Weekly Reflection

Weekly Reflections
Week 9

15th June - 19th June

Goals for the coming week

• Start midterm reports
• Finalising OTJ's across all curriculum areas
• Organise for parent interviews (Week 11)
• Reflect on inquiry at present

Professional Development for week

• Te Wananga o Aotearoa
• iPad training

This week has been an extremely busy week. It has required me to assess all students in mathematics (Addition and Subtraction, Multiplication and Division, Measurement - time and temperature, ratio and proportions, and algebra  and where they might be currently sitting now according to the data given and own teacher judgement through group work, one-on-one, and as a whole class. At time this felt very overwhelming, however with the support of my mentor teacher, I was successfully able to make an overall judgement in each area of mathematics. This process has definitely made me think about how important it is to manage testing, and student engagement in their at the same time. 

The way behaviour management is dealt within my classroom is slowly improving, but as any child would, there will be days where more than one or two of your students are going to be unsettled due to a range of unforeseeable reasons. The importance of this matter is to still keep your boundaries firm and not shift them. 

This week we have started on measurement - Angles. I have seen high engagement by the vast majority of my classroom. This is encouraging them to create angles, name the different angles, and using a protractor to accurately measure these angles. 

After carrying out a post test last Thursday on Proportions and Ratios, I was disappointed by the outcome of some my students. This made me question what went wrong, what I should have done and what I might do next time. Through discussions with the AP, she explained that students give evidence through a variety of ways. For example, one-on-one, and group work, as not all students do well in tests due to issues such as anxiety. From this discussion she said how a lot of aspects within proportion and ratios had been taught. A suggestion given for next time was to really identify the area of greater need. 

Continuing Focus

• Refer to inquiry regularly
• Managing time 

Weekly Reflection T2 WK 7

Weekly Reflection T2
Week 6

Date: 25th May - 29th May

Goal for coming week

• Continue making anecdotal notes
• Start GLOSS Testing on all students 
• Re-familiarise self of key knowledge and ideas for measurement 

Professional Development Attended

• Algebra Workshop 2
• iPad Traning (Manukorihi Int)

As the term slowly approaches the end, it makes me wonder where all this time has gone. I believe a lot of rich and quality learning has taken place in the classroom. I have found that the majority of the students have really engaged in the mathematic learning. I believe this is evident due to the discussions had, solving of problems and the maths lesson going overtime. 

The current Narrative writing unit is working really well. All students are showing a great interest to write their own narrative and in that are producing quality writing pieces accordingly to their current needs. 

The current reading programme is also showing high engagement. This reading unit encourages students to use blooms taxonomy to encourage analysis, remembering, creativity, understanding, evaluation and knowledge. My well below readers are working on the Toxic Box where they get to choose a box they wish to read, then work on follow up activities to consolidate their reading knowledge and understanding.  

Algebra Workshop 2

4th May 2015
Algebra Workshop 2

This was a great workshop, following on from workshop 1. The key idea of this workshop was identifying what an equation and expression was and meant.

We know that an equation is about either side balancing equally. For example:

• 36 = 30+6

An expression  is a mathematical phrase that can contain ordinary numbers, variables (like x or y) and operators (like add,subtract,multiply, and divide). An expression does not include the equals sign.
Example of algebraic expressions:

• x+8 (A number plus 8)
• x-4 (Four less than a number)

Throughout this work shop we looked at different activities and aligning these with the New Zealand Curriculum. Below you will see images of the activities that we as professionals have taken part in relating to the different NZC Levels.

Notes taken from workshop. Showing what is expected for lvl 2 compared to lvl 3

This is a level 2 activity where students are looking for patterns, how the patterns work, the order in which the numbers ordered and looking at negative integers. 

Level four activity, using formulas to posts how many posts are needed with 88 rails.

This image above is about how many moves it takes to make 3 equal groups with the first group having 6 counters, 2nd 5 counters, and the 3rd 1 counter.

Weekly Reflection T2 Wk 5

Weekly Reflection 
Term 2
Week 5

Goals for coming week

• Ensure PRT blog is up to date. 
• Organise reading exercise for students assessed as stanine four (Work on inferencing).
• Organise maths for whole class, using PAT data. 
• Make comments on where students are at (maths, reading, writing). 

Professional Development Attended:

• Te Wananga o Aotearoa (Te Ara Reo Lvl 2)
• iPad Training (Manukorihi Int)
• Algebra Maths Workshop (Te Toi Tupu) 

This week was the first week using the PAT comprehension data. Through this data, I identified students who were assessed as being at stanine 4. After identifying these students, I then identified appropriate an appropriate activity, which would challenge them to think critically about a type of text. I first started off by observing my mentor teacher who is also carrying this out. This gave me an insight as to how I can run this learning programme with my 5 children. 

Using the PAT data for mathematics is working really well. Students are mixed in ability when they are paired (i.e. higher level thinkers, with lower level thinkers in terms of mathematics). 

The first of three mathematic algebra workshops were held on Thursday. This was a first workshop. As a whole, we identified what the learner should be learning in regards to year level, and what those activities might look like.