Kia Ora, Malo-e-lelei and Kia Orana to you all. I am a Year 1&2 teacher at Glenbrae School in Glen Innes, Auckland, New Zealand. Welcome to my professional blog known as "Viena's Teaching as Inquiry"
For the newest learners, they use rub off dictation to help them familiarise with what writing looks like. It helps learners with the formation of letters, word recognition, plus other aspects of writing.
How will you sustain the habits that are promoting success for your students in Term 2? Sentence Frame - Continue to use this twice a week. I believe that maybe twice a week is enough because my students need to have an opportunity to create their own story using their own words. This is going to be interesting, but I would like to give them an opportunity to take risks as well. Phonemic Awareness - I love this strategy. My students love this, too. Children's writing show that they love writing because they are able to write down something for their ideas. Clapping of hands is a very good tool to use especially for the little ones - its interacting and fun. Cut-Up Sentence - For all my new entrants, this is how I teach them how to write a sentence. It teaches them the directionality, the punctuation, the capital letters, holding an idea in the head for a while before recording, and other things. I feel like that I don't need to teach those goals individually because it is covered by cut-up sentence. Rub Off Dictation - Helps chn to hold information in their head for a while before recording it down. I do this every day and it will continue just like that in Term 3.
What did you learn as a teacher / what surprised you? (Term 2) I knew that TESSOL strategies help but doing/using them in class really made me see how chn enjoy having fun in their learning. All of the above strategies have contributed a lot to chn's great improvement in their writing. How will you transfer your new learning to other students / curriculum areas? (in Term 3) I use Sentence-Frame in Maths - it helps chn in learning new language in Maths. eg. Sione is taller than ..... Clapping to hear dominant sounds in an unknown word helps chn to be confident in their own writing.