My first week back at school has been interesting. This week I tried a new behaviour management strategy. A bell. I used it for rotations- so that the kids would know when to change, and so that I didn’t have to raise my voice. I had found, last term, that when we were doing rotations everyone would be really engrossed in what they were doing and sometimes not hear me when I would ask everyone to change. I would do the ‘clap, clap, clap’ thing, but I think that they might get immune to that if I do it all the time. I got the bell idea from Helen Kurtz- a supervising teacher I had last year. She was great.
All holidays I had a really terrible cough and am still not 100% over it. Because of that my voice isn’t very loud (it’s not really very loud at the best of times). So that was another way to combat that situation. I am finding voice projection to be a real issue for me. I have always known this, but is more apparent with the preppies, and also, the fact that Jenny has such an animated, and much louder voice, means that that’s what they’re use to.
On Friday I wrote down some notes about how I could work on that area, and my over all behaviour management, from observing Jenny with the kids. Here’s what I learnt:
Use lots of expression in my voice. This often gets the kids attention, and makes them interested in what I have to say.
Reward good answers and be positive.
I realised this week that I like plans. I like to know what I’m doing and where I’m going. Wednesday was a bad day for me. We were starting our play- new for the term. I thought that the children would give me some ideas of things that they wanted to play and then I would work with that to hopefully make it work with the ‘international’ theme that I was hoping to go with. But the children didn’t really give me what I wanted- they said lots of things that they liked doing, like face painting, and playing outside, and things like that, but no themes. Riley did want to do Australia Zoo again, but I tried to discourage that. Jenny eventually took over and worked it so that we’re playing ‘aboriginals’. I guess the problem with that, that I see, is that they don’t KNOW anything really about aboriginals, and while I know that they’re meant to be learning, it’s hard to hook them in, and to keep them interested if they don’t have any previous knowledge. I was relating it to the Australia Zoo play in term one, and the reason (I think) why that was so successful was because they had already watched Steve Irwin do his thing on TV, they’d already BEEN to Australia Zoo. They had the Bindi DVDs at home, and already knew about Wildlife Warriors etc. It was the finer details, things like how to milk a snake of it’s venom and create anti-venom that were the learning parts of the play- not the play focus itself.
I think that that’s why the museum wasn’t a huge success with the rainforest play either. They didn’t know what it was like in a museum, they didn’t know what to ‘play’. So that’s what I have picked up about play. From my experience that all is.
But what did I learn from Jenny taking over play planning? Apart from Prep being hard, I learnt that the teacher needs to have a pretty pivotal role in planning, even though it’s a negotiated curriculum.
Prep is hard. I am finding the flexibility issue a real challenge- if only everything could be planned and done to plan. This stuff is crazy. I like Tuesdays and Thursdays- rotations days. I like them because I plan what is going to happen, and then that’s what happens. I don’t mind so much if something unexpected comes up, or if something takes more time then I allowed for it. That’s all okay, because I generally have some sort of back up plan as well. My struggle is on play days when it’s so much more up to the kids. When they don’t know what they want, but I have to do something. I find it hard with the three sections that they’re in as well- three groups to manage, encourage and work with. It’s okay when there’s an aide, or when Jenny is able to help as well, but otherwise there is a lot of wasted time.
I am thinking of finding some youtube clips of aboriginals that I can show the kids so that they have a better idea of what they’re playing.
Well today was my first day back with the kiddies and already my plans have changed!
I’m hoping to do a bit of a ’round the world’ theme with them, which I am really excited about.
I am also really tired, and so this is a totally short post. I will write again tomorrow, and update this post as well. Sorry!
I’m about to upload a whole heap of lesson plans that I’ve done over my three week block. The reason is because some other student teachers from my school needed to have a look at them, and I didn’t have my folder with me. Plus I thought it would be a nice little bank of ideas for everyone reading!
Rotations Week 3 Rotations for weeks one and two are in a previous post.
Journal Task six goes a little something like this: Observe the reading context of the classroom, eg:
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copy the timetable and note literacy routines and literacy/language block sessions describe organisation of reading materials and groups
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reflect on the purpose/implications of this organisation
A typical week in Jenny’s classroom is like this.
Because this is a Prep there isn’t any set literacy time blocks. Rotations every Tuesday and Thursday usually include a letterland activity, and a writing or drawing activity. The children also spend time writing in their play- this is meaningful writing, writing for a purpose.
