What is my class landscape today? How is it different from 3 weeks ago?

What is my class landscape today (End of Term 1)? How is it different from 3 weeks ago?

Three weeks ago most of my students were at home. Only one student has been at school all term, unaffected by covid. The rest have had between 0 (some students not returning at all) and 4 weeks at school since the start of the year.  On average 6 students attend each day with the makeup of students different on any given day.

The upside of this situation was the ease of developing relationships with my students. The small class size meant each student got more teacher time. One-on-one time meant it was easy to assess their learning formatively and get to know them as individuals. This was so different from the usual start to the year where it takes a term to really get to know your students.

It was easy to do 'spare the moment', 'teachable moment activities', and to target individual needs as this I feel is sometimes where the best learning happens. For children with additional learning needs, they had my full attention which is much harder to give when you have a full class. 

By week 5, most students had been back to school for at least a couple of weeks, so most had learned our class routines. The downside was teaching routines up until this point was difficult with each day being like Ground Hog Day, having to reteach routines each time a new student arrived back at school.

Also, the inconsistency of attendance meant that students would start to learn things like the letter sounds and high-frequency words, then without having time at school they would forget what they had learned. It was like taking two steps forward and one step back all Term. This was challenging as my students had not attended school since before lockdown and prior to that had only had a couple of months at school, catching my students up on all the early literacy and maths knowledge and skills they had missed out on was something at the top of my mind. 

From Day 1 this Term, my team and I had the determination to put all our energy and effort into working with the students in front of us. Making the most of every moment that we had them with us. Covid has taught us how precious this time is and the impact we can have on student learning when we are face to face with our learners.

Today I have 12 out of 16 students back at school. The classroom is the noisy happy place that we have missed so much. The anxiety evident on students' faces as they returned to school has been replaced with happy excitement to be back at school learning with their peers. It is super strange to feel the excitement of the beginning of a school year right at the end of the first term, but that is exactly how it feels. Instead of feeling exhausted and ready for the holidays, we are feeling energized and excited about all the possible learning opportunities ahead of us. 

As each student returned to school I assessed their knowledge of letter sounds, the number of high-frequency words they knew and their number knowledge. With the exception of 2 students, they knew between 0 and 10 letter sounds, between 0-5 high-frequency words with the majority not recognising any and most students had knowledge of some of the numbers to 10. Except for 2 students, the rest of the students were at the pre-writing stage of making marks on the page. So it was safe to say most of my Year 2 students were working at a new entrant level. 

My goal from day one this term was to spend Term 1 jump-starting their learning by using dose and density to accelerate the acquisition of knowledge of letter sounds and the most common high frequency words. Most of my students now know the letter sounds ad with support can write at least the first sound of words during writing. They are still finding it difficult to remember high-frequency words. I'm really happy with this as learning all the alphabet sounds in a Term full of in attendance is I feel a great accomplishment. 

A major difference I have noticed this Term is our home school partnership with whānau. Our relationship is relaxed and communication free-flowing and easy with so many different ways to communicate. We used to have to wait to come into school a couple of times a year but now we can talk anytime. 

We are working together in terms of student learning. I feel this is a direct impact of lockdown whereby we had to find many different ways to connect with whānau and became so used to working together. We gained such a greater understanding and respect for our students within their whānau (not separate from them). For the first time in my teaching carrier, I feeI truly understand the power of strong home-school partnerships.

Yes, there is no doubt, my students, our at least a year behind where they would be expected to be at their age. But moving forward from here, what will make the biggest difference for our students as we catch them up to where they should be if covid hadn't happened? We are set with an amazing challenge of accelerating our student's learning, our students are hungry for it, excited to be back at school, and ready to learn.