Tuesday 31 March 2009

Guided Reading Professional Development

Our school has been receiving professional development for guided reading over this term. Earlier on in the term Kathryn did an observation of one of my guided reading lessons and followed it up with lots of really helpful advice to improve my lessons, which I blogged as "Attacking words and guiding reading". This week she modelled a guided reading lesson for my syndicate in my classroom.

I was fortunate that it was my class as I got to spend time with her choosing a journal reading for the lesson. She showed me how to use the asTTle What Next site to find appropriate journals by asTTle stage. Her lesson focus was using the Chunk, Check and Cheer method to work out unknown words in order to gain meaning.

I found myself please by the lesson because I felt my own lessons lately have been almost like hers. I felt I must have really learnt from her. Naturally I am not nearly as experienced and have much to learn and I did realise some important things that will change my future lessons.

It's all very well to be teaching the main strategies that good readers use (preview, predict, clarify, visualise, question, infer, make connections, summerise, and evaluate), but comprehension has a smaller beginning. When you have readers like most of mine who can decode words just fine and read a sentence perfectly but without understanding a word, or two, then it is vital to go back to Chunk, Check and Cheer.

I will be focusing on word decoding, re-reading for understanding while still have other broader learning intentions such as prediction. I realise they must work together, I cannot teach strategies in isolation of each other.

For some awesome free comprehension strategy posters and powerpoints, go visit Mathew Needleman's Creating Lifelong Learners blog.

Sunday 29 March 2009

Self Directed Online Maths PD

Teaching numeracy is one of my challenges as a beginning teacher, from running a smooth maths programme, teaching the skills and strategies and even using the equipment resources correctly. My goal is to develop my maths teaching and until now I have not had any professional development that made me feel like a confident maths teacher.

I often use NZ Maths website for guidance as it is linked to the New Zealand Numeracy Project, but I still felt like I needed some personal professional development. NZ Maths is a essential resource for all information relating to teaching maths. They have units of work in each stand, background information, exemplars of work and a huge amount of downloadable material masters such as hundreds boards, number fans etc.

My tutor teacher recently showed me the NZ Maths Online Numeracy Professional Development course. Last week I tried it out and was very impressed, and I believe my math lessons have improved dramatically in just one week. It is a simple to follow online tutorial which can be started from any 'stage' level. Most of my students are at Stage 5 and 6, so I took the Stage 5 tutorial which took an easy afternoon to view. I intend going back to view other stages, but an important point here is that you only need to pick the stage that is relevant to your students.

Each tutorial is presented in a slide format which with short but relevant inserts of text or video. It progressively shows you what your students should be learning, how and what it looks and sounds like. This is done through video clips of students explaining math problems and clearly articulating their strategies. This was one the the major breakthrough points for me, I could see and hear exactly what I should be getting from my own students!

The site also has Equipment Animations which are simple flash based animations that show and explain clearly how to use the many, many, many, maths equipement materials that fill my maths resource box. I used to be a bit embarrassed that I wasn't sure how to use half of them, but now I use them with confidence.

I can highly recommend this Online Numeracy Professional Development tutorial to all teachers, experienced or not. It serves as an exemplar for good practice and to measure your students against. Most importantly it is free, easy, simple to understand, and can be done at your own pace in your own home.

Saturday 28 March 2009

Cookie computers show a new delicious way

I just got this incredible link from 'Talking Smartboards & Much More' about new cookie-sized computers with motion sensing, neighbor detection, with a graphical display and wireless communication called Siftables. They really are cookie-sized and work together to form a single interface and keep working as a unit while being physically manipulate. Users can pile, group and sort them in almost any configuration to interact with digital information and media.

Although not yet on the market you must go see the video, at Siftables . They will amaze you and you will see the endless possibilities they provide.

Image by simonsmith001

Friday 27 March 2009

In the same boat and feeling green

As a beginning teacher in my first term of my first year, I often feel like I am not doing enough quality teaching, not enough publishing, not enough assessment, not enough maths, not good enough programmes, generally stressed and feeling somewhat inadequate. Granted I don't feel this all the time, and granted I know I am not really inadequate. I love my job and my students, but I work myself to the bone, day, night and weekends and still feel like I'm speeding the wrong way down a motorway.

I look around at the other experienced teachers and wonder if I'll every managed to seem so in control and confident. I admire the teachers I meet on the web, and envy the ease they seem to integrate all the marvellous ICT into their teaching and learning. I know it will get easier and less stressful, I know I have joined this profession because I love making a difference in children’s lives, but at what cost. After 8 weeks I feel excited, exhausted and so so green, on a rocking boat, on a stormy sea.

Thank goodness for other beginning teachers. I think every beginning teacher should have a fellow beginning teacher to complain to, compare stories with and have a shoulder to cry on (thanks Karrie, you are mine even when I snap at you). I also find the beginning teachers university course a fantastic sharing and emotional blow-out space.

What I have discovered through this process of sharing with other beginning teachers is that I am not alone! We all feel the same inadequacies, stresses and feelings of drowning in paperwork and behaviour management while trying to teach to the incredibly huge standards beginning teachers seem to have for themselves. If there are any other BT's out there reading this, it's ok, you are not the only one. We have to remember that Rome was not built in a day and even though Term one already nears the end, we still have the whole year to take our students to the stars and make a world of difference.

On this note I’ll put my work aside for the night and go spend it with my partner, who is a fountain of patience and understanding, lucky me.

Image by Ottoman42

Saturday 21 March 2009

I Hate Homework but . . .

