Today I have done just half day. The morning has started with the register and some phonics on the white board. The usual teacher is off sick, and a supply has come. The phonics game used is different from the last time, it seems more engaging for the children. They have to finish the level in the shortest time they can. The game is set as a racing track and seeing the finish line on the screen make the children get all excited. After doing phonics for about 10 minutes, the supply teacher decides to read a storybook. The children don’t seem particularly involved in the story and ask when it is going to be busy time. No activities are offered as stimulus as the previous times. However, I am very glad to see that a rota has been put up in the laptop corner: each child will be able to play with the computers only one day a week, I am curious to see how the children will handle this.
Although being an extremely cold and windy day, a great number of children wants to go outdoors, so I go with them. A TA which seems to me to be the most enthusiastic is outside with me. We chat a little while supervising the kids running around and I decide to talk to her about something that really caught my attention in the past few weeks. I have seen children writing in the opposite way, reversing single letters, digits or entire words. I am intrigued by this as the child I am studying for an assignment (he is in another school) did it, and today I saw another child doing it here. Unfortunately, she couldn’t help, but it’s been nice to talk about this, I think I sort of fostered curiosity in her.
Children got bored of running around so we take some paper on the outside table and start to make some kirigami. The TA starts off showing how she makes a snowflake but does not impose to any of the children to do so. I really appreciate her ways, she shows enthusiasm to every piece of paper the children produce, even when to the adult eye would look as a mistake. We helped the children in folding the paper, but then just let them cut it as they pleased, some came out all cut off and literally fell into a million pieces. We had a good laugh with the children and try to do it again. G was trying really hard to get some sort of kirigami and persevered in his objective. I was impressed by the mindset of this child, it was very cold outside, and he wasn’t achieving what he wanted to, but he didn’t give up. Having recently started reading about Dweck, I was intrigued by his engagement. I have decided to help him, not in doing that little kirigami, but in reflecting on his actions and strategies. I tried to use a metacognitive strategy, and it worked. I did that each time he was ‘failing”, until he finally obtained what he wanted. I have really liked doing that this morning, I felt like helping someone in the learning process.