft books. During this cutting time, the children were conferencing with me on their finished piece and deciding on what their next steps would be.

After I had completed the conferencing with those who had finished I listened in on the conversation on around me. It was all about words and letters, not pictures but the children helping each other to form words, find words and use descriptive language.

The publishing folders weren't done so that's Mondays job and to establish that GOOD feedback using the language of writing. For my next experience I think I will do adjective synonym poetry, to create word banks for our writing tool box.

The Importance of an Audience

Yesterday I decided to "pinch" one of the ideas for our ALL Meeting on Wednesday. It was sharing the children's writing with their parents. A wee girl in my group always has wonderful ideas but the dyslexia and handwriting skills make reading her writing a mission. So pushing the aside the surface features and writing it so you can understand her expression and ideas - I published her writing in an email to her parents and on our class weebly.

Awesome response from her Mum. She immediately emailed back and commented on the weebly.
I will make sure to capture those warm fuzzies  for each of the children in my ALL writing group.

What a simple idea for my colleague - but so effective.

ALL Team Meeting

This morning the teachers involved in the ALL intervention, all met to discuss the gems, challenges and celebrations. We are being lead by the AP who is setting us - readings, supporting our ideas, challenging our thinking and helping us to collaborate.

My first thoughts were that this was just a meeting to tick the boxes for the invention. I was pleasantly surprised to sit around the table and share what has been happening for each of us. It first started with the team reporting/sharing what resonated with us from the reading - Gail Loane "I've got something to say".  It was so fantastic that the reading appealed on so many different levels and there was much nodding around the table.

Points made - Everyone can write something
                    - The importance of good feedback (modelled and children using the learning to improve each other's writing)
                    - The children's writing is about their lives/experiences
                    - Reading aloud their writing to share ideas - deeper features over surface features
                    - Taking time to craft ideas
                    - Sharing GOOD writing and other writer's work

So after that we shared - gems, challenges and celebrations. Gems are as the name suggests - moments that needed to be captured. These ranged from using sticky notes to sequence ideas, parking the planning and explicitly teaching ed endings, the children's willingness to write (these children are reluctant writers) and the use of oral language.

One teacher had used the ALL 'experience' time to send emails to the children's parents with a snapshot of what they had written with a personal note from the child. A great way to create an audience for the writing. The teacher was so impressed with the instant feedback from the parents. I need to give this idea a go, so that I have more buy in from the parents.

I shared my challenge for one child in my ALL group who has great oral language but the surface features (spelling, handwriting and lack of spaces between words) make it hard for her to read back what she has written. I realised the wealth of knowledge sitting around the table. From drawing a happy face on a finger, using handwriting cards so she can see correctly formed letters, using coloured paper and having larger lines for her to write on, were some of the ideas forthcoming.

The meeting/sharing was very empowering and has given me more enthusiasm again to do the best I can for these kids. What a journey we on together!

Using words to describe

We visited the bush last week and played "Hide and Seek". The children were excited and were able to give be some words to add to our planner. After looking through the words given I discovered a real lack of depth to their words - words like fun, nice, noisy etc.

So today I was given the opportunity to re-visit the bush and add some more words to our planner. We went outside into the bush situated along side our school again. It had been raining hard yesterday and the area was damp and rather chilly. The children were wearing mainly shorts with a sweatshirt. With the help of the Teacher Aide, we took the children blindfolded and made them stand in places on their own where they couldn't hear each other and waited...

It was interesting, a couple of children had to look, some stroked the trees around them, some stamped the ground and some shouted. So we 'released' them and asked them to tell us how they felt, what did they hear, did they smell anything and so on. We had prompted them before hand to think about these elements before we took them on their travels.

It was like pulling teeth, they didn't have many words for cold, (like the wind was whipping through the trees and the Teacher Aide was turning blue!). Some of the children were rubbing their legs and rubbing their arms but still they could only come up with words like cold, really cold...
After getting some words out of them and it was beginning to rain we went inside to write some synonym webs for cold and scared.

After the children came back to class, I asked a colleague for some resources around words and what she used to develop the language for her children who were struggling with writing as well. As we have been given some more allowance on our photocopying budget I have gone a bit mad.

Lots of laminating tonight, hopefully it will help tomorrow when we make more synonym web for describing words for out Hide and Seek writing.

Weebly

This is the link to my class weebly where we share learning and teaching that is occurring - Weebly

Reading about Visual Dyslexia

The Visual Dyslexia Solution

Inquiry - How do I help my struggling writers?

 I have selected 8 children  to work with using the ALL programme. This is a programme where the children are exposed to guided teaching for a period of at least 170 minutes - 200 minutes per week. This will happen for 15 weeks with the expectation that the children will move a year's progress - A JUMP START. The children are exposed to more oral language, scaffolding, any assistance that the Teacher deems they need.

So, after selecting 6 children with advice and knowing that 2 others are on the fringe and would benefit with extra support, I have 8 children in my ALL group. The selected children were given an e-asTTLe writing test - this was a cold sample, a picture cue and time for brainstorming and then writing for 40 minutes and 5 minutes editing. The expectation was the children would write a piece of descriptive writing. Of these selected children 3 are diagnosed with dyslexia, one who wears rose-coloured glasses to help her with visual dyslexia.

As part of the preparation for ALL - the children were all surveyed to find out how they feel about writing and how the feel about being taught writing.

The children are given a special book - a science book where the left hand page is blank and the right hand page is lined like normal. The blank page is for gluing in planning, graphic organisers, stretching and chunking words and practising writing a sentence. The book is set out with a learning goal sheet, Essential spelling lists 1-7 and success criteria for writing. I call the group my writing club.

I have struggled to plan for these children as I want them to have some input as to what to write about. So I started my first session with them today. I first showed them their books, asked them what they what to write about. The children came up with ANZAC (as the classroom is full of ANZAC, as it is our topic study), holidays, dolphins, fantasy & futuristic stories, and animals. I have created a list to use and guide the children. I began talking about animals - Pets and I found out that all the children in the group all have a pet of some sort. Mostly cats and dogs as well as a horse.

This has become my starting point as I want to develop the children's ability to describe when writing and it is always good to start with something they're familiar with. As I needed to work with the rest of the class on deconstruction of the new genre, I sent the writing club group away with a fat strip of paper and the expectation they would write one sentence about their pet.

Tonight I wrote out their sentence using Comic Sans font and the children can use this as the starting sentence for the piece of descriptive writing. Tomorrow together we will plan using a main ideas spider graphic organiser, word banks and write what next step they need to focus on during their writing.

Holidays!

I have realised how much I need to "give back" to my husband for all his efforts during this first term. How he just gets things done around the house and copes with my rants about school. Have spent beautiful days just chilling with him and feel so much better. Able to tackle this blogging thing. We have been for a couple of walks and a bike ride around town too.

I know that I need to look after myself so that I can get what I need to do done.

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I am setting up my blog