Self Regulated learners in writing

Article


This was an interesting study on self regulation and writing. It is quite an interesting piece as it talks about how they used writing to help some children become self regulated learners. They broke up the persuasive writing process to teach them to be more self regulated. There was a lot of modelling and setting up criteria and goals to help the children understand where they are going when writing a persuasive piece. They talked and were quite clear what they needed to do to write a good persuasive piece. This along with looking at how they can work collaboratively to improve a piece of writing helped the children to become more self regulated as they were taking responsibility for their learning. Another important aspect is that the children set goals that are achievable and precise so that they are clear with where they are going. I thought it was interesting that one of the students who the teacher thought would struggle with being self regulated actually wasn't as they set themselves realistic and achievable goals.
The fact that it mentions that a student carried this idea of setting achievable goals over to their own personal life is great as ultimately we want the children to transfer the skills they learn in the class into the real world. This will definitely help them to become, as one of my previous blogs mentions, 21st century learners.
The feedback the children got was also an important part of the process too, as it needed to be focused on the goals set. Which in my own personal life I prefer feedback based on what I am working on not on other aspects.
The teacher said that it is important for the children to be driving their own learning. Ultimately that is what I would like the children to do to help to become a self regulated learner. I feel sometimes this would be easier to do with older children. However over the last few years I have started to give the children I teach more control over their work. I will continue to work on this as my aim is to get the children to be self regulated especially in the collaborative environment.

Poor Maths Results

This article on Poor Maths Results was interesting as I heard of this way of teaching maths and came across this article. I found it interesting in that they have done studies to say that ability grouping does not work. During my last few years I have had another look at reading groups as I don't always think that reading abilities groups work, so adjusted my reading programme with good success. However for maths I had not really considered it. I think when they stated that if children are only exposed to lower curriculum than the expectation is low. I question this a bit as  I expect they have to have a certain amount of numeracy knowledge in the first place. With  ability groups they do move on to other levels and I don't think the expectation is low.
 The article also talks about how teachers have to be trained in the way they teach this way without ability groups and I get that. After having a bit of a think about this I think that having the right type of open questions could work. I have many questions though like do you pair them up when attempting these open questions so you get different view points from different levels. How do you ensure that the lower leveled children share their ideas and don't get overwhelmed with the higher ability child's work and just follow their thinking completely or is that okay.
Problem solving in maths is important and can be challenging and a lot of fun for the children and really puts the children's maths skills to test. I need to find more information on this type of teaching to fully understand the practical approach to it.

TED Talk-How to make a library that makes kids want to read

Literacy-Libraries

I watched this Ted Talk about some people that were interested in changing libraries in public schools in New York. To get rid of the idea that libraries are musty old boring places. So this guy was bought in to re image so came up with three options 1- a shh free zone Option 2-OWL- rename it Open Wonder Learn or other thing that fits- Option 3-based on read (red) Red Zone-Are you Red?- But needed to rethink these as not many kids didn't even really know much about a library.  He came with this logo L!brary.
However this was not the end of it as then the architect came back and said there is a problem and said there is a gap between the shelves and the ceiling can you fix it? So they came up with the idea to put in pictures of the children above the shelves as mural reading and enjoying themselves. Then other schools wanted more and so they added other art and ideas from the children. They got artists in to come up with ideas and put up materials in this area etc.
This talk made me think about how can we make Libraries more engaging. I have visited schools in Melbourne where they made the library the hub of their learning as it was in the middle of the school usually in behind the office. I liked this as it was often a hive of activity, however you have to consider more than the location of it. Libraries have to look different than they have in the past and the libraries have to offer more than they have in the past. I recently enjoyed the experience of having some people from the Christchurch Library sharing their knowledge on Matariki. This was great and the children were very engaged in the experience and they also were interested in going to the library to learn more about Matariki because of their visit. A library today has to have the resources that help a child to learn and have a variety of different resources. I think this talk has make me think libraries also need to be attractive in order to get them to walk in the door and enjoy. I like the display of some art work in the spaces, as couldn't a library be also a place to appreciate the Arts as these days they often have to be multi purpose buildings.

Personalities

I am currently working collaboratively in a modern learning environment and have been able to observe what it is like to work so closely. It made me think what makes a successful collaborative environment. At first I think you need to look at the people involved in this as no matter what training you have had for this kind of environment, it is the people that play a big role in this.  So what personalities do you need to have in this type of environment to work well.

