Notes from session:
Goals reviewed first, set by children and with teachers input too.
Word rumble, timing set with the class first. T questioning blends, patterns and sounds as the words are displayed. Checking on contractions, changing words with prefixes and suffixes etc. Adding knowledge and reviewing with each word making a full and rich language experience.
Sound charts after words. All words have phoneme and sound. After chart chanted teacher then says letter name of sounds identified as more difficult, chn point and say phoneme.
Quick sound revision, looking at yesterday's sound and discussing where each sound could be in the word. Clapping syllables from yesterday's words.
Review of weeks words and addition of new word. Looking at tricky chunks in the words before the chn start recording.
Alkonin boxes. Pulling all sounds out then discussing how they could be made. Reviewing quickly with each group then moving on to dictated sentence on the mat.
Dictated sentence, teacher says, chn echo, break it into a smaller chunk. Whole sentence then break it into manageable chunks. Go back over the days sound and check on how the chn have used it in their dictated sentence.
Amazing tight control and very solid expectations of responses from learners in each part of the word work lesson. Whole body listening, expectation maintained throughout lesson.
What:
Observing a skilled colleague is often where my ideas and hence practise change the most. Watching Laura teach her everyday word work sequence is a true inspiration. She has so many teaching methods that encourage the children to use so many of their senses and engage their thinking in ways I've not considered. One of the most interesting aspects of her teaching is the recap she uses to ensure a thorough understanding and a true depth of knowledge in her learners before she moves on to introducing a new concept. I thought the session I was watching was introducing new material but I found that as Laura recapped she identified knowledge gaps and filled these and re taught the previous days concepts as required.
Watching another teachers behaviour management strategies is always a good way to refine and hone the way I work with students to maintain a calm classroom environment. I was interested that despite it being over half way through the year she started her session with a recap of what a good listener looks like and referred to a poster that the children were very familiar with but it set a great tone and level of expectation for the whole session. Children were quickly prompted where needed and had a very clear expectation of what they needed to do at each stage of the lesson as they were able to redirect themselves with very little reminding from Laura.
So What?
My teaching of word work has always been the best I could do with the information at hand but it is nothing like what I observed and so I look forward to taking ideas from this session and changing my teaching accordingly. Hopefully this will all work towards the end goal of more word knowledge for the students I teach.
Now What?
Watching other teachers is inspiring and extremely beneficial for my teaching so therefore I need to keep seeking out opportunities to observe and learn from the many skilled practitioners in our school.
Tamsin
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