Setting up the routine. A diary, week 3

This is the third episode in this series. Don’t forget to check out week 1 and week 2 first. There is the week 4 post, too!

Starting the lesson

Nothing has changed here and I have to say it is a lovely feeling to have it ‘just happen’, at least for a few minutes of the lesson. It is a confirmation that things are happening and according to plan and that, eventually, we are going to extend this ‘law and order’ to the other stages of the lesson, too.

How do you feel today?

According to what I planned, we added two more feelings ‘I am ill’ and ‘I am scared’, one to describe how we really feel in class (Hello September, Sneezing and Coughing!), the other one because I want to have it ready for all the stories to come. It might be also a nice phrase to use when we talk about emotions, also to say ‘I am not scared’, which is a very positive affirmation to make anyway! At the end of week 3 we have a total of 13 adjectives and phrases to use to answer this question and I have two more expressions, as suggested by the kids themselves. There is more to come soon!

Apart from that, I decided to let the kids take over and to take turns to ask the question to each other. At this point we are still doing it in a very closely-monitored way, with the teacher supervising and the kids simply answering a question from one student and then asking another one, in a chain. It took some time of the lesson as the kids were taking their time to choose the following child but it was definitely worth it! I was observing the children and I did notice how seriously they took the task and, actually, how much pleasure it gave them, too, to be involved in such a way.

Songs

We have practised all the songs introduced before and since we already have quite a few, it is possible to ask the class to choose a song to sing: ‘Do you want to sing ‘I can count to 20’ or ‘Count from 10 to 100′?’ to give the students an opportunity to make decisions about the lesson. That is what we did.

We also sang ‘Pete the Cat, I am rocking in my school shoes’ and during some of the lessons, this turned into almost a theatre, because all the kids wanted to sing and to perform all the actions, to sit at the desk, to eat something (they quickly reached out to their bags for a snack) or to read a book, in exactly the same way as Pete does, lying on the floor…This was definitely the song of the week for us!

From the new song, we only introduced ‘Have you got a pet?’ which we needed to introduce and to practise the verb and the structure which was the theme of the week. We also played the game with the spinner from wordwall, in which we sing the song for students, one by one, spin the wheel and the child in question answers ‘I’ve got a tiger. I like it. It’s a good idea’.

Rules and Classroom Language

We have been revising all the classroom verbs and phrases we introduced in the previous week and we devoted one of the English lessons to introduce and to drill some more advanced classroom language that include:

• Can I go to the toilet, please?
• Can I drink some water, please?
• I sit nicely.
• I listen to the teacher.
• I am a good friend.
• I have a question.

The two new phrases include: I don’t fight and I don’t shout, because this is exactly what was happening. I normally try to avoid using this kind of a language and to focus on a positive way of formulating the rules but one of my groups needed a very serious reminder.

Rewards chart

There have been not to many changes here. With my group A, the chart is no longer necessary, we only need to revise the rules and bring them back, to remind the kids about the behaviour we want. My group B need the rewards chart constantly but with the use of the chart and the rules, we are slowly moving towards the point where we want to be. I have some students who struggle with managing their emotions but there has been some progress in that area, too.

Time

Not too many changes here. We keep using the system we have created and it works. The kids are more familiar with the lesson plan, the different length of breaks, the changes of teachers, work in progress, nothing else.

Story

This week I decided to introduce a phonics story and, because of the theme of phonics, animals and have got / has got, I went for ‘Hen’s Pens‘. Overall, it was not as exciting or popular as the other two we have done so far but because it is a different style, without a song but it worked well.

What we did:

• introducing the new vocabulary and reading
• describing the picture on the cover
• looking for dots and zigzacs around us
• listening and talking about it
• doing one wordwall activity on rhymes together on the screen
• a reading activity done individually, on paper
• a colouring picture for those students who wanted it

Accidentally, just before this lesson, one of my students found our paper copy of Usborne stories and he brought it to the classroom and looking through the book, he found there our story. This way, he created a link to our following lessons because I want to use the story in a few shared reading activities.

Socialising

These are the things we did in the previous week to faciliate the community building:

• we continued doing everything we have done so far: making decisions, choosing songs and activities, helping with the resources.
• we added a little bit of student – student interaction during the first stages of the lesson (How do you feel today, see above)
• we did a few activities in Maths and Science to help the kids work in teams. We had two team activities with one student working for the group – two treasure hunts. In Science students took turns to find clues what to draw in a picture (types of plants), in Maths, similarly, tasks (addition and subtraction to 20) in order to uncover the secret phrase (‘Maths is very interesting’). In another Maths lesson we also played with subtraction and posters and small objects. In this game, kids had to work in small pairs to solve the task (put the hands on the poster to leave the required number of animals visible and take out the small objects out of the box).
• we also tried to play ‘I spy’ in one of the Maths lessons, this time in pairs. It was mildly successful as a speaking activity but they did get a chance to sit together and work on a task together. It was a necessary step and I would like to repeat it again in week 4.

Creativity

We have had some opportunities for creativity in this week, too!

• we created a beautiful picture of different plants in a Science lesson. It was guided (my instructions) but the execution was up to students. Of course, they really wanted to take them home.
• in our final Maths lesson, we decorated the first page of the notebooks that we will start next week
• there was a follow-up colouring picture for the story, for those kids who wanted to get one

Teacher

This is only very much Anka-relevant and it might not work or be important for all the other teachers in the world. I decided to take a note here, though, to remember and to see how these things will be changing because they also affect how we work as a group and how I feel, too.

• I managed to convince my fellow classroom dweller to rearrange the tables in one of the classrooms so now we have a beautiful U and I am happy.
• I am planning my lessons with the resources and boxes online, in order to be clever about all the carrying things around.
• Tuesday was quite difficult in terms of behaviour, very jagged and patchy, hence annoying and tiring and I went to school the following thinking that, no matter what, ‘I will have a good teaching day and the kids will have a good learning day!’ and somehow we all did. Partially, it was due to this approach, partially, because I prepared activities to help me achieve it. I noticed that I have been setting my expectations and the level of challenge a bit too high for my kids, without taking into consideration the fact that it is still only week 3 of our adventure and that we spend together 20 hours a week, some lessons are early in the day, some lessons are late in the day and they all simply cannot be just amazing. Although they can be good and they can be better if all these factors are taken into consideration. I did and Wendesday and Thursday were much better.

Happy teaching!