Kicking the year off

Today was the first of our two call back days and we begun by looking at the school behaviour management systems, namely the Reflection Room and whether this 'time out' was really working for some kids.
There is one kid in my class (shall we say X) who I will have again this year and I know that I am going to have to work hard with X to make sure they begin the year in a positive way. They were a frequent visitor of the Reflection Room and I know that this was not seen as a major consequence to them, however I continued to use it out of fairness to the rest of the class that should X disrupt our learning then they too would go to the Reflection Room. Last year the rest of the class had given X chance after chance to change their behaviour and through the power of Restorative Practice the rest of the class (who were victims at time to X's disruptive behaviour) told them that they had used up all of their chances and that they were sick of hearing empty promises. I know that it could now be very easy for my Year 4's who were X's classmates last year to view X in the same way as they did come the end of last year, not really giving them a chance of a New Year Fresh Start approach. So I am going to have to model giving this person a chance. I will continue to touch base with X before school and build that relationship but I also hope that by giving X some responsibilities they will rise to the idea of being a Year 4 and therefore having to be a role model to others in the class.

I know that X loves technology so what responsibilities could I give X around this?

Maybe...
-It is X's responsibility to turn the class computers on each morning and shut them down at the end of the day.
-Help the techsperxs (if not one themself) to turn and log computers on in the ICT suite at the beginning of our allocated time.
-X is often one of the first at school is there something X could do around organising her equipment for learning and encouraging others to do the same. X could be my little parrot. Have you put your chair down? Have you got a sharp pencil ready? Have you looked at the board to see what book you will need out first?This could have the positive spin off of everyone being ready at 9am and me not having to remind. Once everyone becomes better managers themselves and automatically does this could X look for the best table before 9am?
-Could they be my eagle eye to look out for who is being a powerful learner and what they are doing that makes them a powerful learner to give a spotted card to. Maybe encouraging her to look for the powerful learners will somehow mean that she starts modelling/mimicking their behaviour.
I am going to consciously schedule time into my programme to look at teach pro social skills using ideas I have found on Pinterest and through programmes like the Stop Think Do book. This should hopefully help X become a positive classroom member along with the rest of the class.

Do you have any other good ways to make a child feel special and needed through little jobs in your class?

Term 3 Reflection

Wow! What a busy term! But in that time there has been a lot of great learning too for both the kids and myself. Attending an ICT course in the holidays I learnt about exploring the ipad and layering the apps. I have always been aware of using the ipad in a productive way so that it doesn't just become a babysitter or give kids 'busy' work. But this course made me think even further about it.

Since attending that course I have shared back the information at a staff meeting with Te Kowhai and at the term ICT Connected Cluster. It has been great to see kids playing games that they love like Maths Slide but then taking a screen shot and posting it on their blogs reflecting and setting goals for the next time they play that game. Today it was awesome to see my Techsperxs coming back from their meeting and sharing what apps are good to use. They then took a screen shot of the apps, created a comic life, then put the comic life onto a pic collage and then loaded it onto the blog. A great example of layering but the best thing was that it was completely student driven with no teacher direction to layer the apps and get more out of them.

Something I want to do more of next term is our app wall in class. We are beginning to look at an app a fortnight. How can this help with our learning type reflective questions and getting the kids to tell me if it is a practice app, problem solving app, collaborative app etc and how can we make it more than just a practice app? Getting the kids to talk more about the benefits and justify why it should still be on our ipad and not removed.

This term I started a class twitter account. Some of the kids have really understood the benefit of twitter and are sharing links to their work encouraging people to comment and visit their blog which is great to see. We have also taken part in kidsedchat which the kids have enjoyed and gets them sharing with others around the country finding out what they are learning and again encourages questioning as they comment back to people.

Raw&Flawed, Published vs Perfect-Student Voice

I really like the idea of using our blogs to showcase the process of learning rather than the mastered learning. I like the idea of publishing raw ideas ready to get feedback all the way along. He is right in the momentum being great at the start. I notice this with comments as well. The sooner the kids see the comments the more impact they get from them.



Publishing student voice from EDtalks on Vimeo.

Giving kids choice-Who holds the power

I really like this idea as a way to get the kids thinking about who holds the power and to reflect on my own teaching. Am I making too many of the decisions? Am I letting the kids take ownership of their learning? How could I give them more choice in the day?

I would be interested in trialing this with my class and maybe adding a column with what they would  like to have more choice or say in?

Taken from Emma Winder's blog http://my-learning.me/2013/04/22/who-has-control/

Who has control?

Posted on April 22, 2013 by EMMAWINDER25Leave a comment

Interestingly, when I’ve spoken to the students in Year 6 lately, they’ve told me that they have lots of control in the classroom. I can’t say I agree, though they may well have plenty of control compared to previous years at school. So, to give both myself and the kids in my class a better idea of who had control over the various aspects of the classroom, I decided to have a big discussion around this.

