Teaching Portfolio

We went to visit Lincoln Primary to observe their collaborative practices. I found this a very interesting and worthwhile time as I felt we have had a really successful collaborative term and wanted to investigate the where to from here. Something that has been concerning me for some time is the lack of movement between our groupings across the core subjects. There are some children that I have not taught this year and as we approach 3-way conferences I have realised I don’t feel I could confidently talk about these children’s learning. This made me reflect on wether we are truly demonstrating collaboration or wether we are still cross-grouping in a sense. At Lincoln they work in a power of 3 and rotate their instructional groups every two weeks. I feel this would be too short a turn around for us as we have such varied needs however I would like to begin rotating groups next term to ensure we all teach all the children. I am thinking a 3-week turn around would be possible as thi...

This chapter discusses the importance of using and sharing learning intentions with students. This was the same message I heard over and over again and university and something I have been reflecting on now that I have been teaching in the real world. I was (and still am) of the opinion that children writing WALTs in books is a waste of time, particularly at the middle school level where this is a very time consuming process! However I do see the value of sharing WALTs or LIs in the classroom and have a permanent area of my whiteboard that displays our current LIs across the core curriculum areas. I try and refer to these often in my teaching and the children look at them when prompted, however I feel I could probably make this interaction more explicit to the children. Absolum highlights the need for teachers to make learning clear for students to help them succeed. I think I often verbalise the LI and ask the children ‘What does this look like? (i.e SC) however on reflection I feel...