Reflecting on another year, the end of my second year and what a whirl wind. The growth that I've seen in myself and my students is phenomenal. One of my goals this year was to create a safe environment where everyone felt included, valued and heard. As a result, I believed that my class would thrive socially, academically, and holistically. When thinking about how I wanted my students to feel when they entered our class, I knew I wanted them to be focused on their learning and improving their own skills. Some major shifts have taken place this year because of the level of comfort and acceptance that we feel every day. One child in particular, who I worked very hard on in regards to his attitude towards his learning and the behaviour that prevented any learning from happening, has seen major changes. He has accelerated in all areas of Mathematics and has moved from well below his cohort to exactly where he needs to be. We noticed that once a plan was established and relationships were forming, we were able to work together to help him understand the strategies he needed to be at level 3. Another child who struggled immensely with his writing has seen incredible shift, and I believe it comes down to explicit teaching of writing skills and student agency. I provided the class with more opportunities around literacy, including opportunities to share writing daily, opportunities to select their own topics for writing, as well as opportunities to share reading! Reading for pleasure has absolutely taken off this term and my class are now more engaged in silent reading than ever! That's because we are now making regular and purposeful visits to the school library, we are sharing our reading experiences and we are making reading recommendations. I believe that by removing the stress of writing for instruction, and teaching writing skills within writing and reading for pleasure, has resulted in shifts for children like this one. He has moved from level 1 of the curriculum to level 3. I'm seeing more writing happening in the same time frame, deeper thinking is coming through and spelling and sentence structure have improved - because that's what I've taught.
Overall, it has been a successful year - academically for my students, socially for the relationships between students and between myself and the class, and holistically - we have grown our understanding around problem solving strategies and growth mindsets, and it is setting everyone up for success in the future.
