Day #12

Today was really cool because I was able to attend an inter-school semester meeting.  These meetings happen once every semester (quarter).  The staff form three schools including the school I'm at will gather together and have a meeting and discussion about ways they assess and grade.  During the year they have focused on reading and writing.  Today's meeting focused on oral assessment and children's ability to speak and listen.  It was really interesting because you were able to see how each school has it's own "flavor".  The teachers at different schools had a different teaching philosophy and each individual teacher had her own philosophy as well.  It was just really interesting to see how different all the teachers were.
It was also really good to see how different schools and teachers assessed the same thing.  It really goes to show that there are numerous and endless ways to reach the same point.  All teachers are striving for their students to reach a certain benchmark and each teacher had her own way of getting to that.  It was also really nice to see staff from different schools interact with one another.  Most of the time, you get so caught up with the staff at your school and thats the only staff you know.  However, these meetings allow staff from different schools to learn about each other and interact and share ideas about learning, teaching, and different resources.
Today my Cooperating Teacher (CT) also showed me how to group students based on ability since she just finished assessing all the children in the class.  It was really good because I know the general abilities of the different students and seeing her place them in new groups was really nice because I could actually picture what the groups would look like.  She said that there are three things to keep in mind when making groups.  These three things are ability, behavior, and functionality.  I completely agree with her and think that the groups she made were really good and will help students to excel and grow as readers.
Tomorrow, my supervisor will be coming in to check on me.  I am a little nervous, but I believe that I have been doing a lot of really great things in the classroom so far, so i should have nothing to worry about.  I will be teaching two lessons tomorrow and I'm really excited. Although they are both reading lessons, I think that this will be a great opportunity for me to further practice my teaching reading skills.  I hope to teach a full class math lesson before I finish my placement at this school.  However, after I finish my placement, I hope to return to the school for a visit since I will not be leaving Australia for a few more weeks.