Tuesday, 28 December 2010
Moving on...
I have decided to move The Reall Battle to reallbattle.wordpress.com. Sorry for any inconvenience,
Wednesday, 22 December 2010
Obstacles to learning
Today I've been wondering about what's happened to my teaching recently. I was really excited about having two days a week in one class, rather than bits and pieces across the school. And yes, I was nervous that I would be teaching Y3 rather than my comfort zone of Y5/6. However, I WAS excited; I was looking forward to being able to focus on being in a classroom with a set of children.
I am naturally a risk-taker in my approach to learning and teaching. I enjoy the focus on learning and what children need. But you wouldn't know that if you'd visited my classroom over the past few months.
I think one of the issues is that I'm aware of much of the learning I find most successful is 'messy'. And specifically it doesn't fit nicely into an exercise book. Also I have in the back of my mind that clearly structured tasks are easier for the four ASD children and one child with attachment disorder to cope with.
But I strongly feel that 'messy' learning is important. That I need to take risks and make learning more hands on and interesting. I also need to think about the needs of ALL the learners in the class, rather than focusing on those with more extreme needs.
Sounds like I'm just making excuses - poor ones at that! It's me putting obstacles in my own path.
So next term I'm going to get back to basics - the basics of what I believe are important for learning and learners.
I am naturally a risk-taker in my approach to learning and teaching. I enjoy the focus on learning and what children need. But you wouldn't know that if you'd visited my classroom over the past few months.
I think one of the issues is that I'm aware of much of the learning I find most successful is 'messy'. And specifically it doesn't fit nicely into an exercise book. Also I have in the back of my mind that clearly structured tasks are easier for the four ASD children and one child with attachment disorder to cope with.
But I strongly feel that 'messy' learning is important. That I need to take risks and make learning more hands on and interesting. I also need to think about the needs of ALL the learners in the class, rather than focusing on those with more extreme needs.
Sounds like I'm just making excuses - poor ones at that! It's me putting obstacles in my own path.
So next term I'm going to get back to basics - the basics of what I believe are important for learning and learners.
Friday, 19 November 2010
The Power of DIY (2DIY that is!)
I bought a 2 Do It Yourself site licence for our school a couple of BETTs ago now. It's been used with great success in ICT Club and with our pupil editors of our learning platform.
But today started the most exciting experience so far for me.
We have been looking at metres and centimetres in Y3 and today I really wanted to reinforce the 100cm in a metre concept and encourage the children to go into simple fractions of a metre too. It's Christmas Play rehearsal time for us at the moment so our lessons need to cater for the various stresses that brings. Yesterday using strides around the playground as approximate metres (in the rain) was a hit and seemed pretty tricky to follow.
I decided a comparably fun activity would be for the children to create a matching pairs game using metres and centimetres. To demonstrate the idea I created (in about five minutes) a simple game in 2DIY. We played it and then the children made their own paper games to practise.
But during the lesson I realised that the chance for the children to create them in 2DIY next week was the logical next step. When I asked the children for their opinion they were very excited. They had only just calmed down from realising I'd created the game just for them!
I very much look forward to seeing what they create next week - and, of course, sharing it on our learning platform.
Now if my home DIY skills were as good I might have quite a productive weekend...!
But today started the most exciting experience so far for me.
We have been looking at metres and centimetres in Y3 and today I really wanted to reinforce the 100cm in a metre concept and encourage the children to go into simple fractions of a metre too. It's Christmas Play rehearsal time for us at the moment so our lessons need to cater for the various stresses that brings. Yesterday using strides around the playground as approximate metres (in the rain) was a hit and seemed pretty tricky to follow.
I decided a comparably fun activity would be for the children to create a matching pairs game using metres and centimetres. To demonstrate the idea I created (in about five minutes) a simple game in 2DIY. We played it and then the children made their own paper games to practise.
But during the lesson I realised that the chance for the children to create them in 2DIY next week was the logical next step. When I asked the children for their opinion they were very excited. They had only just calmed down from realising I'd created the game just for them!
I very much look forward to seeing what they create next week - and, of course, sharing it on our learning platform.
Now if my home DIY skills were as good I might have quite a productive weekend...!
Saturday, 13 November 2010
Mood Music
At the end of October I put together an anti-SAD playlist on Spotify. At the same time I decided to subscribe to Spotify premium so that I could listen to said playlist on my iPod.
I wish I had done this years ago. I've long been away that my mood and energy levels are affected by the weather and that as the days grow shorter I really struggle. Having lots of songs that have a strong beat and/or positive associations for me has made all the difference and I don't think I've had a weather/light affected mood issue since I created the playlist.
I have even been known to just put my iPod in my pocket as I walk downstairs in the morning to keep the playlist going. And I'm now up to 52 tracks! I'll share the link here, but to be honest as a playlist it probably only works for me - but I'm sure there are many tracks on here that many others would enjoy.
I feel like I've created my own life sound track!
(The Reall Battle focus behind this post is that as educators we have to be in the right place to be able to do the best for our learners - but that's a whole other post for another day...)
I wish I had done this years ago. I've long been away that my mood and energy levels are affected by the weather and that as the days grow shorter I really struggle. Having lots of songs that have a strong beat and/or positive associations for me has made all the difference and I don't think I've had a weather/light affected mood issue since I created the playlist.
I have even been known to just put my iPod in my pocket as I walk downstairs in the morning to keep the playlist going. And I'm now up to 52 tracks! I'll share the link here, but to be honest as a playlist it probably only works for me - but I'm sure there are many tracks on here that many others would enjoy.
I feel like I've created my own life sound track!
(The Reall Battle focus behind this post is that as educators we have to be in the right place to be able to do the best for our learners - but that's a whole other post for another day...)
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