Manaiakalani - Sharing Blog Knowledge

Today in our staff session I looked at a blog and the benefits of having a blog. I looked at Simon Scott's Blog. He is a Deputy Principal at Hornby Primary School. He discussed that as part of his learning journey with Manaiakalani he assigned his students the task of creating a blog for their learning journey. He said that it was exciting to see the high levels in engagement with the children as they were sharing their knowledge with their peers via their blogs.
A focus for him was teaching the children to comment on other peoples posts. To do this the children followed the following criteria:  

He stated that  "following this template it has stopped children from giving shallow feedback like 'Good work',  'Awesome, well done!'.  Their comments now are full of advice or questions that promote further learning or initiate a learning conversation.  But the biggest impact to the students learning has been the improvement of punctuation in their writing.  This has been transformational!  Through the combination of the  3 steps to writing a comment and having an authentic audience the children's punctuation has improved out of sight. "

When reflecting on my classroom environment I do not feel that teaching the children to have their own blog will be beneficial. Due to the age group this will be a struggle to monitor and teach the children. However I like the idea of the 'Positive, Thoughtful and Helpful Feedback.' This is something that I could teach the children to do after following a learning experience, whether this is Writing, Reading, Mathematics, Performing Art, etc. This could be done verbally to help the children develop the ability to listen and accept feedback from their peers.

Storytelling - non-fiction texts

Liz Swanson

Session today was introducing non-fiction texts and ways of communicating to children.
We discussed the 6 different types of communication: recount ( retelling what happened), instruction (how to do something), persuasion (why you should do something), discussion (pros and cons of an issue), information (facts about something), and explanation (how something works or happens - cause and effect). Children need these forms of communication for everyday life e.g. relationships, jobs.

Here is an image of planning for Goldilocks and the Three Bears. You are able to create different types of communication and writing from this story. This is a way to incorporate non-fiction writing from fiction texts.

When telling the story it is handy to use actions and have the children do these with you. This will help their memory when retelling the story. We had modeled the purpose of using a person with props to help tell the story. This helps the children to visualise the story before they map it.

We then discussed mapping and a different form of mapping and sectioning with a different formation.

Here the images match up to the story. You read the images horizontally, across the page and each line represents a section/sentence of the story. Mapping this way helps the children to read aloud with the teacher and with the incorporation of actions, they will remember the story better.

Manaiakalani - Creativity

Belfast School - Term 2 Staff Meeting

Creativity - lessons need to have a hook. This helps with the behaviour management. The more interesting the lesson the more engaged the children are.

Looking at teaching in the 60’s - differences. We discussed how back then teachers had more chances for children to make and create. However, they had to copy the teacher, little chance to adapt and go on their own creative tangent.

Manaiakalani talks about the importance of sharing the knowledge and concepts learnt. Sharing these with other people and comparing ideas.. It is all about communication.

Creating paper planes. Had a task to create a plane that flew straight then to the left. Used internet to research and create.

Relevance to juniors: Children could share their data and new learning onto 'Book Creator - Ipad App.'

Older children: Google drawings.

We want children to be the creators of content not the consumers.

RIRO - Reaching In and Reaching Out

Liz McNaughton

Final session for RIRO. This course has been helpful by learning about resilience. It is thinking about dealing with stress and a negative mindset. We learned about stress in children and the cortesole. By reflecting on our own thoughts and experiences we learned how to have a positive outlook and engage in a growth mindset.

Things that stood out for me:

• Difference between sympathy and empathy.
• A thought is just a though. It has the potential to be wrong.
• Be grateful each day.
• Problems - do they belong to me - do I need to react to this.
• Take time out to relax and calm myself to settle anxiety.
• Model and discuss this with the children to help them increase their own mindset.

Restorative Practice

Learning the process of having a restorative conversation.

Need to wait until the child is ready to have this conversation with you.

Questions are kept basic so that the children are thinking about the answers and are working to solve the problem.

They need to resolve the problem and work out how to solve this problem themselves.

• Different mindsets. Have to approach the child in a way that responds to their mindset.

Restorative conversations do not have to take place straight away. The child may not be ready to talk or you don’t enough time to follow through with the conversation properly. These can happen later on in the day.

These conversations take time at first. But the children get to know the process and these become faster.

Communication

Something that is so so important is communication with parents and keeping them in the loop with what is happening in the classroom.

Every Friday I am sending out an email explaining up coming notices and what they need to help their children prepare for.

I have found that this helped the children have everything they need at school. My only issue is that I am unsure of how many parents are reading this email.

We also have a large whiteboard that we sit outside the classroom door with the upcoming events for each day on it. This is great for parents to see as they come in and it caters for those parents who do not have an email address.

Writing Buddies

Something I am finding is that teaching time goes so quickly! I find it so hard to meet with my writing groups and conference with them.

I have some very capable writers in my room and I have some children that find this such a challenge.

Something that I am trialing is a system called 'writing buddies.' I met with my more capable writers and we talked about how we could help our peers and what our goals could be. I formatted their ideas in an order and put this on a check list. The children keep this with them when they meet with their buddies and help guide their writing. I selected only a few children to see how this works.

So far it is working well. Some children are really embracing the leadership role this is giving them.

Next year I might simplify this but have the whole class working with a buddy to conference with.