Award ceremony in Malaysia

Here's the Asia Pacific Award ceremony 2008. You'll need to follow this link and then select the 'clip' in the left side menu (2nd Row, 1st column) to view the news item.

Teacher/Student achievement

Something from last year, but now 'up in lights' on the Panasonic website. I worked with a group of students who went on to win a national movie-making competition. Also making Petra the 'cover' person for the Panasonic NZ Kid Witness News home page (see the winning movie here too)

Feeling for my student teacher

The kids were a bit of a nuisance today, playing up for the student teacher who is currently on 'full control'.  Kind of reminds me of my final practicum which very nearly put me off teaching.  I don't want it to get that bad for him so I'll need to give a bit of a 'motivational speech' to the students tomorrow.

Student Teacher with me for his final Practicum

Just seems like a short time ago that I was a student teacher, now I'm about to have one in my own classroom.  I hope I can pass on some good teaching/learning opportunities for him, and at the same time get a few reminders myself about good teaching practice.

Math

I'm feeling quite good about my math programme this term.  Seems like into my third year I'm beginning to feel a little more consistent in finding the balance between structured progression of teaching and providing opportunities for students to explore maths with some independence.

I've also refocussed this term on the 'pink numeracy books' in combination with the online planning sheets (as well as still liking the new NZCM books by Caxton).  It's been worthwhile looking through my back-up disks from the past two years and finding some resources I'd forgotten about.

Weather topic

Recording students in front of a 'green screen' as weather presenters
may be a bit more work than I imagined - but what a great way to
present their learning. I don't know why I don't sometimes keep
things a little more simple though? Like recording them in front of
the white board with a map and weather icons that they can stick on,
or isobars they can draw. Maybe I'll suggest that (and with some
gentle persuasion promote that as the best option). It is fun setting
up a TV studio in the classroom though :-)

The results will most likely be on youtube in a few weeks at http://youtube.com/room3kps

3rd New Beginning

Welcome, 2009. I'm a fully registered teacher with a permanent teaching position and about to start my third year of teaching.

One good thing about this career is that each new year can be seen as a fresh new start; taking all the good things from last year and adapting them, and taking all the bad things from last year and.. well adapting them.

This 'start-of-year' round I will take a mental note of student behaviours on day one, to assess for possible problem areas.  Normally students are a bit reticent on day one, slowly emerging from their shells as they get to know you.  Last year, they we're a bit too 'loose' with their own conversations during class discussions or teacher directions - this led to a whole year of struggling to have an appropriate environment where all students listened to one another and felt confident enough to take the risk of sharing to all students.  I realise now that if I see a similar 1st day lack of concern for listening to others, I will need to set some very firm routines and protocols in that first term to hopefully allow for a positive environment for sharing, learning, and discussing throughout the rest of the year.

A mixture of team-building fun but also strict expectations on behaviours during independent learning, group work, whole class work (particularly appropriate noise levels in those different situations).

Fully Registered

Well, here I am, now a fully registered teacher, and to top it off I now have a permanent contract to teach at my school.  Two years of teaching under my belt, finished my beginning teacher professional development programme,  and ready to continue on my journey.

It's been a little while (again) since my last note.  What's been happening?  We've had a successful senior school production, year six camp - and the biggie - some students I have been working with are the New Zealand winners of a Panasonic video competition called KWN: Kid Witness News.  This coming week myself and two students are off to Malaysia for an Asia/Pacific regional award ceremony.  If they are judged the best there, then it's off to the United States for the global awards.

You can view the video (Ecology Detective: Case of the missing Kereru) on my YouTube page youtube.com/mrrobashcroft

Happy Christmas!

Leading by example

I think I have begun to use exemplars less, and I don't think it's such a good thing.  I must consciously choose to do so.

Also, I need to work on promoting group and whole-class discussions where students share more and I less.

Class dynamics and a positive learning environment

It's been a while since my last post.  Not that I haven't been reflecting on my teaching - as most teachers know, reflection is a constant occurrence, documenting it may be less frequent.

