30.8.13

Today we has an incident with one of our students for biting.

Apparently at lunch, he bit two boys.


I really think we need to sit the class down and go over school rules, class rules and just basic human rules haha.
It's getting out of hand.

I was just informed of a website for PETAA (Primary English Teaching Association Australia) who are creating units of works based on the new English syllabus and a neighbouring school in the area is trailing these units of work. If they all go to plan, my school is thinking of implementing a trail of these new units of work.

I'm very curious to see what they look like.

Lesson Assessment #2

I had my second lesson assessed by the principal at the school.

I definitely feel as though it went a lot better then my first lesson i did for him.

It was the first guided writing session i had ever done in my life, and Danny said he would never have known because i was so confident and well prepared. Which is great.

The only comments he had for me was that when writing on the board and especially during a guided writing lesson 'close enough is not good enough' in regards to my grammar and punctuation.

Friendship

We're having some problems with the girls in the class now.

Some girls are leaving another girl out in the playground.
We don't think they're doing it intentionally, but we have to address this problem straight away.

The boys are doing fine. They're all getting along. And their parents have stropped bothering my supervising teacher, which is great for her.

I think her telling them that if they want to speak to her about this issue it has to be in the company of the principal scared them away a bit. Haha.

Starting next week (week 8)

I'll be starting to take some guided reading groups and i'll be doing some running records as well.
(I havent done a running record since 2nd year, so this should be interesting).

During week 5- 6

I lost a lot of motivation with my planning and teaching and roving around the class. I don't know why, but it's safe to say it's gone, and i'm excited about teaching again!

Interim Report

I received my interim report the other day. I received a D for everything (demonstrated) for everything expect for

1.4.1 - demonstrate broad knowledge and understanding of the impact of culture, cultural identity  and linguistic background on the education of students from aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.

and

2.4.1 - demonstrate broad knowledge of, understanding of and respect for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander histories, cultures and languages


I just found out (when i received my report) that one of my students is from an Aboriginal background, so i'm working on a few ways of how i can incorporate that into my teaching.

The only other comments on my report says that i need to work on extending my top end students in some areas of the curriculum  by using open ended questions or higher order thinkning.

But other then that, everything was good :)

It's weird how over the past few weeks i've been teaching more lessons, but it feels like i'm hardly doing anything.

maybe it's because i feel so comfortable now and i'm well prepared.

or maybe i'm just not teaching it right.

There have been lots of disruptions these past 2 weeks (book week and having casual teachers on my class).
It's hard to get everything which i have planned for done and completed properly... not just thrown at the students and hoping they understood it all in 1 quick lesson.

controversial topic

I've been teaching expositios these past two weeks, and i wasn't aware (and my supervising teacher mustn't have been listening to my lessons) because we were doing quite a controversial topic for 7 year old students.

I should have realised myself that the topic was innapropriate. But we had to quickly re-plan our exposition planning sheet because we were going to write the exposition as one of my lessons the principal was coming to watch. so it was kinda a stressful morning.

(the topic was 'killing animals is wrong')

22.8.13

My units of work have been going quite good.

For my HSIE unit on transport, i gave them a little assessment last lesson to see if everything was on track and they knew everything i've been trying to teach and it went quite well, we're on track.

My religion unit is coming on a little slow. I think this may be one of my weaker subjects to teach.
I find it really hard to word my sentences and ask the class questions because i don't want to say the wrong thing. But i'm also finding it hard to explain to the students/get them to give me deep, rich information/answers rather then
"what is a good quality you should look for in a friend"
"someone who plays with you"

I have all my supporting documents and information on the subject, but i just cant seem to word the information right for the kids.

It's definitly a subject i have to work on.

As for English, i think it's coming along well.
we've had a few lessons on what an exposition is and what the structure of an exposition looks like, and we've jointly planned one as a class and we are currently writing it together. Then they have to write one themselves.

Last week was book week

Last week as book week, it was great, the kids loved it and everyone had a ball.
The only downside to book week was the amount of disruptions!

We hardly got anything done last week, so this week we have to catch up on a whole heap of stuff we didn't get to.

23.8.13

Today we had assembly and my class performed.
It was lots f work to get them to learn the song but i have to say, they definitely pulled it off!

Our performance had to relate to 1 of the 7 habits of our school, and we chose to relate it to 'begin with the end in mind'

We sung this song

As well as showing the school a range of things we have done in class with having 'the end in mind'.
We got a lot of positive feedback from all of the teachers and the parents were very impressed.

Job well done!

30.7.13

We had an incident with two of the boys in my class.

One made fun of the other for what he was eating for lunch and this has caused a huge controversy between not the boys, but the parents.

The boys were over it the next day, but the parents kicked up a big stink and one mother didn't want her son anywhere near he other boy (the mother who's son started it all by saying the other boys food was gross), so my supervising teacher and i had to rearrange the seating plan for the entire class, change their 'magic spots' on the floor, remove one of the boys from their guided reading groups, literacy rotation groups and maths rotation groups, and then also come up with a care plan for the child who was accused of have 'gross lunch' because he doesn't really have many friends.

For the next week, we had the parents of the two boys coming up to use at the start of the day and the end of the day trying to talk to us about what was being done - but also more importantly, parents were starting rumours about other parents that it all got too much for my supervising teacher that she had to say to any parent that wanted to talk to her, it had to be in the company of the principal.

It has all died down now, but we still ask Toby* everyday at lunch if everything was okay, if anyone was mean to him etc, and we are documenting it all, so if anything else ever happens or if Toby goes home and tell his mum something happened, we are aware of it.


*Names have been changed

My supervising teacher sprung two new units of work on me.
I've just planned a unit of work on Expositions which i have linked to my Transport unit and i've also just planned one for RE unit 1.6 Love One Another.

Pretty proud of myself. I pumped them out in 2 days. Both are 6 week units and every lesson is planned.

She told me on monday to plan them and i start teaching them tomorrow (Wednesday).

Lesson Assessment

This week my uni supervisor (who is actually the principal at my school) came to watch my lesson.

In my personal opinion it was a complete flop.
And after it i felt pretty bummed.

I did a maths lesson and the plan was to make it open ended so it was differentiated for everyone.

The question was: Which two digit number when halved is an odd number?

I think i went in knowing that it would be too hard for the kids, but it did it anyway. And i was right, it was too hard. I think like 5 students understood the concept.

So i looked like an idiot and i got really red in the face etc.

But when i had a chat with the principal he said he was actually really impressed with the lesson.
He said i was confident, and had a great voice, i was very prepared with my resources, i incorporated the IWB, i had great classroom management, the lesson was well structured and timed and i used a lot of different strategies when i saw that students weren't understanding.

I told him i hated the lesson and that i thought it went horribly, but he said that thats a sign of a good teacher, being able to feel and detect that the class isn't getting the concepts being taught.

Even though he was giving me lots of positive feedback, i still felt bummed. But i've realised now, my teaching was great, i was just upset the students didn't get the concept.

Now for next time i definitely need to pre test to see where students are at.

Everyone in the staff room could see i was a little upset and they were all so supportive, telling me stories about how they have had bad lessons and they still to this day after 20-30 years of teaching they still have bad lessons, so they all cheered me up.

Next lesson he comes to asses has to be a different KLA, so i might do a HSIE or Religion or English lesson.