I just read a blog about homework "Homework. Should it Stay or Should it Go" which is a continuously debated issue in any school and home. As it is my first year handing out and having to mark this homework it made me stop and reflect about what I had learnt so far. Here was my comment on that blog.

What an issue, I agree some kids love it and want more (especially parents) while others want less. I have found in my first year of teaching that giving homework every week is another load of work and time for me too, yet I have started to see benefits as a teacher. Until now I have been giving a random mixture of different spelling, reading, grammar and maths homework while trying to link it to the weeks learning. What I noticed were some large gaps in my students knowledge, things that I had assumed they knew. I am now using homework to develop these areas and do my own informal diagnostic assessments to look for these needed teaching points.

So my final word is that it should stay, but keep it short, sweet and purposeful.
Is the homework you give purposeful?

Image by squarepants2004j/auntyh uia

Tuesday 17 March 2009

Class blog as a Technology Brief

I am still learning my way around the school servers so have not used them for directing class work during our computer suite time as yet. A problem I have had in this year has been directing students to the web sites I wish them to explore that require them to type in long url's. I solved that problem by using Tinyurl.com which is a lot easier to write onto a whiteboard. An example of this is this url [http://baileyrdteam17.blogspot.com/2009/03/rat-playground-project.html] which I converted into [http://tinyurl.com/c995x7] with a single click. Typing in the url provides an oportunity to discuss web addresses (url's) and the most common errors when sueing them, being SPELLING.

To get back to the main point of this blog; although they still need to type in a url, they only need to type in one. In this case it was http://tinyurl.com/c995x7 which took them to a single blog on our class blog. I had put this entry up on our blog to encourage my students to think about the project outside school hours which they could share with their whānau, and also to give them another interesting reference for their technology project. I then decided to expand the brief nearer to a webquest model, giving group roles and reference links. The achievement I am really please with here is it allowed them to access the links I wanted them to research with one click, and I did not have to be concerned about them searching inappropriate sites or wasting time typing in url's.

Our class blog seems to developing from a simple reflective class blog into a learning tool and a place to recognise student achievement (our Star of the Week). I have also noticed my students using it to comment more and more on each others achievements. I have had a few 'social' love notes which I rejected but that is why as a teacher we should maintain moderation control.

So how would you classify your class blog?

Wednesday 11 March 2009

Email for Kids!

I have often felt some frustration that there seem to be no email services for kids under 13, or even other social sites for them, considering we are trying to move their education into the 21st century along with the rest of the world. Children want to be involved with web technology, it's highly engaging but because of our fear of predators and bullying they are not 'officially' allowed any access. I say 'officially' because sites like Bebo only 'allow' users of 13 years old and above, yet I know many of my class and others at my school who are 9 years old have Bebo profiles! So just having these so called rules is obviously a farse.

I don't believe there is a solution to the social networking for under 13's, although I believe there should be, but now there is an email solution that allows full parent management and control. I offer a HUGE congratulations to Zilladog, whom I found through one of my favorite blogs Free Technology for Teachers. Zilladog is a free email service where kids can only recieve emails from parent approved buddy list and parents can get a blind carbon copy of any emails sent if they wish. It is a simple and safe system that also has a profantity and personal information filter. If all this is not enought, it also has free games, appropriate web links, movies and music.

I'd love to see this site take off and be a huge success, they certainly deserve it.

Wednesday 4 March 2009

Castles in the Sand

Today I eventually got my March issue of NetGuide, having missed my previous issues due to a change of address mix up. To my surprise I discovered that had come 3rd in their Photo Competition, which I had forgotten that I had entered!

These photos were the beginning of my rekindled interest in photography which lead me to joining the 365 Photo Project. This project was started by 'edubloggers' to explore visual communication and develop both skills and knowledge by taking a photo a day for all 2009; 365 photos by the end of the year. Since then I have grown as a photographer, built and photographed many other sandcastles, some of which have made my own 365 Photo gallery.

Thank you NetGuide, I look forward to the next competition.

Tuesday 3 March 2009

Student privacy issues in the classroom

In the past week I discovered reading journals on the floor at the end of the day that were supposed to be taken home for daily homework reading with parents or caregivers. This told me my students were not doing their home reading, and their parents were not following this up either.

My initial reaction was to check all my students desks to see how many were just ignoring their readings, which turned out to be a good half to my shame ( I am trying to cultivate learners who are responsible for their own learning). I have since done this twice this week and sent a few notes home to parents asking them to check that their children were actually reading to them!

Well today one student said, "my mom says you are invading our privacy." Although I was initially annoyed because my concern is for their learning and I would think the parent's first concern should be that too, I realised that actually that student and the 'mom' were right (on that point at least). I want my privacy respected and they should have the same right, but I still have to be able to monitor their learning because no one else is and they certainly are not showing the 'responsiblity' that goes with 'rights'.

After a brief panic I decided to brainstorm with my students what they considered personal and therefore private, verses what they considered learning material that I had a right and a responsiblitiy to be able to access. The photo above shows our brainstorm. The results of our following discussion were agreed by all.

During schol hours their desks were their private areas (toys are never allowed), but all items we classified as personal and private should be taken home every day. We agreed anyone leaving personal items in their desk after these hours were agreeing that only I as their teacher may open their desks to review their learning books and monitor what they were leaving at school.

I am really pleased this issue came up as it protects us all against future missunderstandings and ensures we all understand that the classroom is a learning environment, not their personal storage space away from home. It also will provide a step toward learning about copyright and other privacy issues that we will cover later in the year.

I would be interested if any other teachers have an opinion on this subject.