Anyway, I was interested to see my last (written) reflection about class dynamics and am happy to say that things have changed quite a bit for the better.  Strangely though, it's hard to pick what exactly has made the difference.  Probably because it's a combination of many things.

A couple of things I have realised since though.

1. Some of my expectations were based on how my class was last year at the end of the year not the beginning.  I need to remember the journey a class takes in establishing its own community of positive learning.

2. Given time, students are generally able to cope with certain amounts of independent choice in their learning but this does take time to help them learn to manage themselves well when given learning choices.

Accountability and Consequences

I continue to have some issues with dynamics at a whole-class level.  That is, when teaching, discussing, sharing with one-another.

Even with regular direction as well as reflection on the physical environment and 'interest' of learning content, and other aspects of my pedegogy, I find some key elements of having a constructive team-learning environment difficult to establish to a level that I am content with.

After considering many possible reasons for this, and discussions with my tutor teacher, I am leaning towards developing the way in which I communicate expectations backed up with a system of accountability and consequences.

A likely scenario will be where I have some system of adding names to a list (on the board) whereby the consequences of making it onto that list mean students will have some form of negative consequence, such as staying in at break time (possibly combined with a 'time added' component based on time wasted).  Although I would like to use positive reinforcement, in this particular case (and for a time) I feel some negative consequences to promote positve behaviour may be necessary.

The most common type of behaviour occurring that impeeds on thinking and learning are... having separate conversations during whole-class discussions, movement around the room, distracting others or self from the learning activity.  General routine things that are needed to ensure a positive and engaging time of learning as a large group.

Watch this space and see how we go.

ps. I think I will also try to increase my use of positive verbal praise to reinforce postive behaviour.

Posting for Podcasting

I'm in the process of trying to work out how to record and upload audio for podcasting in a way that can appear both in a blog, and as an 'iTunes' podcast listing.

When reading on the blog, I thought you could just click on the title of the post to hear the audio - but not so sure though.

To subscribe to this particular blog in iTunes, you'd need to choose Advanced/Subscribe to podcast feed.  The feed address would be feed://fullmarks.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

Social Engineering

I'm looking forward to term 3 (I think).

A big concern for me this year has not been so much over my programme, but the social make-up of my class. As I reflected on in previous entries, it has been a struggle to have students working together as a team.

Now that they've had two terms getting to know how each other works, and with me setting a variety of desk placements, I am giving them opportunity to have a bit more of a say as to where they might sit to best suit their learning.

Each student filled out a form

1. Would you prefer to sit ... on your own, with 2 or 3 people, a larger group
   
2. Name two people who you would work well with
   
3. Name one person you would not work well with
   

Some interesting results. Three 'soloists' and the rest split between small and large groups. So I've rearranged the desks. I wait with anticipation to see how the dynamics may or may not change.

Mac Journal

I’m trying out a new software program called ‘MacJournal’. I can keep my own reflections or journal entries on my own computer, and post to my blog the ones I wish - I think.

Numeracy Programme

Beginning to find a working 'skeleton' for maths at last (I think). Here's the core set of my planning/programme.

1. Numeracy Online Planning Sheets
2. New Zealand Curriculum Mathematics text books from Caxton Educational
3. Figure it Out series

I use the planning sheets for unit overview.

I use Figure It Out most often for group teaching rather than independent work.  And will use them in mostly in place of the equivalent sections from the 'pink numeracy books' as many of the math contexts in Figure It Out are more engaging for the students but allow for the use of materials to introduce new math concepts and thinking.

I use the NZCM text books for nearly all of my practice follow-up.  On the bottom of each page there is a reference to where each section of work relates directly to the numeracy online planning.  I have added page notes to my copy of the planning.

This has worked well for me this term.  In addition, I still need to make up some math game/activities or problem-solving to supplement the programme.  Again, many of these can be found in the figure it out books.