Teaching competences developed

Classroom management

Additionally to the fantastic classroom management techniques that we have learnt during the course I have observed some others that worked very well

Rainstick

In reception, the teacher uses a rainstick to change activities and call everybody's attention. I found that this is much nicer than a bell since the sound is much more relaxing.

Counting back

To regain calm in the classroom and have all students paying attention the teacher counts back from five and hold their fingers up in the air. The last numbers might be only signaled with his fingers.

Thanking students for good behaviour

This is the next step to counting back or a step on its own. Instead of pointing out what students haven't done as they are told the teacher thanks students for being ready and paying attention. Furthermore, describing what that student is doing to get praise from the teacher: "Thank you Rachel for sitting beautifully with her arms folded".

Dismising them in groups

Very often we have too many students trying to access the same area in the school, for example, trying to get their coats or their books. It is very usefull to dismiss them in groups. You can choose the table that gets ready first or students wearing a sweater...it is up to the teacher and the situation.

Traffic light

Traffic lights for behavior are not something new. Everyone uses them differently. What I liked about the way that they were used in the year 4 classroom is that yellow is a warning and red means loosing play time. This worked in this classroom because most students would revert to good behaviour once they saw their name in the yellow disk.

Silent steps

This technique was used in all classrooms in the school. Children need to pay attention since the teacher does not speak and neither should they.

Students stand up.
Students find a place to sit.
Students sit down.

This technique is used when children have to change from assembly to teables specially when they don't have assigned seats.

Lesson planing.

Guided reading rota & Ability groups

If you read my school diary you would know that in Year four there was a rotation system for Guided reading. This gave the teacher the opportunity to work with a small group of children while the rest did independent work or worked with the help of the assistant.

I liked this system because it allowed the teacher to implement differenciated activities and still keep group work. Also, it allows me to target a particular ability group whether that is to reinforce a lower ability one or to give a challenge to the top set.

I have thought about whether it would be possible for me to implement a system like this in my English lessons. I could also have the English Assistants work with those students having more trouble, I just decide which lesson they'll be working on that day. Also, while designing the rota I found particularly useful to pair a hard spelling lesson with an easy or revision grammar one. That way, I make sure at least two groups can work independently.

If you are interested to see the rota click here. This is an interesting blogpost called: How to make your rotas rock.

Differenciated activities

The higher the year the more levels in a classroom I encounter. We particularly have trouble when a new students comes from a non-bilingual school. It is very difficult for them to keep up with the pace of the class, take part in some activities or games and finish some worksheets.

Sometimes we feel it takes a lot of preparation before the class to make differenciated activites. I found, that having students grouped by ability helped me visualise whether they could complete an activity or not and whether that activity needed to be adapted or scaffolded in a special way.

During the lesson plan process it is quite helpful to identify the learning outcomes of all, most and some of the children. That way you can easily plan a challenge for those that usually get concepts quickly and have spare time as well as what to do with those students who will struggle with the lesson.

Teaching competences developed

I have learnt many things during my stay in the school but I wanted to highlight three main aspects.

Enhancing communication

Talk partners

Talk partners is a programme designed to improve the way children communicate across the curriculum, enabling them to be independent and skilful speakers and listeners.

They started implementing it in school in September. The aims are:

Implement a range of opportunities across the curriculum that would develop speaking and listening skills.
Ensuring quality talk in the classroom.
Have all children would fully involved within the learning activities to enable them to make the best progress and, as a result, become more confident independent learners.

Some positive outcomes of using the talk partners approach are that it:

Provides more opportunities for quality speaking and listening in the classroom.
Teachers have more time to listen to children thus enabling teachers to gage the level of understanding and address any misconceptions on the spot, leading to more immediate feedback.
Greater pupil engagement and less passive listening.
Enables children think more clearly about what they are doing and children write more as a consequence.
Enables participation by children who might not be as confident in the whole class situation.
Ensures all children are involved in the lesson.
Provides more thinking time.
Enables children to learn from each other.
Develops better Ethos in the classroom and respect for all.
Keeps learning fresh. Children get excited at the prospect at changing partners.

