Swivl DAT

My deliberate act of teaching was a reading group who were focusing on Self Monitoring.  We had worked on this comprehension strategy for a couple of weeks and were doing the last, refresher session on it before the holidays.

What Went Well
The learners had their self monitoring bookmarks they'd been given and they were able to refer to them confidently.  There were a couple of learners who were very confident with answering the questions that I had put up for discussion and could talk about self monitoring skills easily.  Over the previous weeks the group had understood what self monitoring means, the importance of it and the different ways to do it

What I Would Change
Next time I would set the swivl up at the back of the group so that the learners are in the video.  It would have been helpful for me to see their interaction so that I can better plan for sessions and to allow me to write narrative assessments on specific learners.
In the future I need to ensure that I move around a wee bit instead of standing or sitting in one spot, I think this would make the session a lot more interesting for the learners and would allow me to connect with more of the group (I follow a special needs teacher on Facebook and he uses this strategy to keep things interesting and keep the attention of his learners).
I need to use strategies for getting the whole group participating in the learning.  More often than not it's a handful of learners who answer all of the questions and do all of the thinking, perhaps because the others are shy, or worried about being wrong or language is a problem.  I think if I had them discussing, writing, mind mapping or doing some other activity in pairs or threes it would be a non confronting way for all learners to participate and access the learning.  This is my main goal moving forward.
I think I also need to think about the structure of the session and really plan it out a bit more deliberately so that I can get the learning I want out of it but keep the session short and sharp.

End of T1 Reflection

T1 reflection - what’s not going well

iExplore 

• Most learners are not following the learning model document and do not understand that it is more than creating a presentation. 
• Those who have done bake sales have needed significant intervention by Lisa and I.  They haven’t understood the process they needed to go through to get from the idea to the end product (finding a recipe, making a list of ingredients, doing a budget etc).  
• There is more of a language issue than I originally thought there was and I think many learners need ESOL support when doing their iExplores.
• I forgot to give the Sharks group the web quest that we created for them.

iDevelop

• Some learners aren’t getting enough instructional sessions on strategies and are not remembering how to use them. 
• Learners don’t automatically go to the slideshows on our Google site and do the capability tasks.
• When maths workshops are quite large I have found it very challenging to reach all learners and use materials with them
• Most learners aren’t updating their reader’s notebook.
• There doesn’t seem to ever be enough time for each subject area (reading, writing, maths)
• I don’t think we have enough maths games and language games out for learners to use to practise their capabilities

iExperience

• I have found it difficult to have enough time for visual arts on Tuesdays
• It has been difficult to offer workshops with only two learning coaches
• Many learners need language support with independent activities

Home learning

• Half of our learners are not doing mathletics at home.
• We haven’t got a way of checking that the learners are doing home reading

Other

• Provocations that are not on YouTube don’t seem to grab our learners.
• Many activities in all areas are not getting done
• Many learners sit with their friends and are very distracted during independent learning time
• They are very slow at getting organised when transitioning into a different learning area

End of Term 1 Maths

Assessment
Every second Friday we have been doing a pre-test.  This includes ten questions from various maths stages, all of the questions come from the planning sheets on NZmaths.  After the pre-test Lisa and myself mark them and put the learners into workshop groups based on what their gaps are.  Over the two weeks we run workshops that focus on the strategies in the pre-test and each workshop has a slideshow that accompanies it.  The slideshows are uploaded to the class Google site for learners to access for capability practise and to support their further learning after the workshops.

Daily 3: maths with someone, maths on my own, maths writing
We have been encouraging daily 3 with our learners and have a display on the wall to support the language of daily 3.  We have found though, that many of the learners spend all of their maths time playing card games or on Mathletics.  The card games they are playing are often snap or last card so they are not gaining much or practising their capabilities.  Following

Mathletics & Digital Tools
Learners are required to earn 2000 points each week on Mathletics (this number was decided on by the learners).  Activities are set for them that align with the workshops they have been, or will be attending.  They have been given time in class to work on Mathletics however we are finding that many of them are only doing Mathletics and nothing else so at the moment we have limited it.  We are also finding that around half of our learners are not doing Mathletics at home.

We have not started using Studyladder yet however I think next term we should look into this.  Some of the stage 5 activities on Mathletics don't align with the strategies we are teaching them (lots of algorithms which they shouldn't really be doing at stage 5) so it would be good to use Studyladder to fill this gap.

Moving Forward
It'd be good to find a way to keep our workshops going but make them smaller, less learners in each one so that we can use materials more easily.  Also I'm keen to build in a bit more repetition for those learners who find maths difficult and need to repeat the same skills many times in different ways.