Class Open Evening

If you had walked into our school last night, you may well have wondered just what you had walked into! We had our class open evening, which was a chance to show off about some of the learning that we have done so far this year. 

Last year was my first attempt at organising one of these evenings, and it seemed to spring up on me very unexpectedly. This year has been quite a bit better, as I had planned on it and made it part of our classroom programme through a written language unit on advertising. Each student was assigned a group, which then picked an aspect of the year 7 & 8 programme to "sell" to the people who came to our evening. They did this by way of an information station that they presented to visitors as they passed through the classrooms we had set up in. To make it a bit more authentic, each visitor was given $5 in play money to 'spend' at the stations in whatever manner they wished. 

The night was quite successful in that the visitors were highly engaged in our presentations, the students learned a lot about advertising and presenting, and we managed to convey just what it was that we did at school. I'm hoping that now, we might get a chance to invite classes of students to visit our class and see some of our presentations as well. 

On the first week of school...

This week has been an interesting one for me. Monday and Tuesday were teacher only days (or as my calendar at home puts it "pupil free days"!) where we discussed our school curriculum, and had refreshers in Literacy, Numeracy & ICT. We also had some team building with the Joshua Foundation ... which was a lot better than I feared :)

Because Thursday was a national holiday, that meant I only had 2 days this week with my students. The first day, we did a LOT of talking - mostly me talking in response to questions from them about their year to come. I got the feeling there was quite a bit of anxiousness, so I took some time to explain a few things and that seemed to help.

There are a lot of expectations put upon these kids - from me, from our school, from their parents. So part of my role is to help manage their workload. I set some clear guidelines for how they can improve their self-management skills, and an expectation that I wouldn't be there to remind them constantly about things being due.

Today (our second day), our two head students had organised a community fun day. The Year 7 & 8's were each put in charge of a station, and ran things from 11am - 3pm. They did so well, I was really proud of them! I saw lots of engaged students putting themselves out there, explaining things to younger students, encouraging and supporting them to do their best. I had LOADS of positive comments about the work they were doing... it was great for raising their profiles in the school!

Next week I hope to start some more formal learning, although we are organising the first school assembly too, so that might take some of our time!