Number Agents

I feel quite well into my journey now.  The combining of our Mantle (Planet Protectors) into the same responsible team as our Number Agents worked incredibly well and I now have an effective model I know I can go on with next year.  The combining of these two areas meant that I could do justice to this side of my teaching, while still ensuring children have three decent blocks of self-directed play. What I have been extra chuffed about is the feedback I have had from parents about Number Agents.  A selection of comments emailed to me are here, but I also get a lot of feedback face to face with how much my children love it.  "Totally happy for  _____to be apart of this she absolutely LOVES number agents it's a fantastic concept wish it was around when I was lil" " what an exciting and super fun way to learn! ____loves it." "I think number agents is amazing and has really helped ____with her numbers etc this year. She is always talking about it an...

There have been a few triggers for this blog post, which has actually been going around and around in my head for the last few weeks, but I have been pushing it back, in the hope that we would be given the ability to once again embrace our fabulous NZ curriculum. So there are several triggers for this post: 1) A post on facebook about data walls (horrific things) 2) The debate that resulted around the need for children to be able to see where they are going and reflect on their process and the need for this to be visible. (through the narrow lens of literacy and mathematics.) 3.A discussion as a staff about the slow school movement 4. Last but not at all least, the very real likelihood that we will be stuck with another National Government who, bless their cotton socks,  have worked tirelessly to narrow our curriculum, undermine teachers and increase anxiety and competition in our learners and promote shallow, fast learning.  Hey they have even coined the horrid ph...

I often blog about the progress of boys in writing and how we can break down some of the barriers for them in achieving success. In this blog post I would like to reflect more on an affliction that often affects our girls...perfectionism and a fixed mindset.  Not to say that boys can not be equally afflicted with this disposition, but in my experience it mostly affects girls and it has the most impact on early writing  success (and maths, but you will already be aware of what we do through Number Agents to help with that.) Perfectionism is something I hypothesize that we see in girls that have been encouraged to be 'school ready' in the way that people often think of as school ready.  This may look like knowing their alphabet, recognising words and being able to record words.  In my experience these children (usually girls) are first born and have clearly been given the message that school is about the 3 R's.  They come in with skills that are great cognitiv...

Over the next few weeks I am going to post videos that show the different parts of agency.  I will post each new video as I get to them.  This first video shows how we check in.  This is what happens at the beginning of each session and is used to help move children from the real to the imagined world. There are many ways children can check in and this is just the way we do it.  It is a little noisey... we have 42 agents now :) This next video shows the next step and come straight after our chant.  We do different things for warm up and professional development obviously, but this gives you an idea. This next video also shows another way we warm up.  This is a dot talk.  We have used our agent eyes for visual images all year, but we have not done many of these dot talks (three tops) The agents have come a long way in a short time. This next video follows on from our professional development today (professor led the same conc...

Deeply understanding how we can best teach and facilitate learning in a new entrant room is one of my professional goals and one I have been working at for some time, in fact this is probably not a goal that will even have an end. I found this poem on twitter this week and it really reinforced my desire to help all children believe in themselves and best assist them based on their individual need. Using a play-based approach was one of the first steps in my journey, but certainly not the be all and end all.  I think if we are to really 'get it right' in those first couple of years at school we need to have a deep understanding of the process of brain development so we can cater for children on an individual level.  Simply because all children are different, they all enter at different stages of development and require programmes that cater for this.  They also have different interests, passions and urges that we need to understand a whole lot better, simply by taking ...

Writing is something I have been giving a lot of thought to this year.  In my discussions with a range of teachers and principals this year, the one thing that comes through is that writing levels are a concern.  Particularly in Year 3 and 4 with many of our struggling children being boys. Part of my reflection this year has been on this, why?  Why do some children struggle to get started with writing, why does it become hard, and why are boys in particular struggling? I believe there are several components here that need to be dealt with separately.  Very briefly these things include: *Fine motor skills, if holding and using a pencil is an issue for me, then I am not going to want to write, it will be hard for me, and that will be a major barrier to my progress.  These fine motor skills need to be addressed early on.  We need to look at each child individually and assist them each to develop these skills.  Fine motor schools can be linked to han...