Symphony Maths

 

This is a new adaptive learning program that we have introduced in our school. I took part in a training session on Zoom to learn about the features of this program. This program is now a permanent part of our maths lessons and challenges all my learners at their own levels. What I really like about this program is the option to hear the questions as you read them. This is an invaluable tool for those learners who struggle with reading the instructions. 

This is now up and running in Years 4 to 8 in our school.

First Aid PD

Safety in the workplace is extremely important so knowing how to keep our students safe is an important for teachers. This week our staff updated their first aid qualifications together over two afternoons. Our four hour training course was run by Bronwyn from Actions for Survival, and was both really informative and really interesting. 

Important Takeaways:

DRSABC - Keep yourself safe first... this is the most important point to remember 

30:2 ratio when giving CPR (30 compressions: 2 breaths)

Adult: 2 hands

Child 1-8: 1 hand

Baby: 2 fingers

6 puffs of a reliever pump per 6 minutes to help control an asthma attack

Overview of a Balanced Reading Programme

Last week Panmure Bridge School and Glen Taylor School had a fantastic professional development TOD lead by Sheena Cameron and Louise Dempsey. We explored and unpacked the modelled, shared, guided and independent reading approaches, with lots of great practical ideas shared that I am excited to introduce into to my reading program. Here is the link to my notes.

Some of the key ideas we explored:

• Explicit teaching of reading is important at all levels
• Summary, main ideas, evaluate, justify, connections, synthesising
• Must be teaching reading across the curriculum
• Becoming a proficient reader means decoding, self monitoring, critical thinking, evaluating
• Self monitoring means knowing what words mean, decoding and making meaning
• It is not ok to not understand
• Give a picture of the word to help students make connections and move to making meaning not simply decoding without understanding
• Think, talk, elaborate
• We read to students to:

• Encourage opportunities to focus and notice vocab, language or key points
• Gift the time to think about the complexities of a text - comprehension
• Modelling think alouds - what fluent reader do to make meaning
• Develop a passion for reading
• Give information
• How words join together

My Takeaways:

                                             

(Images from The Literacy Place presentation)

• Introduce 'tricky words'
• Encourage students to use sticky arrows to find the example or evidence or identify tricky words
• Introduce post its as ‘stoppers’ to avoid reading ahead in guided sessions
• Y7/8 need attention to prefix and suffix - use white boards to add suffixes and prefixes to build words from a root word (find these in the comp. book)
• Think/pair/share...think/pair/record
• Shared Reading: 
• Teacher models reading but students must be able to see the text (words)
• Exposes students to a variety of texts (their reading diet is limited due to skill level being limited)
• Encourage students to build on from each other's ideas by saying “I’d like to add to that because...”

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