Talk Partner discussion needs to be very focussed and not too long. e.g. 30 seconds to come up with one thing you can see in this writing; One minute to think of a good simile for a cat; Two minutes to decide what has gone wrong with this calculation. This avoids pupils losing momentum and going off task.

Also, talking partners are changed at least every term. Students in year four classroom sit next to their talk partner in assembly and keep a book where they say what they liked about their partner and even better if their partner... They also give each other a little diploma to stick in their books for helping each other out.

Here you have A guidance booklet for schools and some posters for talk partners

Feedback & assessment

Teachers continually assess pupils’ performance through their observation of pupils on tasks set, and through the work produced. Formative and summative assessment strategies are implemented across the curriculum. These assessment strategies aim to be:

Consistent within the school.
Pupils are involved in the assessment process.
Encouraging.
Varied in style e.g. highlighted marking, comment only marking, self-evaluation, peer assessment.
Purposeful and of use in identifying areas of achievement and development.

Correcting with 'tickled pink' and 'green for growth'

It is when pink highlighters/coloured pencils are used to identify the successful aspects of work, and green highlighters/coloured pencils are used to show areas that need development. It is a brilliant visual way to encourage children to reflect upon their work. Comments are still important, as these are used to explain why something has been highlighted pink/green.

Often, children are asked to have another go at a sentence/word that is highlighted in green, which encourages them to edit and improve their work regularly. They are also encouraged to reply to any comments that the teacher has made. This means that marking is not going to waste because they have to prove that they are reading it. In my oppinion it is worth setting aside some time each week (5-10 minutes) for children to read, respond to and act upon on your comments. They can also do this when they finish an activity early.

This is the most common way of doing it however you can associate different colours with different words. I would however make sure that the school keeps this as a policy in order not to confuse students.

Click here to read a glow & growth strategy, click here for a Think pink and Go/good/great green and here to get a free poster with a marking scheme for tickled pink and green for growth. You can also find some posters for the classroom here.

Correcting with 'polishing purple'

Older children can also self/peer assess in this way, by underlining using colouring pencils. In Craigwell class they had just starting using "polishing purple". Sitting with their talk partners they would look at one of their notebooks together for ten minutes. Their partner can give them ideas or correct spelling mistakes they feel really confident about. Then, they would do the same with the other notebook.

Popsicle sticks

I implemented popsickle sticks in my classroom two years ago and since then, I have perfected how I like to use them. It is not a new idea but surprinsingly I haven't seen many teachers in psain use them.

With a system such as this one, all students must pay attention because they never know when the teacher might call on them. Once the teacher pulls out a student's stick, the child is not off the hook for the remainder of the class period; the teacher can return his or her stick to the bunch or, since I want to have children participating but not relaxing I have one or two popsicle sticks that read teacher's choice.

You can find plain sticks, coloured ones and can even decorate your own or let the children do it. I like coloured sticks to assign colours to abilities. Therefore i I pick a blue stick I know it will be a student from my top set. This is very helpful when checking for understanding since you can check that all abilities in the class understand.

Since I have an ipad in my classroom and a digital board I have use this to substitute popsickle sticks. You have apps such as this one for Android and this other one for Apple . You can also use a website or a power point or Notebook page. The last one is particularly useful for EYRS since you can use students' pictures before they learn to read.

Whiteboards

Another formative assessment idea that engages the entire class and provides evidence of student learning is the white board. Small, personal-sized white boards are inexpensive and if each student has them at their desk they can provide answers and information by simply raising them. Teachers can quickly grasp student understanding and adjust how they move forward. As technology makes its way into classroom environment, tools such as the iPad tablets or phones can be used in the same fashion.

To check points in a game everyone stands up and as you call how many points they start seating down. This is very useful when you want to find the winner for a game. It is also useful to see who has scored high and low in a test although I don't like other children knowing their classmates' scores.

Here you can find an Assessment for Learning Policy policity very similiar to what my school had.