Running Interference

Last week I observed a funny situation in the class. One of my boys who doesn't necessarily engage with writing and struggles to stay motivated in class for long periods was acting in his usual manner. It was Monday and we had begun our writing of a narrative which was going to take two lessons to complete. He was sitting there day dreaming with hands on his chin and chatting happily with his friends from time to time, doing very little work. In fact very little is an understatement.

Onto day two, Tuesday. The lesson begins as normal but this time he has fingers on his keyboard and I can hear the occasional tap. His friends are talking away like usual and then suddenly he gets up and moves to a quiet spot by himself without a word being said to his buddies. Now his head is down and there are a lot of fast little taps coming from his direction.

Five minutes later one of his friends comes wandering over and starts talking and mucking around. He tries to look interested in what his friend is saying but he then notices me watching and stands up and moves again to another quiet spot. Five minutes later his friends turn up again and he looks at me and says to them leave me alone you guys are annoying me.

From then on the same steps in the dance kept happening except I decided to keep cutting in. His friends are very active and as soon as my back was turned would try and sneak over. Basically I spent an hour running interference for him. His friends were for the most part on task, but they just like to talk about it a lot.

So this all made me think about the difference between kids who need support and the comfort of their friends and those that just need some space and time to create on their own. How do I cater for both parties? Something for me to ponder.

How do Students Feel about Writing - Survey Results and Responses

This is a presentation that shares some early findings regarding writing in my class. The purpose of this survey was to get some initial ideas about how the kids feel about writing and what interests them in writing. It is a work in progress so the presentation will change or be added to at times.
 

Mixing Sports with Maths and Writing

I am a typical Kiwi bloke who loves his rugby and sport in general, so although I am to old and lazy to play rugby any more I can coach it.

Our school has modified the size of our fields and purchased new rugby goal posts this year, so I had the idea that I could get my rugby boys and girls to mark out the field and goal post locations. I hope it will be interesting for them and that they will be motivated to do a good job because in the end they will be the users of their outcome. I will keep you posted how this goes over the next few weeks.

Testing Times

I have recently seen an advertisement for how not to get kids writing and how not to get the best out of boys and their writing. The solution for the above is simple. TEST THEM. Sit them down and tell them they have 40 minutes to write to the best of their ability about a topic I have chosen. 

I wish I had filmed the first 10 minutes of this test. Kids sitting at their desks staring at their blank screens trying to come up with some ideas, others nervously looking at how much the person next to them has written.

Of course some kids are fine and produce some pieces of quality but for the most part it is not the case. Anyway I don't mean this to be a negative post about assessment. Assessment has its place and I do value it. My reason for writing this is more about the fact that the boys, 90% of my class anyway, really aren't suited to this type of environment and struggle to write anything of great value. 

So my observation is - pressurized teacher chosen topics and environments of this extreme nature don't suit boys!

No 1.

This year I am going to take a closer look at the boys in my class and try and figure out what makes them tick when it comes to writing specifically, but also the other curriculum areas.

I'm hoping as a byproduct I will end up with a toolkit of strategies and approaches to keeping boys motivated in class. Motivated to learn.
Just a brief warning before I get started with my reflecting. I was one of those boys I am going to be researching when I was at school. I hated english and writing and it took a lot of pushing from my dad to get me reading before I started to enjoy reading books. So as I post you may notice that my grammer is not the best, I apologise for this in advance.