Welcome to Mrs Stone's
Year 2 Classroom
Behaviour Management
Reason one will be to promote good behaviour in the classroom; which in turn promotes good behaviour and attitudes around school.
This class will implement a visual interactive classroom behaviour program called ‘Class Dojo’, which will be displayed on the Interactive Whiteboard for all students in the class to view. Each student will be allocated a personal Avatar, as displayed in this photo on the left.
This program aligns with expectations of the set school rules in addition to the social skill ethos of the school taught through "Program Achieve."
Class Dojo allows collaboration between the students and I through setting agreed behaviour expectations for the classroom. It personalises teacher - student interaction in a digital setting. It can be used to target and reward specific behaviours; personalisation of behaviours allows students to have ownership of their individual behaviour. This program offers an engaging interactive way for students to recognise their own strengths and weaknesses (Class Dojo, 2011).
It can be downloaded to any smartphone or ipad, thus enabling other teachers such as the Health and Physical Education teacher to also be able to award and direct behaviour when it occurs and not later. This enables myself the class teacher to monitor behaviour and achievements from these lessons and give feedback to the students.
Their points accumulate and at the end of the week the students are able to see who has achieved a reward for the week. This motivates others to do well in their behaviour the following week. As parents you can log on daily to view and discuss behaviour with your child. As the teacher I may also send individual messages to parents or a whole class message.
If you would like to read more I have provided a link to ‘Program Achieve’ which clearly shows evidence that having a well-managed classroom coupled with good behaviour management, positively supports classroom learning.
If you would like to view an example of ‘Class Dojo’ in action in a classroom, click here.
Three reasons why we should use ICTs in our Classroom.
Creative Learning with Mathematics
For my second reason, I will be using the mathematics program called ‘Mathletics’ to enhance students’ learning in mathematics.
Mathletics can be used as a whole class or an individual teaching tool, and the teacher can set activities based on the mathematics concept for the week. After completion students can have the opportunity to “play games” involving mathematical concepts. Set tasks can also include assessment in alignment with the Australian Curriculum. Visually a weekly report of progress can be viewed to monitor any misconceptions and involvement in task.
For example one topic we are learning this term will be about interpreting simple maps of familiar locations and identifying and describing half and quarter turns. This comes under the content description of Measurement and Geometry which is located in the Australian Curriculum for mathematics for this year level (ACARA, 2015).
To support the students with their understanding of this concept they will be using the ICT technology of the ‘Bee-Bot’ Robot. This programmable floor robot is child friendly and is the perfect starting point for teaching directional language. The children will learn to program forward and backward moves and advance to half and quarter turns. I will then set task on the Mathletics program to help consolidate the students learning of location and direction.
Evidence shows by incorporating ICTs with learning, provides better opportunities in learning skills. This evidence is available on the Mathletics website, if you wish to read, click here.
If you feel the need to view ‘Mathletics’ in action click here. If you would also like to view an example of a ‘Bee-Bot’ Robot being used, click here.
Active Learning for Reading
The third reason is to support students to advance their reading abilities. All of us play a very important part of supporting our children in literacy. As children become more confident in their reading it supports all areas of their learning.
There are many multimedia reading programs that support young learners' literacy skills. For our classroom we will be incorporating 'Reading Eggs' into our literacy program.
For ‘Reading Eggs’ all students sit an ability and levelling test to ensure tasks are at their individual level of learning. As the teacher I can set tasks and specific books to read for comprehension and fluency progress. A fundamental reason if that these tools support learner’s ability and attitude towards reading out unfamiliar words and providing some support activities. Reading Eggs have proven it supports young learners with learning new literacy skills and helps them decode unknown words and thus motivating them to develop a love of reading. These personalised support activities allow the students to work through the activities at a pace suitable to them. This program is set up on both our desk top computers and ipads (ABC Reading Eggs, 2015).
Articles on the ‘Reading Eggs’ web page explain why this program supports all learners. If you wish to read this information, click here.
If you would like an example of how 'Reading Eggs' works or if you would like to register for your free trial, then click here.
All unattributed images provided by E Stone. (2015).