WEEK 5: 25 & 26 March, 2014

Tuesday 25 and Wednesday 26 March

 This week at SBL was really encouraging. It was nice to spend a whole day in one class each day, this is something I havn't had a chance to do. I liked this as it gave me the opportunity to see a classroom evolve from taking the roll, to dismissal at the end of the day and connect with kids more. I had a new entrant class on Tuesday and a year 3/4 class on Wednesday.

It was an eye opener to see how advanced the five year olds are. I helped a student who struggles with number and letter recognition. I done a maths activity with him. He was excited by the end of his discovery that he recognized  '5' was a number and  'M' was a letter. This was very rewarding. I had a student whom I was fortunate to sit with and ask how she learns. I was pleasantly surprised at her knowledge to my questions, and her answers.

On Wednesday I learnt a lot about the class I was observing. The class really projects PRIDE. Personal Best, Respect and Responsibility, Integrity, Dedication and Encouragement. The teacher asked the students to explain to me what they do in their class to project the school moto. They have an awesome learning environment the teacher has created. They have fern money in this class. They thrive to collect as much as possible and they can actually purchase things out of a brochure the teacher has. This encourages doing your personal best at everything you do. I was fortunate enough to give some out while they were doing their work. Mrs X made it clear to the class I was looking for people working to their personal best, being quiet and doing great work with pride. The students were very pleased when they knew I recognized their great work.

The students were learning about insects, inparticular cicadas. The students encouraged me to look through their magnifying glass as they had to illustrate their work. The hairs on the end of the nose and on their bottoms fascinated the students.

The class were doing a project which resulted in each pair deciding on a famous NZ star. They need to research this person and do a slideshow. They were excited to get me to read them.

I learnt what a homophone was. A word that sounds the same, has different spelling and a different meaning.

I was lucky enough to have another awesome and intelligent student to talk about learning with. She was clear with her answers and how she learns at school and that she likes things that she finds challenging.

In this class they have a soft toy that goes home with someone different each night. The students share at the end of the day if they will be having a fun evening and who their class mascot goes home with. I got to choose what story I thought this toy would like to do that night. They bring back the toy in the morning and write a story about their adventures.

I observed a maths lesson to an advanced maths group, year 6's. They are recognised for this class by completing a mathematics testing paper done at the end of the year prior. Todays lesson was on compound shapes and their WALT was what do you know as an individual in regards to measurement, numbers, geometry. Regular and irregular shapes. The teacher asked if they knew what a compound shape was. The learners brainstormed their ideas by relating what they did know, which was a compound word (two words joined together) they figured out that a compound shape was two shapes joined together. This was an uh oh moment for them. It was interesting to watch them solve a problem they were given with different resources. They knew to find the volume of an area means they need to multiply HxLxW. I enjoyed watching them use different strategies and them come up with the same answers. They done this by building on prior knowledge, known facts, using resources, making connections to something familiar, peer work and discovery.

I had a great week and look forward to returning to speak with my students about them learning time, taking a full class fitness lesson and organizing my year 5 netball team. I really enjoy walking through the school and being recognized from the students in a friendly manner. This really makes my day.