Today, I had the opportunity to visit Glenbrae School and Tamaki Primary. It was great to see other New Entrant/Year 1 classes in action and I have come away with my mind full of new ideas to bring back into my class - especially for creating activities on Explain Everything for reading. So that these ideas are not forgotten and lost over the weekend I noted these ideas down on a slide on Explain Everything.
In one of the classes there was a major focus on the students retelling and sharing what they had read. The teacher explained that this was to get the students to talk and also to share their ideas using correct English - many of the students were bilingual and English was their second language. In my class I have often wondered how I can get my students to share their ideas more and this was a real "light bulb" moment. I will definitely be taking the opportunity in reading for students to get talking and sharing. Hopefully over the next 6 months I can increase my students confidence to share their ideas, beliefs and new learning!
Steph, I really enjoyed reading this post and seeing how you use these school visit to develop new ideas about your own practice. Have you had an opportunity to try these ideas with your learners yet? If so how did it go?
ReplyDeleteThank you, Clarelle! Am starting to weave the ideas into my Explain Everythings and have also been giving students sharing time at the start of the day to get them talking and using full sentences to share their ideas :) Has been very interesting and cute to see what the children are bringing in to share with their peers!
Delete