Community

Each Friday Lynmore School has a whole school assembly, called Community. It is a great way for the school to come together to strengthen the bonds between, students, classes, school houses and the wider community.
It is also a chance for the school to acknowledge achievements of students. There is also another element. Each week one class puts on a Community Item. This is a whole school class performance of any description it is at the discretion of the individual teacher.
This week it was the chance for my class to put on a show. We brainstormed ideas in the class as a collective and the idea of a variety show like the X-Factot or New Zealand's Got Talent was the idea that garnered most traction.
I wanted to create a fun show that the rest of the school could get involved with singing along, clapping, booing our pantomime villain and really for it to be very interactive.
We had a four day week to put it all together (due to Good Friday being a day off). The students could chop and change the script and ad lib lines and reactions. They really seemed to enjoy the process and we created our show in just three days!
It was great to see the students working in a different context and how much certain students loved to perform and those that might be considered quiet were able to shine when the stage lights shone on them.
I have attached the video below and I am very proud of the performance my class gave.

Running Records

One of our recent professional development staff meetings was on running records with Wendy Johnstone. She was here to outline the importance of running records and the importance of consistency across the school when marking them.
It also it posed the question as to how effective Probe, which is the resource used at the senior end of the school, is as a running record tool. The idea of a seen text being a text that the student has already read in an instructional setting setting such as guided reading. Is this happening with the use of Probe at the senior end of the school?

Ministry of Education (2000)
Using Running Records: A resource for NZ classroom teachers

"The text used for a Running Record will usually be a 'seen' text- one that the student has previously read......The child's familiarity with the text will support the reading by providing prior knowledge of the content and the language, and so the reading is likely to be an example of the best processing that the student can do."

Google Docs

I am moving toward using Google docs across the classroom. My W.A.L.T.s and M.O.Ss on each subject and each group are going to be created using google docs and the class can actively co-create the success criteria and then they will be able to go back in and look back and add comments.
Today I also trialled an interactive lesson on Google docs with one of my reading groups. I had sent the group a document on energy to fill out. They were each given a colour to type in, each child had  an iPad and were all logged in and working on the same document at the same time.
I was not in the classroom I was working in the staffroom but I was watching them complete the document and I was able to pose questions and comments to them as they were typing. It was great from my perspective as I could see the work they were doing and how they were able to use the technology. It also felt even more interactive and engaging than if I had been in the room posing the questions to the children.
I talked to the children afterwards to get their opinions on it. They were positive in their feedback and super engaged.
With these live documents it really allows more of an ownership and engagement and I hope that it will become a feature of the class.

Questioning In the Classroom

As a teacher asking questions is what we do on a daily basis. The reasons we do this and the manner of the questions may differ. It is however essential that the child understands what is being asked of them.
Judith Thomas was presenting at our staff meeting on questioning in the classroom. She talked about four levels of questioning. The first level being based around more straight questioning. Who? What? When? Where? The level 2 being more the how? and why? The next two levels were about getting a deeper understanding of the topic more inference based answers and an understanding of the wider world.
For me personally I feel my choice and range of questioning is a strong point I encourage the children to access prior knowledge or use inference and most importantly I give them time to answer.

Boys Club

This year I have taken on the responsibility of running the Year 6 Boys Club. The purpose of the club is to encourage and allow the Year 6 boys to play games and do things that they want to do, even if it is rough and tumble, in a structured environment.
In our first meeting together we brainstormed some of the things that we would like to do. The consensus was for a game of tackle bullrush. Bullrush a game that was prevalent around the schools of New Zealand a generation ago but in more recent times it has gone into near extinction. (I have linked an article to its reintroduction in a Christchurch school http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/schools/8797378/Bullrush-back-at-Christchurch-school )
I believe the fear of injury in a game like bullrush is not a true reflection of the reality. The rules around the game were set out at the start and I wanted it to be student led so if any problems arose the boys themselves would call a timeout and resolve the problem.
Over the last few weeks bullrush has been are go to activity during boys club and the boys have enjoyed their games without conflict or injury.
This type of physical game is great opportunity for some boys to use some of their energy in a structured way.
Over the next few weeks the boys club are going to go into Waitawa Bush and play some games in that environment.