Appraisal Template

THE PAST

Positively Orientated

Looking back over this year so far I have several things I have been pleased with. One of these was the learning celebration we held as a class at the end of term one. I really enjoyed this time as it was great to have parents in the classroom and seeing my children be empowered to share their learning with the adults in their lives. I feel this was a success as it built relationships with parents and whanau and also developed skills in the students to be able to articulate and explain their thinking. It was also a really positive afternoon and fun for everyone involved. Prior to this I had reflected in my journal about encouraging parents to come in to the school to celebrate their child’s learning. After this learning celebration I journaled again and reflected on how positive this interaction had been and how much I would like to make it a regular occurrence.

Negatively Orientated

One this I feel I have not done so well in term one was my ability to feel comfortable and confident in my classroom. Looking back I can see I was very overwhelmed and trying to learn too many things at once which effected my teaching and relationships with my students. I had been told the first year of teaching is incredibly hard but even with this knowledge and preparation I still feel I got a bit lost during my first term and did not teach the way I thought I wanted too.

I have shared this practice as I feel I should have relaxed more last term and enjoyed the little things that went well rather than focussing on all the aspects that weren’t working too well. I am trying hard to do this now and I feel this is making an improvement on my teaching and my relationships with others.

THE PRESENT

Positively Orientated

Something I am really pleased with in my current practice is encouraging the children to own their learning and have choice over their learning activities. I have introduced a structured choice based reading programme this term and the children have responded really positively to this new ability to choose. I have had to adjust my planning and expectations quite a lot from what I first introduced as some children could not cope with the amount of choice or workload I had set for them. after reflecting on this and adjusting plans for different groups I am really pleased with how this programme is working and would be keen to share this experience with other teachers if they were thinking of trying something similar.

I feel this term I found my stride my classroom and feel much happier with how my class is running. I think this has also reflected on my relationships with my students as we are much more of a team in the classroom now than we were last term.

Negatively Orientated

I am disappointed with my lack of confidence dealing with parents in my classroom as I feel I am still relying on other more experienced teachers to deal with conflicts that arise in my class. I am aware that with experience I will feel more confident dealing with problems with parents (hopefully!) however at the moment I still feel very conscious that I might say the wrong thing or not know what to say. This leads to another area of my practice that I am lacking confidence in and that is resolving conflicts between children. I feel often I do not know what to say when a conflict arises or how to solve the problem. I think this links closely to my lack of confidence with parents as my biggest fear is a message going home via a child that is misinterpreted and escalates the situation. I am currently trialling a range of behaviour management and reward systems to find something that works with the children however I would like to develop more strategies to deal with conflicts on the spot.

THE FUTURE

Positively Orientated

I am really looking forward to growing my practice through future experience. One particular aspect I am looking forward to is being able to look back over a year and seeing how much my students have grown socially and academically. I feel very attached to my class and although I am not looking forward to them moving on I am looking forward to seeing how far they came over the year. For my own personal teaching practice I am looking forward to working with highly skilled and experienced teachers in a collaborative teaching structure and developing my own skills in a very real setting.

Negatively Orientated

I struggled to think of a negative aspect of my teaching practice in the future as the future for my career is quite unknown at this stage.