Miranda

Miranda's reflections on her students. Diagnostic results, what next profile, POL adjustments and resources sent to develop skills.... Feedback and reflection of successes and barriers Other teacher's comments and reflections on the processes..

Monday 8 Feb reflections: Enjoyed the workshop especially all the new ideas being put forward. Have decided to make my expectattions clearer at the beginning of the year this year starting with the letter. Overall I would like to see much more reading and writing from my students this year.

Thursday 25 March TG is the first student I will monitor. he is interesting because although he appears motivated, shyness and lack of confidence have led me to think that his level is actually higher than it is. It appears although he could be a capable student he has missed out out on basics, especially in literacy and numeracy. I have asked him to make sure he has a maths, English and Social Studies booklet to show Walter when he next visits at the beginning of Term 2. The sooner we have him on the level where he feels confident the better. I will continue to encourage his artistic skills. His pastel drawing of the eels was featured in the March newsletter.

Thursday 25 March LM is the other student in this reflection exercise. I realise that I have a lot to learn about teaching a year 7 child, especially one that is is quite a young year 7. LM has the opposite tendency to TG- she appears to be a little over-confident. She feels her work is good although even for student her age it is rather immature. Her handwriting, spelling and punctuation are quite poor. So I need firstly to have a better idea of what the levels should be for a student her age and what specific strategies (and resources!) I can provide to lift her achievement. At the moment I am concentrating on basic things like tricky word sheets, spelling lists and asking her to proof read much more carefully. Carolyn is doing her Maths so I will need to keep up with how she is going and if she is displaying the same learning styles as her literacy. Mum has realised she can't sit on her work for ages rather than sending the booklets in as they are completed. This change will make it much easier to help LM see where she needs to improve. Tuesday 5 May have just had more work in from LM, a combination of informal letter writing and her own writing. I have indicated that her writing journal is to be used for longer detailed writing- this time she was offering a recipe and a run through of words that could be joined to letters of the alphabet! I advised her that she too old for this type of work now and that I wanted to seesomething more substantial. She is a confident reader (and a great piano player apparently) but she finds writing hard. I am concentrating on improving her hand writing through practice sheet exercises and her proof reading by insistence that a piece of writing needs to be perfect no matter how many drafts it takes. She seems to enjoy this process rather than resent it.It is the structure of it that she appreciates. For example it took 4 drafts to get her formal letter to a standard I was happy with and even then there were errors. I think overall this year will be a year that LM realises she must up the ante with her writing and general work presentation.

TG is still very quiet and softly spoken but is definitely gaining in confidence. Walter has been to visit the school where he is supervised three mornings a week and reports that T is enjoying both the structure and social contact there. Now that his Maths has dropped to Level 2 he can identify the gaps he has more readily. Tyler's work return is slowing down a little so will remimd him of his goals.