Developing our learning culture

Developing learning focused relationships

We spent a lot of the first term getting to know our students and working on finding out more about them. In the photo to the right you can see that the students made these lapbooks about themselves. We have played lots of games and done lots of fun activities together.

Foster trust respect and cooperation

We are working on this in a few different ways. The first is through the behaviour/values lessons. Each week Nicole and I take this very seriously to try and get across the importance of each value to the students. We model these lessons and encourage the students to tell us what we are doing wrong so that they can learn well what they should and shouldn’t do. Behaviour Expectations.

We have also been teaching cooperation by creating group tables where the students from both classes are mixed up at tables. They earn group points for doing the right things and for working well as a table. This will be something we continue to keep working on how they work together and how they can learn to share ideas with each other.

High Expectations

We set our high expectations by making goals with the students and their parents before the beginning of the year. We talk with the students about what we expect both with behaviour and their learning often. I think the most important thing is that the students really develop self belief and self confidence in their own abilities so it is important to help develop their confidence.

Physical environment

This year Nicole and I have worked hard to set up the learning environment in a way that is clean, tidy and organised for the students. As well as making it a space that they feel comfortable in and that they can feel like they belong. We did this through spending a lot of time having the students create and complete artwork to fill the walls, filling the class with their own things. I think this has gone well and the students are really learning where everything goes so they can better help keep the space tidy and organised. The environment also displays the cultures of our students and some brief information about where they are from.