Staff meeting 24/3/15

Writing moderation

Before the sharing of student writing examples of a recount, we spent time previewing the New Zealand curriculum writing standards, for  more about the reading and writing standards including using the standards look here http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/National-Standards/Reading-and-writing-standards

After our preview of the examples we got together in small groups to share and compare the process of writing to ether confirm or adjust writing levels of students this was a group collaboration to establish an understanding of what the standard looks like and whether the student has the requirement of the achievement level. This lead to various discussion to use the evidence to judge each students writing in relation to the national standards making an overall teacher judgement from specific evidence gathered and teacher experience from a particular point in time.  

I see the need consistence and comparability both in the task set and the marking and to understand is close enough good enough to establish an agreement of their writing level. This is easily said however I am thinking not so easy to be done in practice.  

For a Ministry of education Moderating asTTle writing power point look here  http://connect.vln.school.nz/p11095800/     

I E P's

This post is not a reflection on any one student.

With gaining a full 11 weeks employment in Matai (special needs unit) for term two I have been trying to gain as much insight as I can to these learners hence I spent yesterday morning viewing a selection of Individual Education Plans An IEP sets goals for the student and shows how the student will be supported to meet those goals. It is developed by the team of people who support the student, including their parents, family, whānau and the student themselves. to find out more follow this link to the Ministry of Education http://www.minedu.govt.nz/NZEducation/EducationPolicies/SpecialEducation/ServicesAndSupport/IndividualEducationPlans.aspx      

By the implementation of consistent management and communication strategies for the immediate learning and safety of the student I hope to develop an understanding of their learning, the resources and equipment needed for his/her strengths and needs to be meet through my teaching.

A sensory profile presents information about how a students experiences and processes information from various senses from auditory (hearing) vision (sight) vestibular (movement against gravity) tactile (touch) smell taste proprioception (deep pressure/body sense from joints and muscles).

This can tell me many things as a teacher such as whether a student is wary of loud noises, how able the are to sit for a long time, needs a favorite object in his hand , the need for simplify instructions.  

There's an involvement of many different services including but not exclusive to physiotherapists and occupational therapists to work with both student and teacher; viewing effects such as safe movement (both the students and their ability to move and accesses within the classroom) student ability to take part in the learning activity especially physical and the tools needed to undertake and complete the lesson.  

Ladybirds in Tawa

Introduced the theme of ladybirds with a poem then discussed words to describe what ladybirds look like thinking about colour and what parts they have. Children then drew a ladybird and wrote a simple sentence describing their ladybird.
We then looked at rhyming words for bug ie hug, mug, jug, tug, dug, pug.

For maths we counted how many parts there are to a ladybird ie eyes 2, legs 6, wings 2,  body 1,  head 1,  antennae 2.
Also through out the day we had been making our own ladybirds, which we then added spots starting from 1 to 7, we then used our ladybirds for counting on by counting how many spots on the first wing and counting on with what was on the other wing.

After a warm up of buzz, I used the abacus to revisit 10 and...... (teen facts) as the teacher had explained that the children were quite confident with these facts. We then compared some teen numbers and ty numbers and what they look like on the abacus ie 12 & 20, 13 &30, 14 & 40, 15 & 50.

Jets making connections between finger patterns and sets of objects
10 fingers is the same as 10 bears
7 fingers is the same as 7 beans
3 fingers is the same as 3 dice

Then moving onto
8 fingers is the same as 8 bears is the same as 8 counters on a tens frame

Writing and maths in Rata

While working in Rata and with support from the teacher I had clear ideas and expectations for the writing and maths lessons.
After interval with the children on the mat and the Walt written on the white board (we are learning to start our sentence with a capital letter and read our story so we know what comes next)
I started with My cat likes to..... children brainstormed ideas (ideas recorded these on the white board) so our sentence became My cat likes to sleep in the sun. To enhance the sentence we brainstormed again this time focusing on descriptive words so then our sentence became My big fluffy cat likes to sleep in the sun.
Leaving the Walt in place, children were given two pictures of cats  (the higher group were able to work independently) while I work with the others I the mat, where I modeled what was happening in the pictures ie a kitten had found a ball of wool and in the next picture the kitten is tangled in the wool, these children then chose their own prompts and I supported them with the writing process. As I was in this class the following day I was able to get the children to read through their work, reading to see if it made sense,had they used capitals, full stops and spaces between their words.

Staff meeting

An interesting presentation from Ana about the Ministry of Education revised  e-asttle writing complete with online video  explanations. This online tool is designed to assess childrens' writing progress from years  1- 10 by providing a variety of communicative purposes ie describe, explain, recount, narrate persuade. A valuable tool with quality exemplars to track student writing.

Amber and Roz spoke about GGL and showed a tracking graph (which was informative as I had little knowledge of what happened from the form being filled out and the child spoken to, nice to have the elaboration)

Pirates in Tawa

We started our morning brainstorming what the children thought a pirate looked like or what he/she (no one thought there was any girl pirates) does  (this was used to engage prior knowledge). After this was completed I read a poem describing what a pirate is/does from this we we're able to confirm the prior knowledge we had and extend with what we didn't know.

Later I shared Jolly Roger and the treasure  (yellow) with the class the children got to colour and decorate their treasure chest and write a simple sentence (modeled and sounded out a simple sentence on the white board).
Later in the day we made our own stuffed pirate