Tuesday 26/04/16

For the first 3 hours of the day I finished preparing what I needed for taking the
class with full control for the whole week.

I only had one lesson to teach which was building off of last weeks introduction
to 3D shapes. I felt somewhat under prepared as the students worked through
the set activities a lot quicker than I had anticipated which meant that I hadnt
printed off enough 3D nets for the students to finish up on, as I didnt think
everyone would get up to it. Thus I had to ask Carolyn to leave classroom to
photocopy more.

A positive was that they majority of students were already familiar with nets and
what they were, so I wasnt required to discuss or explain them too deeply. I did
notice however that some didnt name all shapes correctly which would suggest
that they need more teaching on names and the differences between pyramids
and prisms.

Another thing I took from this lesson was that I need to be aware of students
who arent keeping on task, Carolyn heard students talking off topic. She
suggested that I need to listen to students discussions and position myself
where I am able to frequently scan the whole classroom to check for students
who arent staying on task, and work on gestures for quiet, turn around, get back
to work whilst Im busy or working with other students when I cannot tell
them to do so.

Wednesday 27/04/16

Today we had a number of students away for interschool athletics.

Morning flowed really well, introducing new reading group activities was
seamless and they seemed to be effective tomorrow will be a test with 3
rotations. I walked around the room to make sure everyone was ok before
starting my guided reading and all the students appeared to understand the set
expectations.

I then spent 2 lessons following the class to their rotations, assisting when
possible and if needed.

Sport was a little tricky, as I didnt know all the students names as the teams
were made from a mixture of classes and running behind time due to the sports
teacher being at athletics.
Forgot to tell them a couple of the rules to rounders throwing the ball to the
base a batter is running toward to get them out, dropping the bat after they hit it.
Because I wanted to get the game going as quick as possible and thought I could
teach them as they played.
After today and a little more evaluating of my teaching over the last few lessons,
Im starting to feel like I need to be a little more dynamic with my use of language
when informing students of what they are to do. I feel like too many students
either arent listening to me or are losing meaning in translation and dont fully
understand what is to be done. I feel like I need to repeat myself a number of
times to get my point across and make sense. It is hard to know what it is that
seems to cause the miscommunication and it could well be that those certain
students do not see me as their teacher, thus they do not listen to me as intently
as they would if their actual teacher was teaching them.

Thursday 28/04/16

Today was easily the toughest and most demanding day of this round.

It started with a double session of Reading Group (2hours), as a number of

students were missing yesterday due to being at athletics I introduced the new
Reading Group activities while reminding those students that did reading groups
yesterday. The session ran smoothly and at the beginning of each new rotation I
managed to make sure every student knew what he or she were doing and that
they were on task.

I found that the first guided reading session I took to be the most challenging of
the 4 (1 on Wednesday) I had taken with the new text and making inferences.
After discussing this with Carolyn during yard duty at recess I learnt that this
was actually the most challenging of the 5 groups. It had seemed that all the
students were just reading the words of the text and not actually processing any
of its meaning, this was learnt when it came to discussing the storys inferences
as most of the students were unable to do so. I had to encourage them to find it in
the text, which they were still not able to do this group really made me work
and left me feeling quite overwhelmed that they werent understanding the
story.
Carolyn was rather impressed that I was able to recognise this without any prior
knowledge of the students and their comprehension skills, and was quite
positive that I was able express how I felt.

After recess I took PONT (Point Of Need) Math, in this lesson I taught a spread of
26 students, who werent skilled with mathematics, from my class and two
others. As Mathematics has always been something that scares me I was quite
anxious at the thought of teaching the lesson to children that were already
struggling to understand the concepts of Math. I felt that the lesson started well
and all the students enjoyed the dice game (subtraction with MAB).

I felt like I failed to effectively teach vertical subtraction (using MAB) to these
students and believe that it was clear that I did not know the content well
enough and how to actually and successfully teach it to these students.
This lesson was a complete shock to the system but something I am grateful for
and feel lucky enough to have experienced with such great support and
encouragement before beginning the profession. I learnt a vital lesson and that is
to KNOW what it is Im teaching.

The Persuasive Writing lesson ran relatively efficiently, however I did notice that
during the brainstorming session and at parts throughout the lesson there were
a number of students being talkative and straying off topic at those points I did
pull those students up, but it did persist later. After the lesson, Carolyn and I
discussed this and I explained to her how I was feeling in regards to students not
listening or seeing me as their teacher/an authoritative figure and beginning to
act up. She explained that children need structure and have to know where the
boundaries are they are only trying to find them. She suggested that before the
last lesson that I have a class discussion explaining my disappointment and what
my expectations of the class are. Carolyn also pointed out that after doing this it
is a great foundation to have and refer to, what did I just say?, Do you
remember when I said?, are you supposed to be talking when I am?.

So after bringing the students in after lunch I took the role and told them how
disappointed I had been with the writing lesson and some of their behaviour,
explaining that it is not on, nor is it respectful. I explained that distracting their
peers who are trying to learn is not fair and they should no longer do it and
finally I said that whilst I am talking they are all to be listening as for when they
are talking I am listening to them. I asked for them all to try their best for the
next lesson and the remainder of the week.

After the discussion I began explaining the next lesson when one student
stopped listening and started talking to his peer, which allowed me to follow it
up immediately with . What did I just talk to you about?. Following this I
noticed a big difference in the students behaviour as they were settled and
listened better. Once completing the PowerPoint on Madagascar, I thought the
students really responded to the little questionnaire I did on some of the facts
covered. This allowed me to check for their understanding whilst they all
remained engaged.

Today offered some fantastic experiences, ones I will never forget and will build
off of as I continue bettering my teaching.

Friday 29/04/16

Today was a much quieter and relaxed day.

It began in the computer lab, which allowed me to wonder around the room
observing the students progress with their Matheletics. I was also able to help
certain students struggling with their subtraction by teach them the correct
subtraction process (primarily trading). After doing this I noticed these students
were able to go on and get the majority of their remaining questions correct,
seeing them impressed with themselves was quite rewarding. I then took the
grade back to the classroom where Mrs Sheaf displayed the live leader boards
whilst the children ate some fruit.
Next I took the class for their spelling and handwriting lesson, this was quite a
fun and enjoyable lesson. After brainstorming a few words as a class I then
requested the students to come up with as many as they could individually in 5
minutes and we would see who could get the most. For the next 5 minutes every
student had their head down building onto their lists. I then surveyed the class
for who had the most words (26 being the winner). I asked for the students to
put their hands up if they had a word to add to our spelling list, almost every
student in the class had a word to add. It was great seeing so many of the
children wanting to have one of their words they thought of on the board,
something they were proud of.

After this we built on last weeks handwriting, this time working on horizontal
joins for specific words with the joins of particular two-letter joins from last
week. I enjoyed writing with horizontal joins again as it hasnt been something
Ive done in a long time, it was quite challenging and having the students make
fun of it was really entertaining and I think we were all amused by it.

Reading groups was really easy today. After yesterdays discussion I felt a lot
more comfortable speaking with the class about my expectations and reminded
them all how they were to be working. Reminding one group in particular that
they had to be quite whilst they played BOGGLE and Upwords, which at one
point their noise level got a little too high so I just retold them and didnt hear a
peep for the remainder of the lesson.