I found this article which I liked when they talked about how it is not the introvert v's the extrovert situation that we need to be thinking about.  Personal and emotional intelligence is very important in ensuring a group of people can work collaboratively. Being able to read the situations and emotions of the people you work with can help with working together.
One thing Mayer's research has shown is that people who are able to better understand and react to people's personalities tend to be happier in the workplace. "We find that on the job people with higher personal intelligence are happier and more likely to appear agreeable and helpful to more people," says Mayer.
You can't really change people's personalities and hopefully Principals and Board of Trustees  consider this when employing and think about who might work best with this person. It is not always the case for many reasons. This article made sense to me as how you interact with your colleagues is very important and if you except their personalities the easier it is to get along. I think respect is also a big thing that needs to be considered when working with others in this collaborative modern learning environment.

We need to work well together otherwise the affects of this will be on the children's learning and the general hum of the environment.  It doesn't matter how nice your environment is the teaching will not be great unless the teachers work well together as a collaborative team.

Inspiring Reading And Writing- Murray Gadd

Attended this session with Murray Gadd on Reading and Writing- What is critical for all ( especially under-achieving and reluctant) readers and writers?
This man has clearly done some research in this area and many of it made sense. The eight dimensions that he came up with made perfect sense. It was interesting to see what he found to be the one that helps to generate learner gains and decreases the achieving gap. I have over the last few years realised the importance of direct instruction in teaching and this is important for the children to gain more from the lesson.

It was nice to be reminded on the fact that writing topics comes from
-the students' own experiences, understanding and interests
-the texts that students access: or
-the cross-curriculum findings and challenges that emerge from classroom inquiry

He appeared that he didn't like the Monday recount pieces of writing, although I do believe there is a time and a place for that. I think for some children that is definitely a stage they go through and does fit under their own experiences aspect. I know in my class I started with writing about their weekend and t was good for awhile as it gave them confidence in writing what they knew. However I have now moved on to imaginary writing for most.  I liked some of his ideas of using text in stories to motivate children for writing. I plan to do this as another way to inspire writing as have not really done it in awhile. I liked when he got his children to write about only an aspect of the story. It is great to let the children to have a choice in writing when they can. Also his questioning was good to get more out of the children to write.

This speaker has made me think about checking out some more books to inspire the children to write.

Gafe Summit

I had the pleasure of attending the Gafe Summit in Christchurch over the holidays. This was a great opportunity for me to extend my IT skills and learn some new things that I could incorporate into my classroom programme.
Some of the speakers were inspiring and I liked how some of them were still teaching and that they ju had a passion for extending the children's computer skills and other things. I think when you go to events like this you can get overwhelmed by all the ideas however it is important to walk away with a couple good ideas that you can use in the class straight away. It definitely happened at this Summit as I wish to get the children to do more on the Chrome books by accessing their google accounts. I know how tricky it is to teach them everything so Screencastying seems like a good idea so that I don't have to be everywhere at once so I plan to use this. I have been taught about google forms before but to see it a bit more in action in an example in maths was great and I have already used it in maths for my top group. The bonus to this was I was able to read the results of the test very quickly and easily.

Some of the things which may not seem big but make my life easier were important. Things like learning about finding the rights to use pictures, taking screen shots and adding to this and mercury reader were just a few of the ways to help my classroom programme.

It was a great experience but it does me think about how quickly technology is moving. In just my time I have gone from hand writing my lessons to now writing them collaboratively on the computer. The google suite sure makes it easier to work in the environment I am now working in I couldn't imagine doing it with written plans.

Self-regulated Haven

After reading a blog on self-regulated haven it made me think how things are going at my new school. I have this year being enjoying the challenge of starting a new school and all that that entitles. The feel of a school is very important and sometimes it is not till you leave or go to other schools that you really notice it in your own school. It can be the little things that can make a place seem like a self-regulated haven such as a calm environment which is not the same as a quiet environment as it is one in which the children are interacting but in a respectful way. The children I work with have the skills to work alongside others in an environment which in my current situation is a very open one with many children moving and working together.
I think sometimes we just have to look at where we have come with this way of teaching and environment as I find the children do really well in this situation. I enjoy just taking a moment to look at the focused children who know where they need to be and what is expected and who are making good choices in their learning.  I think that if we put a whole of lot adults in a shared space and said okay work together in this area there would be many issues. So to see children do this is great.
I believe that the children do feel safe in our environment and I think one of the reasons is because it is a calm environment. With having different teachers in the environment the children have different teachers they can go to which is great as this means that they can make a connection with at least one teacher.  However the flip side of that is that teachers need to work hard to form relationships with more children. For me this is a good challenge to get to know different children in the hub.

The other aspect is that the interactions the adults have within in these environment is important and needs to be one of professionalism and one where good interactions between the adults happens. We are role models and the children see us interacting and if done well then this will hopefully rub off on them which will help to create a calm and self-regulated haven.