Weekly Reflection: Why do we treat behaviour differently from learning?

This week a bit of my time and concentration has been focused on unwise decisions made by my students. I've run the full gamut of emotions; shock, anger, denial and sadness all the time trying to keep my cool. It's funny the way we view behaviour. If a kid makes a mistake when they are...

Weekly Reflection: Inertia

My knowledge of physics ends at barely scraping through a pass in high school. However over the last week I've been thinking a lot about inertia, the principle that every object has to preserve its present state whether in movement or not. The bigger object, the more energy there is needed to get moving. What on...

Weekly Reflection: From Knowledge to Action #pypchat

People have unique to express their feelings This was the central idea for my first unit of inquiry as a Primary Years Programme (PYP) teacher. As part of the unit's provocation my class and I watched Kindness Boomerang and I challenged the kids to come up with ways to apply the big idea of the clip to...

Weekly Reflection: Losing my blogging mojo

So it seems that I am HUGELY behind in my posting schedule. After being so dutiful with recording my reflections as a student teacher, I must admit that as a I'm finding it hard maintaining enough energy to keep this blog going having missed not one but two weekly posts. And it's not because I...

Teaching Experience Two goal setting

Over the holidays I had a goal setting conversation with my teaching mentor about goal setting for the next Teaching Experience. During my first TE my areas of strength identified during my appraisals were: Taking on feedback Using evidence to inform teaching Classroom management Use of ICT in teaching Areas for development: Being clearer with communication with learners around...

As a new school year starts…

As the new school year starts up in New Zealand I was suddenly struck by the thought that (all going well) this time next year I'll be responsible for a class of students. It's both exciting and completely overwhelming. So much to learn, so little time. In the meantime the Sunday Star-times has done a...