L.Potter Professional blog.

Today I had an opportunity during my BT release to observe the schools reading recovery programme. During my observation I was able to see how the teacher worked with individual students on both reading and writing. Something that I really liked and took away from the observation was how the teacher got the student first to tell her the sentence before they wrote it down. She explained to me by getting them to tell her the sentence aloud they can check to see if it makes sense. When I was watching how the reading session was done in the reading recovery room I noticed how the teacher used the magnetic letters  to introduce new words.  She did this by changing the first letter of each word and keeping the same ending. An example that she used was "pat" and changing the first letter to create the new words "sat", "mat", etc.  After observing this session I have been using more classroom oral talk before writing. When I have used this as part of my writing pr...

Inquiry Question:   “Will a focus on explicit teaching with learning intentions linked to follow up independent tasks lead to accelerated learning”.  The effective use of 1-1 Ipads in the junior classroom for engagement and ubiquitous learning.

  In place of the staff meeting on Monday, we had a Manaikalani workshop, where we looked at one of the key concepts of "CREATE". We were each able to explore and choose two different workshops to attend, or only one if we were running a workshop ourselves. A key quote that was highlighted and I took away from the session was the idea that "creativity fosters wellbeing - and as a result improves learning".  I chose to go along to the smartphone photography  workshop as I really enjoy taking photos and was keen to get some ideas about how I could use this tool inside my classroom. I really enjoyed this workshop as it was very hands-on and we got to experiment taking different photos. Some of the photo ideas we tried were the flashlight effect and the waterproof bag which was probably my favourite one. I was given the  opportunity  to lead a drama workshop. This workshop provided basic drama games that could be used in a junior classroom but also be  ada...

I have been looking at establishing an effective maths programme inside my classroom. During one of my BT meetings, I discussed with my mentor how to organise groups based on my maths data. I have made a chart with all of my students and the specific learning goals that they need to work on. I have started using this as a way to help me plan my maths groups. I have this inside my classroom and will highlight students when they have achieved these learning intentions. During my BT session we also discussed how to do maths planning and some activities that I could try with my class. I have started to implement these into my maths programme, and I have found that my students have been very engaged with these.