I finished my internship quite a few weeks ago now and I’m absolutely loving the free time however I thought I'd reflect on some really cool ideas from when I was observing my mentor tetacher.
I’ve gotten some really good ideas from my mentor teacher so I thought I’d jot them down for future reference:
Fast finishers- at the front of the class there is a laminated sheet called”If I finish early”. If students don’t complete work during one session, it gets put on the sheet so that if they finish work earlier in another session later on in the day (or even next day) they can always look to the list and see what they need to complete. This ensures all students are on task and complete all their work. In addition- there are 3 fast finishing folders at the front of the class (for maths, english and art) so if students have finished everything on the “If I finish early” sheet, they may grab a sheet from one of the folders and can get this checked for an additional reward once they have worked through it. These finishing folder sheets go into a pile on the teacher's desk for him to mark at a later time.Spelling Revision- a simple but really effective way in which my mentor teacher is getting the students to remember their spelling words is by getting them to brainstorm and write the definitions down together as a class. For example, the students received their 20 spelling words for the week yesterday and today the teacher wrote down each word, one by one, whilst asking the students what each word meant. The students were all eager to give their own definitions for each word and loved it when the teacher put up their definition up on the board for the rest of the class to write down. This was a really great activity, particularly as the students’ spelling words were on homophones and it allowed them to differentiate between words such as “way” and “weigh” by having a definition which made sense to them.
Reading stamina- for 20 minutes every day, the class has a great reading activity which is known as Reading Stamina. This is where students are given time to pick a book to read at their desk, from a selection of books in the classroom. They continue to read their chosen book in silence until they are called up to read to the teacher. As they read the book, the teacher ticks a sheet on what reading strategies they are using, such as “skip the word and read on”. The teacher has a discussion about difficult words, etc. as the student reads. A few students are called up each day during reading stamina until the teacher has heard all the students read by the end of the week and has marked what strategies they’ve used on their weekly reading stamina sheet. The strategies the students use when reading are also put up around the room on posters and the teacher writes the students name under the strategy to show which strategies they’re using well and which other ones they can utilise as well.
When work is done- my mentor teacher used a routine that I haven't seen in any other classroom. When students were given work to do and they completed it, instead of having a huge line at his desk he had the kids put their hands on their heads. Once he saw they were done, he'd go over, mark their work and then they could move onto a finishing folder or move onto unfinished work. It really minimises the amount of kids walking around and waiting in a line to get their work marked and I found it to be very effective.