I think that the early years curriculum caters for the needs of the young learners really well. They would not respond well to standard literacy time or big lessons every week on how to write. They write when they need to, and the play episodes provide a reason for them to learn to write. The prep children are only 4 and 5 years old, at the beginning of the year many could not even write their own name. Specific lessons have been taught on writing their name and on some letterland character (letters of the alphabet individually).
Reading Interview:
N.A 15/5/07 Female
1. Do you like to read?
*nods head* yes.
2. Where do you read?
On the couch at home.
3. What do you read?
Fairytale Books
4. Do you read to…
a) learn Yes
b) for fun
c) because I have to
d) no answer
5. Which of these would you prefer to read?
a) The Rainbow Fish
b) The Forest Yes
Why?
Because I like forests.
6. Which of these would you prefer to read?
a) picture book (just pictures)
b) website on on same topic Yes
Why?
Because I want to show my mum and dad.
J.T 15/5/07 Male
1. Do you like to read?
*nods head* yes.
2. Where do you read?
At school
3. What do you read?
Magic School Bus
4. Do you read to…
a) learn Yes
b) for fun
c) because I have to
d) no answer
5. Which of these would you prefer to read?
a) The Rainbow Fish Yes
b) The Forest
Why?
Because it’s my favourite book
6. Which of these would you prefer to read?
a) picture book (just pictures)
b) website on on same topic
Why?
“I don’t know”
How I would use this to inform my teaching:
- Expose them to a range of different text options, not just books.
- When introducing new options, start with the texts they already know, and then show the similarities to the new text.
- Use texts whos subject the students are interetsed in. For example, N.A liked Rainforests, and that’s why she chose that book.
- Start a home reading type of thing. I was talking to Chris (another teacher) and in her classroom they have only 20 books for the term that they go round to every student. At this age you can get away with just one level of reading because it’s not important that they read every time. The way we will work it is that the parents read them the book and the students follow along. Let them try to read it, and if they want to read the whole thing let them. The main purpose of it is to encourage a love of reading, and get them to start recognising more words and sounds.
- Talk about reading for enjoyment. Give students a chance to read just because they enjoy it.
- Demonstrate reading all the time for a variety of reasons.
- Use teacher talk when reading.
- Show that reading words isn’t the only way of reading- putting a focus on reading from the pictures, and being Meaning Makers (Four Resources Model).
I just did a Maths Exam today. In it I made reference to a site that goes through the different dimensions.
This might be a little advanced for Primary school kids, but I guess it does the trick!!
It’s called Imagining the tenth dimension
It’s about Imagining what the Tenth dimension would look like, and is really pretty cool. You should all check it out, and maybe you could use it in your classess one day?
Here’s entry four’s task: Select a text suitable for using with primary-aged children. Use the Four Resources model to identify some teaching activities (dot point form)
My table demonstrating this is linked here. And the book I used was The Rainbow Fish.
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Sometimes as teachers we need to stop being serious, and just have a laugh. Check out this site and some of the funny answers kids give on tests.
I just went and installed Zotero, a firefox extension perfect for assignments and things like that. I love it when I stumble upon things that are useful like that!
One of the great things I love about firefox, there again. It goes so nicely down the bottom of my screen- unobtrusively sitting there until I need it! Similar to Google Notebook, which I also just got.
So the way it works is it recognises if you’re on a page that you would reference and a little icon appears in the URL. You can click it and it will add it to your library. Then at a later date, when you’re online or offline (who the hell is ever offline?) you can organise it into categories. You can add tags, notes, links, say what it’s similar too. It’s really handy.
If it doesn’t recognise that you might want to reference something then you can always add it in manually.
So I thought that this was a great tool for doing assignments, and I think I would use it even for blogging- a great way to reference things properly. Should bloggers take this into consideration more?
First up we finished off our smart pizza rotations from the day before. I will collate the information later and see if there are any definite signs on one particular smart in any kids.
We played outside with the Sharing Seahorses after break which was really nice. I think it’s really important to play outside and was great for them to play with the other class. I think that that really helps them to understand that they are a whole grade- together.
I was reminded at lunch that we had to make our friendship chain longer- 5 meters in fact. So straight after lunch we made some more links and the children practiced their writing and copying skills and wrote the words on themselves. We made it a little more colourful by putting coloured paper in it as well. Then we did a play plan and worked on play on their rainforests until second break.
After second break we had group time. We talked about kindness some more and about Gaby Get-a-long. As a class afterwards we sung the Gaby Get-a-long song again. There were a few requests for Snooklefry, and so I played that. We talked about it as it went though and talked about friendship and related it back to Gaby.
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