Action Enquiry Year 2

Day 1 of my smiling research (25/4/05).  I decided to smile more during numeracy hour while supporting Green Group.  Even before we sat down child A tipped over a container of counters.  This child is attention seeking and can create feelings of frustration.  He is actually responsible for this research taking place as it was his behaviour that made me think of it in the first place.  I smiled and asked him to put the counters back.  I continued to praise him and smile and gradually the counters were returned to their container.  I felt positive and calm.

I continued to smile more during the lesson and continued to feel calm but a question I need to ask is:

Did my calm mood mean that I tolerated more disturbances?

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It was the 2nd activity of week 3 today.  I gave the children 4 pictures from Cinderella and asked them to put them into the correct order.  They all talked about the pictures and what was happening.  They all had an opinion on the ugly sisters.  They mainly remained focused when sticking the pictures in order and putting the words of a sentence in the correct order.  Three of the children got restless towards the end of the activity today and 3 of them remained focused and finished the activity.

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Our class had its assembly this morning.  The parents came to watch and it all went quite well.  This meant that our lessons were disrupted and instead of literacy the children did ICT.  My class teacher was happy for me to take my group and carry out my planned lesson but I still had some children I needed to read with because assembly rehearsals had eaten into this time and the children in my group were eager to do ICT. The fact that I am doing an action enquiry was not a good enough reason to ask the children to miss out on something the rest of the class was doing.  It is one of the difficulties that can be encountered and the decision made has to have the children's interests at heart.

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Yesterday I carried out the 2nd AE activity of week 2.  The children listened to the teacher read the story (The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear).  I had prepared 3 coloured pictures from the book for each child to sequence.  We talked about the story and the sequence of events.  Each child was keen to talk and were confident about their version of the story.  The children then stuck their pictures onto coloured card.  All sequenced the pictures correctly with minimum support.  When the children were listening to the story read by the teacher I could hear them retelling parts of the story.  This shows the advantage of starting their literacy week on the Friday before.  The children were already familiar with the story and felt able to contribute.  At the end of the lesson the children finished their mouse masks that they started to make on Friday.  They were all so pleased and showed some of the other children and the class teacher.  Today they showed these masks in assembly.

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