Below is the result of this discussion:

Miss Winder controls:	Teacher and kids have joint control:	Kids have control:
Deadlines Direction of discussions Mathletics tasks Warnings Units of inquiry- “big ideas” Trips Visitors “Thoughts on this” board Brain teasers Planning: Tasks Opt in meetings Group meetings Class meetings Learning intentions	Choosing goals Deadlines Noise level Success criteria “Did you know” board	Planning the day – decide when to do things Where the furniture is in the room How we behave Who we work with or whether we work alone How we use our time Where we sit What we do for fitness Whether we attend opt in meetings Choose how hard we try Choose what rewards we get Whether you need to get a drink or use the toilet What/with whom/when you talk Choose what you want to learn within the big idea in inquiry Choose to add your ideas to the “thoughts on this” board Choose what to write about for goal practice Choose what to do when weekly tasks are finished.

Human Connections-Relationships

This is a great video about relationships an interesting point made about how kids don't learn from teachers they don't like. Nothing new but so right! I certainly had some teachers who I didn't click with or really truly respect. Because of this I either taught myself because I had exams that were worth something to me or gave up on the subject. Which if we let our students give up on a subject doesn't that mean that we have given up on the student? Have we done our best job if students give up?
I wonder how I can use positive affirmations each morning to raise students confidence in themselves?
I love her positive attitude and turning a negative situation (the F) into a positive and you can only imagine the student will next time try their best to do better not only to please the teacher but also do better for themselves. I think sometimes that is the key getting them to take ownership of their own learning.

Storytelling ipad apps Master Class

This morning we meet for a master class on Storytelling apps on the ipads.

Sock puppets was the first one we looked at for an animated way to tell a story.
The saved copies can be found under open and to delete you just hold down on one you want to delete and it will come up with a delete button to push.

Toontastic was another recommended one. This has a plot, setting, characters, problem and solution to all plan and plot your story out with.

With Puppet Pals you can insert your own photos eg: you as the character or our school as the setting. You can save it to your camera roll to upload onto your blogs by inserting as a video or going through safari on the ipad as it is a video.

Big cats are big book read-a-louds but you can also go to story creator and retell the story the kids have just listened to.

Book creator is another great app that you can then save as an ibook. With book creator you can add a photo, sound or even video.

TIP-To stop the annoying update beeps go to settings then notifications then find the app that keeps popping up and push to off.

Te Kowhai and iPads

Wow what a great afternoon learning from other like minded teachers experimenting with the use of iPads in the classroom. I felt it was a great sharing opportunity with both parties learning something new. It was great to see that even though we are both using pic collage we could see different uses for this app. My class are confident in using this app now and will often ask to go on it and create a pic collage learning tennis or gymsport etc. This app is being used in more of a showcasing way as a collection of photos in my class. One thing I started doing as I introduced these different apps was to ask the kids how else could this be used?  This is something I think I need to go back to and do more of. It was cool to see Te Kowhai using it to take photos of maths learning with materials out and basically writing what their WALT is in the middle. Another great use for this app and one I will be trialling in class. 

They also introduced us to a fantastic thinking hats tool. The teacher had used it for topic work but I could see how this would be great as a reading follow up, during shared reading as well as topic and I am sure much more as I experiment more with it. It was great that it reminded the kids what each hat stood for and could be uploaded to their blog. I think I might trial this first with a reading group, but it could have some value as a self assessment type of tool during our designing of our wearable art outfits as well???

Educreations was another app that they talked about which is very similar to the show me app. Except the benefit of educreation is that it has several pages. I know this is a problem some of my boys run into when they are explaining and they write too big running out of space. I also liked that with educreation you can upload a photo. It could be great to get the kids to work out a problem using materials take a photo and upload it. Then they could record what the materials stand for and how it shows the process of reaching the answer.

I loved the idea of the visual poet app it could be used in so many ways, sequencing their writing, sequencing a shared book, a collection of photos with key words, social stories etc. I think this app is one that needs time to explore all the possibilities it has.

Scratch was another really cool app for writing time. It split your screen in half, one half being a website and the other a notepad. One of their teachers used the website side to bring up an image from the Internet and then get the kids to write key words, describing words to do with the picture on the other side. I am not sure yet if you can import your own photos on the website side if you can you could take a picture of one page of a reader and get the kids to make notes about what is happening on this page, what this page shows etc.

They also talked about A+ spelling test which I have seen before. It is great for recording the kids weekly spellings words and saying them in a sentence. Then the kids can test themselves during spelling time. The same with spelling app spellasaur.

Grammar wonderland and parts of speech were other good apps for getting kids to work in small collaborative groups to refresh what nouns, verbs adjectives etc are and identifying which word is a noun etc. The parts of speech one even gave you a pie graph of what they got and what they need work on almost like a mini PAT analysis.

Talking to Krystal after the session the seniors talked about a cool maths slide app to teach the kids to use the iPad in a collaborative sense. It also keeps that competitiveness going to get the kids having a quick recall of their basic facts. It also means no one needs to be the teacher with some of the games I have got my less confident mathematicians doing I have needed a more able mathematician to be the teacher to make sure they are getting the answers right.

Some great ideas that I can't wait to start experimenting with! A very worthwhile afternoon.