2016!
This year is going so fast that I already feel as though I'm trying to catch up. Term one is almost coming to end and it feels as though it is my first year all over again. Although I am definitely more relaxed about the amount of work that is required because I know more this year, It is still very overwhelming.
The part that sticks out the most so far this year is how different my class is from last year. I have stayed with the same year level so in my head that meant that I would be able to run my class in a very similar way to last year. First mistake for the year and it was a big one. I am an organised person and felt that I was ready to go. I was ready to go, but my children were not. They are so much younger than my class from last year and could not handle they level of work or the way it was being presented to them. I used google docs often to send children work and they were on a self directed programme. Even though I introduced it slowly and in very small chunks, they were still not able to manage themselves.
WEEK 5 is when I felt it all fall apart. It was just not working at all. The children were not achieving and I had not set them up for success. While this may seem like a negative, it was actually a huge positive. I recognised that what I was doing was not working. I could see where I needed to go but my main problem was that I couldn't see for the life of me, how to get there. I just couldn't see it. So, this led to conversations...with a variety of different people about a number of different things.
I spent a number of hours talking with my collaborative 'buddy' about how she runs her programme and took a few ideas from there. Then I spent time talking with my team leader, she was able to give me a few ideas and so was my mentor. With a week full of talking about how I could change my programme I took the weekend to make some pretty large changes. I stripped my whole programme back to basics. Back to whole class teaching, all doing the same things at the same time. There are a handful of students who could possibly handle self directed learning but most can't. My next step is to figure out a way that some students can be planning their own day where others will not. Or maybe they can plan certain parts of their day. This part is still a little unclear for me but I can definitely see the way I need to go now. Baby steps in the right direction and checking progress as I go. On top of that...
The thought of testing 29 children in three curriculum areas and reporting on every single one of them is freaking me out slightly but I am trying not to think about it too much just yet.
As the end of term becomes ever so close, I am reminded to think about all the things that I have been doing and not to focus on the things that haven't worked or that I haven't done.
