End of Term 4 reflection

Classroom management

After spending time making specific follow up tasks for my micro-groups I am still struggling with having students on task when they are not at the table with me. There are always constant interruptions from around the room which is distracting for the others around the class as well as for the students with me. 

How can I manage this a little better?

Having audio recordings for my lower readers has been a great success. I am able to explain in detail exactly what I want them to do and they are able to listen to it again if confused. This promotes independent learning and I have found that they have been able to complete their work almost completely by themselves. 

I had not added them to the follow up activities that I had been making for the rest of the class as I thought they were able to read the questions therefore it wasn't necessary. As it was pointed out to me during our SM observations, the way in which some of the questions were phrased could be confusing for some students, especially my ESOL learners. By resolving this my students would potentially be more on task and the constant disruptions could decrease dramatically. Not only could I phrase questions using more familiar vocabulary I could also add instructions in audio form. 

WALTs and follow up Explain Everything tasks

As a beginning teacher I have found selecting WALTs very difficult. Looking at progressions has been very helpful and now I am able to have specific learning areas that are taught in direct instruction. How does this affect my following up activities?

It's great when we are able to share all our resources with each other. However, by really focusing on the specific learning areas for my micro groups I was finding that some of the Explain Everything (EE) tasks were not tailored to the needs of the group.

In one particular micro group I was looking at speech marks and sequencing which wasn't covered by the EE already made. I was also finding that the students in this particular group weren't able to read the instructions which was hindering their independence. I added in audio recordings which meant they were able to listen to the instructions and re-listen to them without having to be sitting next to the teacher. 

Where to next? Where do I have all the time to make these?! 

What is really working!?

Being a beginning teacher I am on a huge learning curve - especially with the introduction of 1:1 iPads and the use of Explain Everything. After using generic whole class templates for one week I have found that the learning that specific groups need to receive in guided reading sessions is not going to be followed up appropriately. It is necessary for each book and group to have a project that is specific to the learning that they are doing that week. Rather than change the projects given to the students I will need to change the routine so that I am seeing two groups a day rather than all four/five and work on a continued rotation.

I have also been trying to develop the tasks that the students will be able to cover over one lesson. It is sometimes hard to gauge how long a particular task will take some students. This will hopefully become more clear in the coming weeks. 

The following is an example that I have created for the book In the Days of the Dinosaurs: Zala Runs for Her Life. The agree/disagree template is easily copied into a new project and will be a slide that I can re-use throughout the year. I'm always on the hunt for time saving ideas that still push the students.

Generic whole class Explain Everything templates

Oh where do we find enough time?

Trying to get a specifically made Explain Everything project made for each book and each reading group that comes past me is an extremely difficult and time consuming task. It isn't really sustainable.

For the next week I will be trialling generic whole class templates that can be used by students to match the specific book that they are reading.

One problem that I can potentially see with a system like this is that these projects look at general ideas such as re-telling and character studies but don't cater to specific needs that the students have.

To get around this I will also be looking at possibly introducing some of these options:

> Having two projects for students to work on?
> Having students add their own slides onto the end of the project that is scaffolded by me

With this also comes the learning of a new routine of saving the new copy not the template. Another concept that they will have to grasp before transitioning into independent learning.

Time will tell.

Somewhere to begin

After a couple of weeks giving my students time to experiment with the different options available some things have become clear.

Firstly, it is so important to follow up with repetition once you have taught students a routine in Explain Everything. For example, once you get them import a photo you need to make sure that you do it for a couple of days afterwards otherwise you will never end up getting past the 'learning to use the app' stage.

Saying that, students are very quick to pick up tasks and will become hard to manage if you don't have another step for them to go to the next day.

I think after 5 weeks I am at the stage where my students are becoming familiar enough with the app to be able to start independent work without constant teacher monitoring. A few examples below so the starting point of the types of activities that I have started with. Please note that these examples are a starting point and also given to the students at a time when they are still learning to use the app.

This is an example of a slide for the book Hoppity Hop which is a Magenta PM reader. In this activity the student has to put the words in order from page 2, including punctuation. This focuses on sentence structure. It may potentially be a little to hard to include the punctuation and may need more scaffolding for the students to complete this page.

This slide is taken from a project created for The Picnic Boat which is a Green PM reader. This introduces the idea of speech marks and the right places in which they are placed. This is copied straight off p5 of the reader. This worked well and the particular students completed this activity easily so a follow up activity where they were given a foreign text and had to place the speech marks would have been beneficial. 

A new age of worksheets?

The introduction of iPads and the new possibilities for education that this brings is very exciting.

However, the way in which this tool is used has many challenges; the main one on my mind is are we just transferring worksheet activities onto an iPad?

My current inquiry looks into this directly by asking the question: What kind of iPad activities promote higher order thinking and cognitively engage Year 2/3 students?