Saturday 8 September 2018

Diary of a Deputy Week 2: On Track

Friday again! There was no time midweek to catch up with any thoughts - evenings were filled with preparing for my littlest daughter's fifth birthday (wrapping all the presents family had ordered from the Internet),  making a presentation about year 5 for the parents and finishing of a piece entitled Metacognition and Primary Maths for the October issue of Teach Primary - perhaps it will appear in print with a more snappy title, but hopefully it will be a useful piece for the readers. I also managed to squeeze out a blog post here on my own blog which details an approach to writing characters that we have been trialling in year 5. I also managed to finish reading the forthcoming 'Powering Up Children' by Guy Claxton and Becky Carlzon - a really thought-provoking book with lots of implications for the approach to teaching and learning my new school has.

Days followed my official schedule - teaching afternoons in year 4 and 5, carrying out learning walks in the mornings, as well as co-planning with teachers in year 4 and 5. Wednesday evening saw me delivering training to the school's support staff on giving feedback (a favourite subject of mine, see herehere and here) before dashing off to celebrate with my daughter. On Thursday and Friday mornings I ran parent workshops for the new year 5 parents which, according to the feedback forms were recieved really well. There was lots of positivity surrounding the learning environment - particularly about the studio area we have set up where children have continuous access to a range of creative supplies, books and construction materials. We are still waiting on two bespoke woodwork benches, some shelving and some more general decorative items in order to complete the area - once that's done I'll be certainly sharing pictures of it and writing about how we use it, how we timetable for it, and so on. For now, check out the working Lego model of the earth and the moon that I've been working on in advance of a lesson next week:

I also discovered yesterday, and it was confirmed today, that the children have already done a unit on The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe back when they were in year 2 - they even went on the same trip I was planning. Whilst redoing the whole book in greater depth and at a year 5 level wouldn't be a bad idea, it's probably a better idea to replan the unit. Having spent a lot of money already on supporting non-fiction texts about woodlands, castles and mythical creatures I'm looking for something that covers those bases. We have a few ideas - one strong possibility I will set about reading this weekend once I've finished Ross Mackenzie's very exciting The Nowhere Emporium.

But, a positive to end on. And a big positive: I love my job. What a privilege to work in a school where children love to be and where parents are so involved and supportive of their child's learning journey. It has been so good to spend more time with the children, staff and parents this week - I feel there is a real community vibe and it makes me very excited (and dare I say, passionate) about working at what I believe to be a really unique and special school. I have to say though, I am rather tired.

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p.s. Just had an email to confirm that we have secured transport to take us on the trip we were supposed to go on last week (if you haven't read the first installment of my diary, you won't have read about how we turned up to the venue and we weren't booked in).

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