ICT in the class

It was exciting to see Ashton come back to class after lunch buzzing from what he learnt during ICT club today. It shows how relevant ICT is for the future.
Within our class we have been using our interactive mobi daily and the kids love working with it! It has been particulary helpful with writing and modelling to the whole class in a format they can all see and be part of brainstorming ideas and adding to others contributions. In writing we have been looking at narrative and being able to bring up a picture of a character to describe, or to model writing a short descriptive piece and then using the highlighter to pull out the adjectives in the piece is working well, setting the kids up to write their own exciting stories.

Writing Ideas

Today I went into Room 10 to see how they do their writing. It reminded me of using language experience to inspire writers who often struggle to know where to start or what to write. It is something I used a lot last year but haven't used so far this year.
The class went outside to stand in the wind. Coming back to class it was great to see them using their notebooks, once again reminding me that I need to incorporate these notebooks more throughout topic and writing to get the key points and provide students with a base to then work from. One group stayed on the mat and worked with Gwynneth. They had the extra assistance of the experience and then a great illustration of what happens when it is windy, once again providing them with the stimulus of what to write.
Having a number of hands-on boys within my class, language experience is something I can see working well with this group of lower writers as well as extending the more able writers. I could use this idea of wind and then revisit the idea of language expereince looking at similies using popcorn which is an easy one to look at describing it looking like a sheeps body or sounding like fireworks exploding.
For me this lesson highlighted that the kids don't have to write a lot during writing time but focus on writing well and adding depth to their writing. This is an area I am working on with a lot of my writers and this was a great lesson to stretch sentences out and make them more interesting with the verbs.
Where to next?
In my class I have a number of posters along the wall that talk about nouns, verbs, adjectives etc. I am going to make it a goal of mine to introduce one of these posters a week and to then do some work around what it is quickly for 5-10minutes a day. This way students should be able to identify these in the books they are reading and develop them in their own writing.
Key questions for me now would be.
-How frequently can you incorporate language experience with it still being effective?
-What are some effective language experiences to target boys and lower writers?

My teaching goals for Term 2

This term I want to especially focus on;
Maths-using a range of materials with each maths group to simplify the problem and then work through each phase from materials to imagining and number property within each new strategy taught.

ICT- getting the most out of my interactive white board by incorporating it in my daily maths and reading programmes, allowing it to be child driven with them using the equipment as another tool for learning. As well as utilising the blog to become reflective thinkers and writing for an audience.

Writing-establishing good routines for independent writing, so that students are able to be productive at checking their own work, while I am busy with other students.

Reflective thinking

How can increase reflective time in class?
How can I make reflection time beneficial for Year 2s and 3s?