As of April 2015, I thought it useful to keep a diary or blog of experiences and research I have conducted into Education and Primary Teaching.

Classroom Environment
I have aimed to change all displays in the classroom since February 2015. A half termly change over of displays helps to show children that the learning completed in the classroom is valued and celebrated on the wall. At times, I think it might be useful to spend longer in ensuring that learning is completed to a better quality to help raise expectations and learning standards. The front of the classroom still contains working walls for the Literacy and Numeracy. Whilst I think that this helps to raise the profile of the core subjects, I'm not sure how useful it is as a learning tool as children rarely engage with it. I would like to explore further means of using displays as a learning tool rather than to simply celebrate and praise work.

Teaching:
I have continued to reflect upon how writing should be structured and progressively taught over a week. It has made more sense to plan lessons which lead up to an end goal (The Big Write) on Friday. It has been useful to make writing lessons more engaging and fun by including DVD clips and props to discuss and lead up to the writing task. Next half term, I should continue to reflect on how I ensure coverage across all the grammatical areas of learning that need to be covered. Guided groups in writing lessons continues to be a sticking point. As there are thirty children and only one adult working in the room it has been difficult to find the time to support and extend all pupils.

I have continued to find the Abacus learning scheme useful for Maths as this has provided a good coverage for learning concepts. Addressing children misconceptions and errors during starter activities has allowed me to focus on the needs of the class whilst not focusing on too few concepts. My structure for organizing guided groups has worked really well - dividing the class of twenty two children into three groups and ensure that two of these are supported each day.

Reading worked well with three guided sessions and two whole class sessions this half term. Some of the guided group sessions were too large however and Thursday's whole class lessons was not always beneficial to learning. Making Thursday a guided reading day and Friday and session to review the comprehension and complete further reading activities leading into the next week might be an improved way to teach next half term. The independent activities should link closely to the key assessment focuses I am trying to assess.

Maths Leadership:
As a Maths subject leader working within the primary school, I have continued to monitor the different elements teaching each half term. This has included: short term planning, marking, Maths working walls and displays, children's perceptions and whether they know their targets as well as parent perceptions after workshops. The monitoring is useful for me but has had little impact on other teachers' practice. Next term, I shall use an inset to address improvement areas in monitoring and morning meetings with whole staff to drip feed suggestions for further improvement.