I was lucky enough to take part in Sonya Van Schaijik‘s initiative “TeachMeetNZ” on the weekend and presented a little 3 minuite presentation titled Youth and (relative) Inexperience in Education. My slides and notes are below if you are intereted in my experiences of being a new, young teacher in New Zealand. Youth and (relative) inexperience … Continue reading »
Interestingly, when I’ve spoken to the students in Year 6 lately, they’ve told me that they have lots of control in the classroom. I can’t say I agree, though they may well have plenty of control compared to previous years at school. So, to give both myself and the kids in my class a better idea of who had … Continue reading »
It is interesting to ask students what successful learners do – you always get students who say the secret to success is to concentrate hard or work hard. I agree this is important, but is there more to a really great learner than that? I wanted to pose this question to the students in my class to … Continue reading »
I recently visited all 3 Year 6 classes and spoke informally to randomly chosen students. I had decided to do this to get an idea of where the students were at with their learning and what our next steps as teachers were. This is what we came up with after reflecting as a team on the students’ responses: … Continue reading »
I was lucky enough to attend ICOT in January and got some great ideas and food for thought. One such idea that grew as the conference went on was to create a wall of skills and tools I thought the students needed to be great learners. The idea was to add skills/tools as the year proceeded and … Continue reading »
This year, the Year 6 syndicate started off the term with an intense focus on learning. We have focused on the following ideas: What successful learners do. What switches us on and off learning. What meaningful learning is. (Useful, get a sense of accomplishment out of it, enjoyable, interesting and … Continue reading »
I’ve been so very slack with my blogging so now that I’m back into it, I have an awful lot to share from the past few weeks. So I thought I’d write a series of posts about all the exciting things that have happened this year. Today: A Survey of Year 6. At the very … Continue reading »
To sound like an A.A member, “hello, I am Emma and I haven’t blogged in weeks and weeks.” Except this is not a good thing! The reality most teachers face of being much too busy to do the things we enjoy has kicked in for me this term. I’m sure many of you can understand … Continue reading »
“There’s zero correlation between being the best talker and having the best ideas.” (Susan Cain) I’ve been wanting to read Susan Cain’s book Quiet for a little while so, when I saw her video on TED talks laziness prevailed and I decided to watch it. The talk really resonated with me as I would consider myself more … Continue reading »
I’ve been asked by a few people lately how I go about conferencing with students. Despite the fact that the word comes up with a wiggly red line when typed into Word, it’s a vital part of my classroom program. It’s much of the difference between well behaved, engaged, self-directed time wasting and ensuring productive … Continue reading »
