Site seeing - Pt 2

This is my 3rd year in a 1:1 digital chromebook classroom and it is the 3rd year with a class site. I am always up for trying new things. Usually I have my timetable written up on the whiteboard, but this year I have been trying to get my tamariki used to referring back to the timetable on the class site.

So nowadays, I just print off the class site for the week and stick it up on the whiteboard. I do this for 2 reasons: Firstly, at the end of the week I write reflections, scribble down what had to be adjusted and why, what's really not working in the timetable and so on. Secondly, when my newbies are stuck and are not sure where to go or what's happening, I can just point out on the timetable what I am referring to.

Below is a screenshot of my timetable all up until this week. It was way easier for my tamariki to just have the timetable up on the home page, so we got rid of the button that used to be above them. Now I just link all the pages and work I am expecting them to do for the day. No hassle, no beating around the bush - it's just one click and they're where they're supposed to be.



The timetable looks kind of weird doesn't it? with all the colour - I originally did this because I wanted to see visually if I was giving enough time to all my curriculum areas. purple is reo-a-waha, blue is reading, yellow is maths, pink is writing and white is topic, cybersmart, P.E, art, etc.

I tried something different this week. I got rid of the colour (ask anyone of Whaea Sally's student  - they will tell you that Whaea just LOVES colour.) I figured if I wanted my tamariki to refer to the timetable I had to do it in a way that is super easy for them to follow. And so came the new mahere ako...





So I didn't entirely lose the colour - I still find it very easy to see my coverage. I rolled it out today and because I had literally everything linked to the day the tamariki were in their seats following the timetable as we went along.  One of my students asked me at 10.15am "Whaea, can we have milk and fruit?", I replied "no" and when he asked "why?" another student told him that it wasn't time for fruit - he had to wait for 10:45am.

Another thing that went well was the morning - usually Te ara panui and Taumata gets a little crazy with the management but today it was pretty settled, we got on with the mahi and finished on time. Hopefully this is us for the rest of the year.