27/10/14
Time is the big factor! Today I had the opportunity to run the whole day. I was very excited about this. I’m enjoying getting to know all my students and develop stronger relationships with them. In this reflection I will talk about the literacy and maths rotations I planned and facilitated, outlining their successes and areas of improvement.
Literacy rotations: On the positive note, I felt organised and well prepared. This is because I knew what the students knew, therefore these experiences built upon prior knowledge and understanding. Furthermore, the learning activities were worked towards assessment as learning.
Room for improvement: During the transitionary phases of this rotation I noticed that some students became off-task and disruptive, and I believe it was mostly due to the drawn out nature of the transitions. This made the learning lose momentum. To overcome this factor I will need to explicitly give direction before hand- perhaps selecting a leader from each group to refer to the rotation chart and a 30 second time span for students to quickly transition to the next rotation task.
Maths rotations: The maths rotations were very well organised, constructive learning experiences that drew upon prior learning. I also used differentiation strategies as I worked with lower students using more concrete familiar objects and some more symbolic mathematics language with the proficient students. Because the maths groups are ability grouped, this made differentiation easier to cater for. The tasks that I facilitated work as both formative and summative assessment.
Recognising the implications of these rotations, I believe some had a higher workload than others, and upon considering the time constraints it was not practicable to complete all of the components of the task.
However, using this to my advantage, I can simply use the left over work to build upon in next week’s rotations. For example, the measurement rotation I designed to build upon last week’s graphing lesson, required students to measure the distance of each group members’ paper plane flight using a range of measuring tools, recording data and then transferring this data into a bar graph. However students only had time to fly their planes, measure and record data. Getting students to keep their data with them, next week they will transfer that data into the bar graph and then look at some other types of graphs they could use to display data.
Another maths rotation (which serves as part of student assessment on fractions) required students to identify and position equivalent fractions on a number line. I worked directed with each group on this task, which was effective in providing each student quality time and giving them the opportunity to communicate their understanding in more depth. During this experience I consciously drew upon the gradual release model to help provide students with an explicit understanding that was then synthesised as students gradually took on the task with more independence and were able to confidently explain fractions on the number line with reasoning.
Final notes for tonight-
Over this weekend I have been conducting research into methods of recording and maintaining qualitative data on student academic outcomes. I recognise that this is an area I need to demonstrate my capability in, as a professional. So I have begun to create my own checklists to keep track of student progress and later use this data to report on student learning. Reporting will commence next week, so I must be prepared.
(Australian Professional Standards- 1.1, 1.2, 1.5, 1.6, 2.1, 2.2, 2.3, 2.5, 3.2, 3.3, 3.4, 3.5, 3.7, 4.1, 4.2, 4.3, 4.4, 4.5, 5.2, 5.4, 6.1, 6.2, 6.4, 7.1, 7.2, 7.3)