#promptfour

[sarah-sheils-2018-blog]

Prompt four

Throughout my placement, I was with grade 4’s. I was lucky enough to have been placed with the writing mentor for the school, which assisted myself in my knowledge and teaching strategies when it comes to teaching writing. The school followed the ‘writers notebook’ strategy which included five main topics. This was explained to both the teachers and students in depth, along with the six traits. I found this quite interesting as I have never seen this style of teaching before. I love the way the students create seeds from things they brought from home or have at school, and how they have free writing time to write what they want to write, showing how amazing their writing can be.

Within the grade 4 classroom, the students participated in reciprocal reading. This was based on the topic that they were learning about within their inquiry lessons, showing how the lessons were intergraded to assist them with their inquiry studies. I liked the way the students had the opportunity to reflect at the end of the lesson and had one person from each group whom would share a question they had, something that they predicted or even something they found interesting.

[ecl310-ejr-blog]

ECL prompt 4

As I entered my placement classroom the whole class were finishing off the first Harry Potter book, read to the class by the teacher. The students LOVED being read to each afternoon.

One literacy component I saw in place was the use of role cards for literacy groups. Each student had a different role (see image) read a text together or article etc. and students had to take on their role each day. If they were summariser they had to summarise what was read that day. Connector had to connect the text to personal or world connections etc. Each day students would swap roles and take part in a different task, working on the previous students work. I found it a great way for students to work collaboratively and take on different responsibilities each day with the support of the group peers.

[ecl310gre96-blog]

Prompt Four

I have not yet been on my placement for this trimester, however from my previous experience i had a very positive literary experience. Children were given a wide range of opportunities to develop their reading and writing skills. Everyday students would engage with their reading buddies during literacy rotations on one activity, the next day this would be repeated, however the groups would rotate to a different activity. The activities included guided reading with the teacher, reading to other group members, sentence structure, literacy games and a reading level group. These reading groups flowed well and students were grouped according to similar abilities. Each week some alterations were made to ensure students were never doing the same thing over again. 

a writing activity that the students engaged with that i taught was a creative writing activity where they had a choice to choose there own character, setting and object. The first lesson that this was taught flowed very nicely until some students had difficulty thinking about what to write with the components that they had to include. This caused some chaos within the classroom. However, this was a learning experience for me as i went home to think about how i could improve the lesson. This was where i did an example story on the board to show students their expectations and to give them some ideas of how to write the creative piece. Students then effectively completed there writing piece with confidence.

[ecl310fa-blog]

During my third year placement, there weren't that many opportunities for students to read and write but in saying that, I really enjoyed the reading aspects when they did do it as they were doing a book study on the book Wonder. Everyday they would spend 10 mins before lunch time reading and assessing through the book. I really could see that the students enjoyed reading this book and wanted to do more. my mentor asked me to create an activity for the grade 5 students in relation to the book. It was lots of fun as a came up with the idea to do pen-pals. this required the students to choose a character from the book and write to them, introducing themselves, and asking them questions that they would want answers if they were to meet this character in person. They loved it and wanted to share their letters with their peers. 

[ecl310bchiefal-blog]

even though I completed my placement in Vanuatu, I still had a very rewarding yet challenging time over there especially with literacy. although I had a grade 3 classroom, the students were at a range of levels from Prep to Year 6, this was challenging to cater for all their learning needs. I remember all 36 of my students sitting on the floor and i read them 2 stories. one of them was 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' and also 'The Nose that Knows'. see how engaged and interested these students were in such simple stories. These students aren’t normally read too, so for them sitting on the floor and listening to someone read was the highlight for their week and mine as well.

literacy can be hard or difficult to understand for any student, but when it comes to having a language barrier, that difficulty is amplified. Trying to teach literacy to 36 students whose first language is not English was quite a challenge. As they were in Week 4, the students were up to comprehension questions. Attempting to teach comprehension to 36 young minds who don’t speak English was one of the hardest tasks i have ever done. This became a ‘not so good’ literacy experience. I had given the students a comprehension worksheet fit for Grade 1-2, unfortunately this was new to them as they had never seen nor did they understand what comprehension was. Also having limited resources didn’t help the situation, I then made my own comprehension sheets and all 36 students tried their hardest to answer the questions. This placement was one I will never forget and cherish forever..

[thejbowle-blog]

Third year placement: went out with a bang! Throughout the past two weeks, i survived grade 5, literacy and a cold. Whilst I taught 6 literacy lessons over the two weeks, we had a lot of other educational distractions arise including 3 excursions. When I was able to teach literacy I introduced to the students how to infer from a text and how to compare and contrast ideas. I also taught a couple of lessons on procedural writing; the students had to create a creative candy recipe - including the materials, equipments, ingredients and the steps of how to create it after they had completed a draft they had to revise it, edit it and then publish it. I liked the fact that the students had different tasks according to their literacy ability, this meant all of the students were 100% engaged with the task at hand and were able to answer their set comprehension questions with ease and without just sitting their not understanding the chosen reading. (The ability range for literacy started at an 10 years old - and went all the way up to an14year old) The class itself wasn't reading a book together however in each child's 'book box' which remained at the top of their tables they had to keep a minimum of 5 books and they had to be a mixture or fiction and non- fiction. When the students finished a task early and or every morning they would read until the teacher introduced the next lesson - these books were rotated weekly.

[ecl310shathah-blog]

Prompt 4