Starting to Adjust?

Well I've been at Swason for about a week and a half. I've been trying to take in as much as possible, but it really is so much. I'm working with a whole new age group, one I have little experience with, in a whole new school,  with a whole new teacher, in a whole new country! A lot to take in. Everyone is very welcoming of the three of us from the states. That is making it easier to slide right into things. But there certainly are struggles as well. There are so many elements to the classroom that I have never had to deal with before like homework, independent work time, higher discipline issues, more assessment, and much more. Year 5&6 in New Zealand is very different than Kindergarten in the US I can tell you that.

But while observing my cooperating teacher and trying to understand how he runs his classrooms I noticed a few things that jumped out at me. He keeps his classroom very structured and set in routine. Since this is towards  the end of the school year for this group, they are set in their schedule and I am the one adjusting to it. While with my Kindergarteners I was teaching them the schedule and they were adjusting. I really had to learn to be the new person. Both my co-op teacher and I made it very clear to the class that I am still learning about teaching and that they are here to help me too. 

I also was able to notice how much assessment he uses within the classroom.  Which is really great for me because I really don't have a lot of experience with assessment beyond observation since the majority of my time spent in classrooms has been with young children. My teacher keeps a very organized running record of each students reading level. I was able to sit in on him evaluating a student that way. He tries to assess a student each day, so that he is constantly getting an updated review on where each student is with their reading. This also allows him to continue to challenge each learner.  He also does a great job using formative assessment. My students just finished up working on poem books, and he called each student over individually to conference with them one on one about their progress and things they should continue to work on. I really liked how he said that in New Zealand assessment is really used FOR learning instead of OF learning. That really shows that the basis of their educational system is about supporting students' learning instead of just tracking student learning.

One thing that really stood out to me was all of the differentiated instruction we have in our classroom. We have groups for everything! For pretty much every learning area (math, spelling, reading) there is a red (low), blue, green, and gold (high) group. Generally grouping student by ability level is generally a good thing because it allows the teacher to do lots of small group work to focus in on areas of weakness and continue to push groups to the best to THEIR OWN ability. But part of me wonders if my class is too focused around ability level. It is very clear in my classroom who is in the high groups most of the time and who is in the low groups. And that really has an impact on who they're friends with and who they relate to. The groups sit together so that is who they are generally surrounded by, so it makes sense that they would naturally grow to be better friends with those students, but my classroom has become quite cliquey from my perspective, and it kind of worries me. I also think that students would benefit from being grouped across ability levels so that different strengths  are shown and higher ability levels learn to teach their peers while the lower students learn how to learn from their peers. And we have done this a little with our technology challenge groups (more on technology challenges in future blogs), but I think more could be done.

Another thing that I think is really evident at Swanson is a value being put on breaks from learning to give students a break and allow them to come back into learning refocused. There are two breaks within the day. Morning tea is at 11am and then get 40 minutes to play and eat a little and lunch is at 1:10 where they get 45 minutes to play and eat the rest of their lunch. That is so much time compared to America recess, which is being eliminated more and more. Also in our first block of teaching time which is 2 hours, we take a short break in the middle to do some sort of fitness whether it be a quick run around the grounds or a game. It really allows students to get their blood flowing and brains focused back in on learning.

Well that has been quite a bit of reflection on my first week and a half at Swanson. Next week I'm going to be doing more teaching, so more to come about how that all goes.

On a slightly different note, Kristin, Beth and I had a lovely 3 day weekend (it was New Zealand's labour day) in Whitianga on the Coromandel Peninsula. We saw some absolutely phenomenal scenery including Cathedral Cove. It was all simply breath taking.