Outram Term 2 2010

I had two really positive days at Outram School this term. There was a noticeable development of a positive attitude, improvement and excitement about the work we were doing from all staff. Many staff members had new teacher laptops that seemed to almost have them singing, they were so pleased to retire their old laptops after years of report writing and lesson planning they were not what they used to be.

Many teachers are using audio recording to meet students’ needs in writing. Writing is the school’s focus for all of their action research projects this year. Stacy is using this both to motivate and support some writers in her class. She observed how powerful this audio recording is for her as a teacher also. When she is marking the children's work she can hear exactly what they have tried to write. I’m sure many teachers particularly junior teachers, have had experiences of having no idea what the students writing says when they come to read the work. This enables Stacy to mark the work and identify what to bring up with the students without having to decode the writing with the student. This avoids a situation that can so often result in the child feeling as though they have failed, as their message is illegible to the teacher. The independence and success the student is experiencing is having a positive effect on their attitude to writing.