Back at School!

It is great to be back at school, to see the children and to begin to learn again.  The last two weeks have been busy getting use to new routines and for the children to renew friendships.

Learning from home was enjoyable but I did miss the contact with the children.  As the children in my class are only 5 years old, I had emails from parents and saw some of the children in class and team hangouts if parents were available to help the children join the hangouts. 

 On the first day back it was all a bit different.  Everyone was learning to use the new routines and the children found this tiring.  We just took things slowly, doing fun things, eating when they said they were hungry and doing Engage activities to help break up the day.  The children are being kind with their words when reminding others what needs to be done.  They are seated apart but we have had fun doing exercises, blowing bubbles, doing lots of art activities and even making "social distancing" hats!

We all agree on one thing - it's great to be back at school. 

The new normal look of our class- with social distancing seating

Finding new ways to tell our friends we want to be friends even if we have to stay apart

One of our fun activities making "social distancing" hats.

Writing in Room 16

I chose writing as a focus curriculum area because many of the children have difficulty sharing ideas in a sentence and physically recording these ideas in a written form.

Prior to lockdown, when school was still open, we began group writing lessons in the manner of Dr Gwenneth Phillips' writing programme.  The children were ability grouped so they wouldn't feel overawed by someone who could express themselves more easily.  A co- constructed sentence was written in a modelling book with the children all helping with ideas for the sentence.The sentence is recorded by the teacher with unfamiliar words sounded out, and attention was given to direction, orientation and sequencing and hearing and recording sounds.  The children were shown how to use familiar class spelling resources correctly.

The co- constructed sentence was read out loud by the group to recall the words in the sentence and the order in which they are written.  The next step was not part of Dr Phillips' programme but it was a solution to the problem of children finding it difficult to remember the words in the shared sentence.  The children took a photo of the shared sentence on their iPad and did an audio recording on the group reading the story.  This way there was both a visual and an auditory reminder for the children to manage and rewind their learning if and when they needed to.  Some of this may have been the novelty of using their iPad during writing time but at least they were able to write the sentence correctly in their books.

The programme was only going for a short period of time before lockdown so I have no data to draw conclusions on whether the writing programme was making any difference.  What I did notice was the engagement and participation of the children in making a co constructed sentence.  Because we were working in smaller groups, it was easier for children to focus on the task at hand.

Smaller groups also meant we could spend time where it was needed most.  We accepted all suggestions as the children were attempting to sound out words and form the sentence, working through the suggestions to find the correct way to say the sentence in English.  Sometimes explanations were met with a shrug of the shoulders but for others they felt they were heard and not dismissed out of hand.

It will be interested to see if the children were able to continue to practise their self management skills from the Engage programme or whether we will need to start the programme all over again and also see if there has been any development of their writing skills.