Last week in Rotorua I met up with a new friend by the name of Cinzia - an Indonesian woman married to a Maori and living in Rotorua. They are a really cool couple, creative and passionate. Cinzia even speaks Maori! So we made this video:
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REFLECTION - CLASS MANAGEMENT STRATEGY - APRIL 2018 From last week (and from now on) my junior and middle school classes will begin each lesson with a 10 minute SSR session. It will be timed and enforced i.e. the silent part! This is in response to what had become out of control behaviour school wide of a specific year 8 class. They had become extremely noisy and unruly across the board. However, I have decided to implement it across the board to set a standard of expectation and routine.
Although the introduction of SSR was initially and primarily about behaviour management I learned (or perhaps re-learned!) some interesting and useful things from it. * It is a positive and effective way to calm a class - the simple quietness can take a boisterous ‘hypo’ class from 100 back to 10 quickly. * It sets a peaceful attentive tone for the period * Some kids do like reading in silence so it’s definitely not just a behavioural control activity (it’s easy to forget this!) * The kids merge into the following activity from a more ‘ready’ state. * It’s an opportunity to share subject related reading resources (in my case: music) * It allows me to start the lesson in a peaceful positive mood - which in turn makes for a better lesson in general. Sometimes it’s equally ME that needs it! I have actually been pleasantly surprised at the positive reaction (or at least the acceptance of) to this new routine and have realised that sometimes good old fashioned ‘sit down and do this activity in silence’ is a good thing! In this day and age of interaction, group work, communication, open space learning etc it’s easy to think everything must always be active, exciting and collaborative, when in fact sometimes there’s nothing wrong with the exact opposite! |
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Teacher/ Musician from Northland, New Zealand. |