To the Very Best of RTLBs

I feel very blessed to have been able to work with some fantastic RTLBs during my few years of teaching. A few have stood out by far in comparison to others. Yes, I do tell my children not to compare. People have different qualities to offer and we can only focus on the present and acting on our ability to do the best with what we have got. However...

Recently, a 'new' RTLB began working with a newly arrived student in the classroom. Here are some major things that stood out.

Proactivity
She was proactive from the beginning about the information she needed and went about setting this up of her own volition.
-She asked for the best observation times and carried these out until her 'picture'/ necessary data was complete. At least 3 obsevations and at different times and in different settings.
- She asked to asses the child and carried out a raft of assessments, both similar and more extensive assessments than those generally used in school.
- She kept in regular email contact.

A Fly on the Wall
-She was completely unobtrusive in the classroom.
-She was engaging with myself and respectful of the classroom atmosphere and current time and place.

She did not interrupt and expect to hold 'adult' conversations while I was in the middle of teaching or managing.
She did not expect my time or input at any time outside of times prearranged for meetings. 

Purposeful
-Meetings were purposeful and kept on track.
- Agendas, ideas and goals were preformed based on data and only required teacher input and collaboration.
-She came prepared with resources and pre-formed documents to annotate.

She did not:
Spend the time talking through things she had noticed... (except when applicable to a goal)
or making unhelpful suggestions.
She did not read through her notes to me!


Feedback
-She provided feedback about the observations and interactions in the classroom.
-She acknowledged the strategies already in place and was aware of the strategies being used in the class and how these could work into the goals set for the child.

Resources
-She made resources (the ones that she used for testing and many others) available
-She took on the responsibility (without being asked) to create the sets and resources that we had brainstormed to achieve specific goals.


To the very best of RTLB's

Thank you for acknowledging that we teacher's do not have the time for assessing above and beyond our 'needy' students. We barely have time for our class assessments.
Thank you for writing up the RTLB IEPs and collating the data so that it presents well for the funding and support required. You are so much more equipped to do this.
Thank you for sourcing and creating resources for the children who need support. It means one less evening of prinitng, cutting and laminating. It also saves hours of my 'trying to reinvent the wheel' specific to a certain child's needs.
Thank you for keeping me on track in discussions and outlining achievable and practical targets.

I do worry about my most needy students and often carry the burden that I cannot provide everything they need. THANK YOU for helping to ease that burden and not add to it.

 

Kate in Action

... a retrospective post.

Thursday Week 4 Term 3

As part of our reflective practice as teacher's this term we are all going around and observing in other classrooms or having others critically observe our own teaching practice to provide feedback.

Thank you Kate Machlachlan for the opportunity to watch your Guided reading lesson!

Ideas and observations:
-Key focus for the lesson was suffixes and prefixes.
-Key word list was resvised with the children on the laptop before beginning the book.
-This word list was made available and introduced to the students before the lesson/ beginning the book.
Idea - Make a list on the ipad/ modelling book
Idea - Use the ipad/ explain everything as a reading modelling book
-All children had notebooks, pencils and/ chromebooks with them in preparation for the lesson.
-At the beginning of each lesson the word list was revised.
-'Experts' were called on for specific word knowledge.
-Word associations discussed
-Follow up tasks were specific to story (eg. article and fact finding)
-Children could access video links that gave them living examples of the story and provided extended knowledge and facts.

To follow up:
-Revise the SHARP Hilton Aery program
-Set up notebooks for turquoise and above groups