Interactions with students

One of my favourite parts of my job is having interactions with students, either face-to-face or through other means. During the school holidays I received the following email and it made my smile. It also demonstrates that some of the children in my class feel safe enough to share details about their life with me, share problems and trust that I won't share it and will support her.

Chloe	20 Jul
to me

thank you so much for teaching me. All so sophie has been mean to me.but this term I will try to be nice to her and not be mean to.I hope she will be like that to.All so I like xavier and richie but just as friend.but not   . Ok 

Sharon Spragg <sharon.spragg@yaldhurst.school.nz>	24 Jul
to Chloe

Hi Chloe,

Thank you for lovely email. It sounds like you have done some good thinking around Sophie and I will try and help you and her become better friends. 

See you tomorrow,

Mrs Spragg

Chloe	15 Aug (2 days ago)
to me

thank you mrs spragg i feel 

Reflection & Next Steps: Some children feel comfortable sharing. Provide more opportunities for the students to engage with me in different ways and to work out how those that don't feel so connected are able to find ways of sharing with me. Remember to give those students 2 minutes of myself each day.

An example of an email to Parents 2016

Hi Parents,

We are half-way through the term already. Doesn’t time just fly?! A couple of updates for you all:

Progress Towards National Standards Reports - these will be coming out at the end of term. We are dedicating next week to our assessments so we do ask that students are at school each day so that we can assess them. Obviously if illness prevents then we understand. Both of us will be having time out of the class dedicated to assessment as well.

Student Conferences - because we are now following the Te Awahano model of in-depth interviews that will fall close to the 20, 40, 60, 80, 100, 120 weeks anniversary dates we aren’t having conferences on the days allocated at the end of the term. Instead we are catching up with you and your child before or after school.

Some families have already had these conferences and some of you are due. We will be making contact with those that are due and meeting with you individually. The times we would be looking at would be before school 8 - 8:30am or after school 3:15-3:45, 3:45 - 4:15 or 4:15 - 4:45. We can of course make a different time if you are unable to attend at any of these times.

Spelling - Until this week our wonderful teaching assistants have been doing the spelling testing. From tomorrow the students will be tested by a buddy or the teacher. We will then be marking these over the weekend and returning the Home Learning books to children Monday.

This change has meant a slight rejig of the timetable and so Beep Test will be a bit later on a Friday morning, closer to 9:30 than 9am. Hopefully the slightly extra time will mean the sun is coming out a bit more too.

Disco - the students are super excited about the disco and we are looking forward to seeing you all next Friday night. It is definitely the highlight of the winter for our students.

The next part of the term is going to be focussed on creating some Manu Tukutuku for art,  some science experiments for our writing and measurement for maths. Of course reading and handwriting will continue.

Thanks for all you great support in making sure your child does their reading, math whizz and spelling each night. Thanks for coming in and saying hi to us and communicating how things are going for your child. We really appreciate and are thankful for this open communication.

Nga mihi

Nicole and Sharon

Parent Meetings

Parent meetings are arranged to follow 6, 6.5, 7, 7.5 years. We (the junior syndicate team) decided that it made sense for the whole junior school to follow the process through. The hope is that we will have higher parent engagement with their students learning.

I have met with many parents. We cover the latest assessment and how they are going with reading, writing and maths. We set goals as a team and give them any support materials that will help.

It is always a really positive time and I love how we always leave feeling like a team. It is a great positive experience to work with parents and the child.

Reflection: Keep working on having these happen, even outside of the markers.

Seesaw PD

Allan kindly set me up with a contact at Swannanoa School. It turned out that a friend of a friend is heading Seesaw out there and so it was good going out to see what they were doing.

Bridie had a few other people there who were also learning about it. Two from the local preschool and another new entrant teacher. I had the most experience with Seesaw but there were things that I learnt.

Learning as follows:

• Voice recording speeds up time for teachers and for students
• Making time for the student to reflect with the teacher so that comments can be done with support and understanding.
• Teaching students to take their own photos / videos of learning takes the workload away from the teacher and gives ownership to the student.
• Set boundaries and guidelines for staff, especially around approving work put up by children.
• Sharing items (iPads/iPhones only) - you can share between classes, so if you are in the wrong class it's ok.
• Printing the QR codes for parents who haven't connected yet. 

It was also great to check out another MLE. While it was after school and there were no children, what we saw was great. It is always inspiring to see and hear about what others are doing.

Reflection: Get the students to start taking their own photos/videos and giving good reflections on their work. Think about how we can apply this to the junior school. Try voice recording with the students. Also try and get out to Swannanoa and see it during the day.

Next Step: Try all of the above.

Introducing Seesaw to the Children

Today I introduced Seesaw to the class in order for them to be able to take ownership of sharing their learning with their families.

I had spent some time thinking about what type of things students would need or want to share with their families. I created a poster of it and shared this with the other adults in the class, explaining what the parameters would be for children putting things on Seesaw. It is important that everyone is on the same page with this because children need work approved before it posts. We don't want work to be posted that isn't appropriate or could be silly.

I went through the following process with the class:

• Explained Seesaw and what it does / how it works
• Talked through each part of the poster and what it means. Gave examples of what they could be.
• Had a child help demonstrate the process, showing the class after each step.
• Gave the children iPads in groups so they could practise sharing something that fitted within the criteria given.
• Put the finished products up on the Active board and we went through a few examples of good ones, ones that needed a bit more info added and those that don't fit our criteria, approving those that fitted as I went. 

Reflection: The students were really engaged with the possibility of sharing work with parents and not having to ask me. The student who modelled it become the expert and he helped others. The quick learners also become experts, moving through the class helping those that got stuck. Each child was able to share one thing each. 

Next Steps: To support those that weren't there to learn how to do it. To support those that haven't quite got what to share with what they can share. To make sure all the teachers are clear on approving work. To teach this to Te Kākano so they can implement it too.