Restorative Practice

I am still struggling with the right time to use restorative practice in class.  I have used it a lot in the playground and find that often with the younger children they almost just want to be listened to and have someone hear their grumbles. So getting them to explain to each other how it makes them feel means they feel as though they are being heard. Asking students 'what do we need to do to make this right?' they will often volunteer the suggestion of apologising on their own. I have noticed that even within my class I need to work on developing the language that they use to describe how they were feeling because often they will use angry when really it might be that they are frustrated and maybe their actions came across that they were angry so they need to be able to better explain this, or you get the generic 'I felt sad' answer.
I have used restorative chats in class but find it a difficult juggling act between it being the right time and not taking away from learning times. I have found that there are occassions during guided reading/writing/maths where various children completing independent follow up tasks are being disruptive. It would be an opportune time to have a restorative chat about their behaviour, who it is affecting, how it makes me feel, and how we can make it right. BUT I am often torn. Restorative chats can't really be rushed you need to approach them calmly and not appear like quickly give me the answer I want to hear because I need to get back to my reading group. Therefore it is hard to know if I should interupt a groups learning for 10 minutes when they weren't the ones mucking around. I know that in the long run the children's disruptive behaviour should minimise and it may get to the point one day where all I need to say is I need to catch up with you for a restorative chat shortly and that maybe a reminder to get back on task. Fingers crossed!
It was interesting using circle time on the first day back at school following the course in the holidays. I modelled what I wanted from the students (to talk about how they felt coming back to school) I said I was excited to be coming back, seeing them all again and hearing about what they did in their holidays and that I was well rested after a good holiday and made sure I went to bed early last night. It was interesting hearing them talk about their feelings. One girl came to school late and was upset because we were in the hall not where she had expected us to be in our classroom. When it came to her turn in circle time she said she was excited to be returning to school because she liked school. Others then piped up saying no you were crying when you came into the hall you were sad. But I talked to the class about them being her feelings and that she could share what she wanted and talked about how she now felt happy again because she had found us.
During the two-day course Marg talked about building relationships and how when we get tired we will often revert to the more authorative figure. I guess I am more conscious of this and how I could have approached the situation differently now. There are some students in my class who need constant reminding of how to sit on the mat and manage their behaviour or work independently. When I have reminded these students constantly throughout the day I can sometimes feel myself becoming annoyed by this. I have used some restorative chats with these students but like anything it is an on-going process that hopefully will get easier as the students and I become more confident with the practice.

Goals for E-Learning in Term 2

This term Room 11 have had their application for a class set of four netbooks approved, which is very exciting!
The kids have loved jumping on these and going about their inquiry learning, researching and finding out new facts/information when we have borrowed these from classes in the past. This term I want to;

1) Continue this emphasis on inquiry learning, by giving students time during 'topic' to come up with questions they want to learn more about and structure their own research and learning with teacher guidance and support. Inquiry learning is so much more powerful to the individual.

2) Intergrate them into my daily reading, writing and mathematics programmes. Using websites like studyladder to perfect a new maths skill, using them to read for meaning by jumbling up a poem and getting the students to put it back in the correct order, practicing typing skills during handwriting. Using tools like Etherpad for my reluctant writers.

3) Of course use them to make more regular posts on their individual blogs. It is hard to get around everyone and to encourage them to make posts on their learning when you have one classroom computer and a computer suite time that you are trying to balance with research, posting and practicing skills like mathletics.  Having netbooks in class will allow this to happen more naturally so that our ICT suite time is a time for going on the blogs and what ever else we may need them for that day.