Thursday 22 October 2015

2015 reflection

This has been a fantastic learning year for me. I started the year at James Street school. During term 2 I made a change to teach a year 8 class at Tarawera High school.

On my arrival I first noticed that the class seemed to be in a state of disarray. The students lack structure and routine. They had a teacher that had had a lot of time off and a term of relievers.
Drawing on my experience gained from PB4L, the Incredible Years programme and 15 years of teaching experience, I knew that I had to develop a strong trusting relationship with the students and set a class programme where all students felt like they were being successful in their learning.

I tried group teaching in reading, maths, and writing but found that the students weren't able to self manage and needed whole class teaching in order to develop a healthy classroom environment and establish a level of order.
At the same time I started to develop a relationship with some of the more challenging students in the class and their parents.
I found that providing  one on one time with these students enabled them to share their interests with me, home life, their concerns and social issues, which enabled students to start developing trust in me.

During this time I developed a relationship with home through phone calls, texts, and inviting parents to meet with me during my release times. Taking sports group also help to create the connection with students whanau.

I have also gain professional development in the use of google docs, google classroom and using
e-asTTle. I am still currently in the process of upskilling in e-asTTle and have a course to attend later in the term.

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