A day of coaching

On Monday I have coaching conversations and some classroom visits, which take me to our Prep spaces for the morning. As the Curriculum Leader in the school this gives me a lovely chance to see what is happening across our school. 

I am helping two great teachers fine tune Daily 5 and tweak some aspects of planning. 

I also get to join them for half an hour to plan on Tuesday afternoon. 

I love that teachers are reflective and continually improving what we do everyday. 

For the rest of Monday I work with my own team around developing Maths Inquiry. 

This is an exciting journey for us and I will blog about this next week - still tweaking.

I just love the displays in the Prep rooms. 

 Read to Self is a focus for us and we are looking for known words and checking for accuracy. 

Germs, germs, germs

On Mondays I do not work in the Prep space - I get to support and coach staff across the school. 

Today as part of my coaching role two of our teachers got together to look at teaching practises and I covered one grade and got to something amazing.

The teacher asked me to read this book called 'A Germ's Journey' and then we would do a writing task about how germs got from on place to another. 

We talked about how germs pass from one place to another. 

The stories were amazing. 

Then later they added the craft at the top.

How amazing does the display look?

My coaching day

I coach teachers in Mathematics one day a week. About three years ago I worked for Regional Office through National Partnerships to coach teachers to lift their capacity and improve student outcomes. This was a fantastic experience and one I was very fortunate to be able to do.
Currently I coach one day a week. I love this part of my job as I get to discuss Maths with teachers who work outside my current year level. This group of students are setting new challenges around skip counting backward or forward. Their teacher is working on counting strategies that help them to count and remember large numbers. Using tallies in the playground to help count is hands on, real and engaging. I was in awe of the counting they were doing. They set goals, review them and set new challenges each and everyday. Great job

Coaching

I would have to say I have the best job in the world. Yes, it is busy, demanding, all consuming - but how many people can say that they love to going to work everyday.

One of the roles I have apart from teaching my prep grade is coaching teachers in our school. Tuesday is my coaching day. While I am coaching, Kate takes our grade for the day and team teaches with Chrissy. On this day I know that my preppies are in great hands as we plan and work as a team.

Last week I had the pleasure of planning and teaching a lesson to one of our Grade 1/2's. The teacher in this grade (Sue) wants to work to support other teachers in our school. So with a new curriculum we are looking, planning and assessing how this might look. I am enjoying the conversations with Sue and together we worked today to deliver her lesson plan.

Planning at point of need is paramount and we had students decide on a challenge for them when counting forward and backward. Some are skip counting by 1's, 2's, 5's and 10's forward or backward from 0 or from a non zero point. The work they were doing was amazing and I can't wait until Friday when Sue and I will review what was intended and then what actually happened and then where to next. ( I did ask Sue for permission to blog about her)

Check out this link for some great Professional Reading
Numeracy in practice: teaching, learning and using ... - Victoria

Assessment gathering - tick. Now what?

As blogged about already we have been engaged in collecting data on our students for the last three school days. Now comes the part where we extract that information, group, plan, teach and keep that cycle of updating information happening. As leader of the curriculum team, as part of the coaching team and as prep teacher this will be a little different in all planning phases. I will keep you posted. 

Pancake Day

Pancake Day has snuck up on me! It is this Tuesday - like in two days time...

I knew it was a short term, Easter will be here before we know it, (my daughter and I are off to Ubud in Bali at Easter, so fully aware of how many weeks until break) but seriously Pancake Day this week?

I have uploaded my work on Pancake Day and I have taken into account that my Preps are actually not with me on Tuesday. Work on special days needs to realistic.

I am not sure if I have blogged about my other roles in the school this year. I share the teaching space as you know with three other prep grades - so there are four grades in our open space. In addition to this Kate is my teaching buddy, her and I are a team. Kate has our grade on Tuesdays so that I am released to coach other teachers in our school. I coach our Prep team while we are in the space as well as teach. 

We have three other coaches in the school. Our school sees this as a priority and has worked out our workforce management plan accordingly. So on Tuesdays I also coach the coaches. But I digress.....

So this week - Chinese New Year, Pancake Day, Stop Work and Valentines Day. Wow Friday is looking like weeks away.

Click here to see our pack on TpT

Gathering evidence of learning

We are in day 2 of 3 of assessment gathering. I have had one on one time with 15 of my students so far and we have counted teddies, ordered numbers, matched collections, looked at what comes before and after, location words, estimation, counting up and back, subitising and measuring in Mathematics.

We have done a read and retell, sound and letter identification, rhyming words, beginning and ending sounds, one to one matching, patterns, reading, writing, oral language and all in one hour. I do have to admit I am a bit over 'Clever Max'.

The next task is to process the data and to plan for teaching and learning. I am part of the coaching group that will support staff to do this early next week. 

I teach Prep and I am also the Leading Teacher for Curriculum as well as one of the school coaches. We have 547 students, 24 classes,  in our school and I track all our students. We have had an incredible journey in a very short 18 months. This is a great place to work.