Week 11 Term 1 Reflection

Reflection on Term 1 2017

Looking back on the term, I am confident in saying it has been a successful term.

Why?

• I survived the term with John - several positive interviews with his parents, positive email conversations, John has settled as a learner and is no longer trying to dominate the classroom. He has started to make responsible choices about where he sits and has all but stopped his social conversations during learning time.  Building relationships with my students is paramount and I made a concerted attempt to do so with John (as with all my students) - and I think there is now a respect and trust that is a good foundation for the year ahead. 
• Key Competencies: I am continuing to develop my understandings of the key competencies and how they are absolutely integral to sucessful learning. I have had an awareness of them in the past as part of the NZ curriculum, however did not really make them a feature of my learning programme. This I have now started to do by talking to the students about what it looks like when they are managing self, and participating and contributing, thinking, relating to others .... Term 1 has been a focus on managing self with learning the difference between a learning and social conversation, making a learning decision about where they sit and who they will work with, moving out of their comfort zone to work with others in the room rather than always their friends, the levels of work completion - completed the work, completed work with my best effort, completed the work with my best effort and challenged myself. 
• Digital Learning: I have continued to build on Classroom as the platform for communication and digital learning. Every week there has been assignments in reading, writing and math and the students have nearly all been able to work in this environment sucessfully. There are a few students who prefer to work off the chrome book, so they have the opportunity to do this as this is their preferred way of learning. I have several students who have found the independence required to work in this environment difficult and next term I will look at how to scaffold and support these students further. (Anthony, Cale and Suhyeok) 
• Relationships: As a unit of inquiry this was completed with a good degree of engagement and interest. I dont think it was an inquiry in the true nature of inquiry - it was definitly a guided inquiry, however has given a good base to develop futher my understanding of inquiry and also for the students to understand what inquiry is. Next term I am going to look at Genius Hour again as this is where I would like my inquiry projects to go. 
• Planning: I am always looking at how to refine my planning and how to make it succinct and a record of student learning. Havent nailed it this term - while my daily planning was reasonably up to date most weeks, it still isnt where I would like it to be. I tried putting my literacy and math planning onto the inquiry planner this term rather than having separate plans, however dont really feel this is how I want to do it.