Sally Avern's Professional Journey

As part of our Learning as Inquiry topic Sustainability,  The students looked into what action they could take as part of our community to help be more sustainable. Their 2 main ideas were, plant some trees and help by growing more plants/ food. The students wrote to our principal and asked for permission to go on a field trip and also if she could help with some materials. Luckily, I heard there was a planting day coming up on the weekend. With this is mind, I contacted Sustainable Coastlines and arranged the for them to go and plant some trees in Drury, close to a new subdivision where the water-ways will suffer.  We made it on a Friday though so that they could attend in school time. This was such a successful day. We planted in excess of 200 trees and the kids were all so happy and into it. It was a really encouraging thing to see, especially after a few morning comments of how 'dumb' this was going to be. :) Matrix was keen to go back and do more on t...

Sam's writing that we have been working on What is happening and why? My students are now producing more quality work. Their planning is improved now that I have worked on what else they need to be including in their writing and looking at it before the lessons in models with them. They are including details that are being selected more carefully and the work is becoming far more relevant. This is happening because the process of pulling apart models and then using that info to increase our writing is helping. What is not happening and why? Some of my students that need extra support are writing their story in a kind of list.  They have gotten the things they need in their intro/ body/conc and have included them but it doesn't really flow and I don't know how to make this better.  They have done what I have asked of them but now I need to know how to make it better. What am I going to do to change that? I am going to continue to use models, although more ...

  Inquiry/Goal: 2017: How can I improve the achievement in for my target students in Reading, Writing, Maths. This is the goal that I had from the beginning of term from writing observations.  My writing is going to be totally rearranged- to be more quick workshops and less long whole class stuff. Every lesson will now be a 15 min spot: 15 min workshop with 2 groups and then a 15 min spot to conference with a whole group. That way I really will get to conference with each child at least once a week. Ensure that we are fitting in to my writing 15 min workshop: A clear LI and SC, as well as: I do, We do, They do. Telling them they have a short amount of time to get it done. By just doing one small thing at a time this will be easy (as this is also what I do it reading and maths). Even when I am finding the ways things happen in an exemplar it should take way less time. But this can be a whole class activity). By doing things in a shorter, more specific way I will be...