Term 2 reflections

2/5/17

Term 2 has started really well. We have jumped straight into our classroom programme with full reading, writing and maths rotations. The students have been great at coping with the changes in the programme to accommodate for our increased numbers and reading recovery timetabling changes. We are adapting to having Sue R in our class and so far this has been going really well. We are trying hard to include her as a Teacher not a TA so have asked her to take control of the Handwriting and PE programmes. We are still trying to rotate ourselves around the groups and curriculum areas so that we get to see all students at all levels. We have had 2 new students start and they have settled in well. Preet is doing well at following the other students but is very quiet and I think developing his confidence to share his ideas is going to be a big step for him. For writing we will get him to work saying a sentence about a picture e.g. The car is red. As he is not yet able to draw a picture and/or tell us about it. Curtis clearly has some good fine motor skills judging by his picture today although he had trouble telling me about his picture. I showed him what I meant and wrote a story for him. I think he will pick it up quickly. Reading recovery is going well and I now have 3 students to work with each morning. Jade is gaining a lot of confidence and I think she will begin to move quite quickly in the 1-1 environment. Tangaroa is really moving with the PM type books but then really struggles on the Ready to Reads. He is picking up spelling patterns quickly. My  relationship with Tara is just so positive and really makes life so much easier. It is so good to work with someone who is totally on the same page. We bounce ideas off each other and I think are making some real progress in our teaching practice and therefore our kids progress.

16/5/17

Cannot believe we are so far into May already. We have had 5 new students start this term. 3 new to school and 2 who have moved to our school from out of town. The latter two have just started this week and have settled in well already. We were warned about the behaviour of one who has been exposed to violence at home but so far she has been perfectly well behaved. She knows quite a bit and seems to have settled in very quickly. We have some concerns about Achilles’ speech. He is not easy to understand and we feel that we should ask the Speech Language Therapist to come in and have a look/listen. Our programmes have changed a bit already this term. Getting through writing is really hard. With so many needy writers it is tricky to see them all everyday. This week I am trying to start with the most independent group. Get them set up and started with a big focus on the planning of their writing to help add detail. They then complete their writing on their own. This is ok while the LI is around planning. However, it’s not going to work so well when the guidance is needed for different parts of the writing. I’m not getting to do reading teaching at the moment as it’s when I’m at Reading Recovery during reading time. I’m really happy with the way we are teaching Inquiry and PE at the moment. Wednesday we have a good hour of Inquiry time and Friday the same for PE. This is much better than what we have been doing previously in these areas. The kids are really motivated about the Inquiry topic at the moment. Loving learning about the Battle of the Mountains myth. We are doing some collaborative art around this to add to our mural. Tomorrow, we will also start some drama about the mountains.

30/05/17

This fortnight has seemed to be hard work. 26 little ones in class is tricky even with two teachers most of the time. Riley U starts in a couple of weeks too. We are continuing to grow independence in our kids and are expecting a lot more from our older children. Some are thriving on this expectation while others are finding it a bit tricky. I am feeling a bit run down at the moment and am not really sure why. I have forgotten a few things I was supposed to do recently and am conscious that I’m not as tolerant as I should be at times. I think it’s the wintery weather and lack of sunlight that is causing me to feel as though I am half hibernated. The majority of students seem to be continuing to progress fairly well. Some of our Year 1s are really taking off. Reading Recovery is also going well with Tangaroa ready to be tested off. I would like to contact Kylie from Rototuna again for some more advice around teaching oral language structure. I want some direction about what to focus on to build oral language and sentence structure. I am feeling anxious about what will happen once Tara has gone and really hope that the new teacher will be able to fit in well.

13/6/17

It's hard to believe we are in week 7 already. Things have been going pretty well with some good progress in all areas. We have now got reading, writing, handwriting and maths goal sheets running and these are working pretty well. They are particularly helpful with report writing and OTJs as we can easily see where kids are. The trickiest part is making sure we make the time to check in and assess goals and make new ones. I want to extend our students writing even further and am finding that really hard with so many. Even with two teachers it is near impossible to get around them all. It is going to be a totally new situation with Sarah starting and I will really have to re-think the way I'm doing things. I still have new spelling goal sheets to sort out. We haven't done as much inquiry stuff the last two weeks so we really need to get into that a bit further too. Our use of Te Reo is increasing a bit and I've been really enjoying the way Whaea Dini has been setting her lessons around the topics we have been doing in regards to te reo in our class. I went to kapahaka last week and I would love to have some access to the songs and videos they are learning in order to do some with our class to allow them to have some knowledge/experience to feel confident in the kapahaka group.

27/6/17
The term is flying. Our class is very full and some of our new students are quite tricky. We are dealing with some interesting behaviours but are making good progress with all of them. Sarah is now working along side me in the class. She has quickly cottoned on to the way we do things and isn't afraid to ask questions. She is fitting in well to the class and the students seem to like her. Some of the more challenging ones need to build more of a relationship with her yet, as they don't quite respect her enough at this point. I am finding I need to be more specific with my planning as I'm dealing with different teachers at different times. I will be collaborating with Sarah, Sue and Marie as well as Sariah and Sharee, so there's a lot of people working with these students and we all need to be on the same page. I am starting to think about what the programme for next term will look like. I will be out for 1.5hours with Reading Recovery and I need to decide when the best time for this is. I don't want to give up writing time and really feel that I no longer have a clue what is going on with the students in regards to writing. I've really enjoyed leading maths this week too. I'm wondering how I can possibly make it all work, because I don't want to give anything up! I'm wondering whether we can have a literacy time where reading and writing is running at the same time. Sarah would also like to fit R W M in before lunch.