Day Three - 21 Day Challenge

Here’s today’s action step: Go visit a classroom—just one, any one you like—and leave a note.

Make it handwritten, make it positive, and make it specific enough that the teacher has no doubt that you were paying attention to the lesson and what he or she was trying to accomplish with students. Nothing about data, nothing about best practices—just focus on understanding and encouraging.

I visited a classroom in the middle block of a busy first week back this term. What an exciting place it was! I loved getting "permission" to go into a class and sit and watch, listen and talk to children about their learning. I was impressed with the levels of engagement of the students in their writing tasks. The teacher was fully immersed in a small group lesson on adding detail to their sentence, and the rest of the class were completing various follow up and publishing their written pieces from over the week. I spoke with one little girl about her learning goals - I asked her "what are you learning to do as a writer at the moment" to which Miss 8 replied, well I can't quite remember, but it's written in the back here [ she showed me] and I have to...[she reads] " use adjectives to add detail to my nouns to make my sentences more interesting".  

As writing is our overall school Annual Goals, I was really impressed to see goals being used and articulated with and by students. 

I really enjoyed the chance to write a short note to the teacher about what I noticed in her classroom. I used a special little card to write in and popped my note in an envelope too. I told her I'd only dropped in to see their amazing writing to which she said " Oh thanks". I don't know what she thought about my card, or my comments but actually, what the card did for me was my own little "reward"! It felt great. It lifted my spirits and gave me a sense of confidence that we are doing incredible things here! I loved this challenge.