Charlotte Verity Professional Learning (School Based)

I found some excellent ideas for improving my use of Circle Time, which we use weekly as part of our Wellbeing focus at Beckenham School...through Jenny Mosley's text: Quality Circle Time in the Primary Classroom: Your Essential Guide to Enhancing Self-esteem, Self-discipline and Positive Relationships (1996) My hub colleague and I have been focusing on kindness and resolving conflict lately, given the needs of our students. Fun Circle Time starters from this text: * All change - call out descriptives, w.g. stand up and move if you have a brother; have visited another country; speak another language etc * Show an emotion - peers guess what it is; peers copy * Word association - e.g. say a word related to friendship, fun, calm etc * Eek and zoom - go around the circle, each child saying 'eek,'. Swap directions when one child says 'zoom' Resolving Conflict * Split class into small groups. Give each group a puzzle, missing 1-2 pieces. How will...

SELF-REGULATION = staying calmly alert, focused and managing emotions in a way that is socially acceptable. THE ALERT PROGRAMME... * is a way of thinking about internal state, without focusing on emotions. * uses neutral language AROUSAL = HOW ALERT ONE FEELS To attend, concentrate and perform tasks in a manner suitable to the situational demands, one's nervous system must be in the optimum state of arousal (Mercer & Snell 1977). We need to be in exactly the right state of arousal to attend and complete a task.                  How is your engine running? Take the time to stop and check, how is your engine running? Ask the students, how is your engine running? Discuss how the class' engine is running (as a group). You can use a speedometer picture to show this. What affects self-regulation? * Physiological needs e.g. hunger, fatigue * Sensory processing difficulties e.g. over-sensitive or under-sensitiv...

The last three weeks have been great learning for me.  Parent conferences These were really positive and valuable for learning more about my students and celebrate success.  Several social issues came up, which we will address in wellbeing and general class time: * Including others at playtime * Using kind hands * Reporting any problems to a teacher at the time these occur How can I connect with parents more regularly? I have set up a googledoc with student names, and aim to more regularly contact parents to share progress, photos of student success etc Collaboration Our collaboration model has changed since my last blog. We now have two teachers (Amanda and I) working in one hub for reading. A small number of children read with our third NE teacher in another room. Amanda and I have shared our children. We have parent helpers in, working with target students from both classes, for 15min sessions.  We have also discussed collaborating in maths... I read Jen...

January 2016 Key Take-Aways ( and what I will do  this  term ) * One size does not fit all * Learning goals underpin but shouldn't drive learning ( i.e. leave the learning intention until after writing...START with the stimulus!) * Enthusiasm for learning & for writing * Fill up the room with  GREAT  writing, and fill their ears with the sounds of great writing. These include exemplars of expected/quality writing at students' level * Effective teachers  read, write  and  know: How words are formed;  the processes and strategies writers use;  structure  and  features  of major genres *  Hold high expectations for students * Min  20 minutes per day   independent writing   -  this could include speed writing, e.g., 1 min to plan; 5 mins to write where pencil isn't allowed to leave paper *  3 types of words:   Looking  (find on word card, dicti...

February 2016 Murray's Planning for N.E. - Year 2 1. Devise / decide a topic with the children - have a STIMULUS OR MOTIVATION prepared e.g. picture book then ask students 'what else could we write about this' ;  open ended sentence e.g. 'My dog did something terrible!...';  language experience; 'the funniest thing that ever happened to me...' 2. TELL the story (with passion!) - EXCITE KIDS! 3.  Show student planner. Prompt for language  With NE students, do lots of oral language, e.g. 'ni-ni-nibbled'  Discuss and write up some of the CONTENT words - e.g. nibbled, shoe etc modelling 'have a go' writing/spelling 4. Develop a success criteria with the students, using picture codes e.g.   = say my story before I start 5. Writing time! Send independent writers off to start. Keep focus group with you, and construct shared writing with explicit focus, based on students' needs (i.e. for my focus students at...

24.08.2015 Paulette observed  a reading session in my Year 3-4 class. The session involved: * Revision of our Reading WALT (Learning Objective) with whole class * Modelling of the Tic Tac Toe spelling activities, which I left on display for students to reference during the session * Teacher guided reading session on questioning (small group) * Independent Daily 5 Reading tasks, set up for student groups (differentiated according to students' current reading skills and next steps) Observations (things to keep doing) Next steps for my practise Use of questioning to encourage student sharing and comprehension Clear modelling on asking questions in reading, e.g. "How can you change that comment into a question?"; "Use our question words - What, Where, When, How..." "Do you know why..."  and "Prove it to me / Find the evidence for..." to allow students to show comprehension Explicit feedback e.g. "You are saying the wo...

3.9.2015 Focus questions How are target writers prompted? What activities/tasks meet their needs? What data is collected and how oftens Observations What I noticed: How can I bring this into my practice? Very positive having a small group and allowing for more teacher-student time Clear WALT discussed with students and written on board. Students could check on the WALT throughout session Having a writing challenge at beginning was positive and engaged children Lots of praise given one to one from teacher Spelling cards – students felt more able with this Use more tuakana teina in learning Review and write up WALT each writing session Ask children to count up and improve no. of words written each day   Use more praise, and encourage students to share and celebrate work  Get spelling cards

20 November 2015 Teaching as Inquiry: Writing This year, I have been working on the following goals for 8 'at risk' Grade 3 & 4 writers. All are currently working toward the curriculum standard for their year. Our goals: Say and write 6+ sentences in one session Correctly form all lower case letters Spell Essential Lists 1, 2 and, if ready, List 3 Improve engagement in writing Results for Term 4 THESE RESULTS ARE FOR 6 CHILDREN. One child refused to complete assessments (behaviour). Another child has significant literacy difficulties, who has been referred to an Resource Teacher Literacy (RTLit) for further support. Children show: * Increased or maintained correct number of essential spelling words * All students forming 25 to 26 alphabet letters correctly * All stude nts have improved the length of their work, and now write 5-12 sentences * For the child under RT Lit support, he has shown improved engagement, story length, and now includ...