Syndicate Goal 2018

Our Focus

Our syndicate goal for 2018 is looking into what our students are doing when they are not with the teacher (independent learning).

Where are we heading?

We are interesting in feedback based on;

• which core beliefs are being shown within the independent learning tasks we are doing.
• Do the kids know why they are doing the independent learnig tasks?
• A snapshot, who is on task, who is off task, are they working to their potential?

We came up with these based on the Term 1 school-wide observations, while these observations were helpful as an overall look at what is happening, as it covered the whole school it was hard to tell what related to our team.

What am I doing?

In Term 2, I began trialling using Chapter Chat as the basis of my reading program. This included lots of activities that the class could do when not with me. These included; drawing, researching, building etc but were very strictly driven by myself. This term (Term 3), I am again using Chapter Chat as the basis of my reading program however I am attempting to let go more of the control and pass this onto the class.

By Week 4 I had noticed that the activities provided this term for Chapter Chat were not as engaging or as _____ as with the previous book. After listening to Jane talk about the theory behind the play-based learning that is happening in the junior two syndicates, I began thinking about possibilities for how this might look in our space with our older students.

At the end of Week 4, I gave my literacy class the chance to brainstorm different activities they would like to do based on our chapter book. They came up with, design, draw, write, build/create and technology/coding activities. These were collated and shared back, it was discussed that when they were not with a teacher they could choose any of the ideas we had talked about along with any other activities they think of under the understanding that they would be able to share why they are doing it, how it relates to the book and which core belief they are showing.

Moving Forward- I am interested in spending time looking into Rimu and the way their play-based learning runs in the morning block. I would love to have loose parts for my class to use to create things but I'm not really sure how it could work within our space.