To BE the BEST I can BE

School: St Anne's

Year Level: 2

Teacher: Peggy Bruce

Focus area: Managing Self

Broad Aim: To develop student’s competency to Manage Self by raising awareness of how they can improve their learning by the choices they make with regards to classroom and personal behavioural protocols.

Fundamental managing self skills aimed for;- being prepared for lessons, working cooperatively to solve problems, asking questions not only from the teacher but from their peers, sharing equipment and ideas, participating and encouraging each other to participate, listening and following instructions, being responsible for their own and others behaviour, striving to finish their work, and having a sense of pride by doing their best.

Research Questions:

Question 1. Implementation: How can students be supported to develop the ability to manage themselves at the year 2 level?

Question 2. Engagement: How engaged are students when they are involved in identifying classroom and personal behaviour protocols, and will this lead to improved learning?

Question 3. Competency: What is the growth in competency that can be expected from students around adherence to classroom and personal behaviour protocols?

Success Criteria for Competency

Expert: I can manage my self in many different situations. I can explain about managing myself in the classroom, ask for help when required and help others in many different situations.
Practitioner: I can use my awareness to help others and to help myself. I can explain about managing myself in the classroom, and help others to make choices.
Apprentice: I can manage myself and I can explain it to others. I can explain to you about managing myself in the classroom.
Novice: I am becoming aware of what it means to manage myself within the classroom environment. I know what choices I have when managing myself in the classroom.


Learning Story: Managing self so I can learn better

Since this research project started in Term 1, I decided to integrate it with our Syndicate topic; ‘Relationships,’ from the Curriculum area, Health & Physical Well-being. The Key area was Learning Mental Health and the Achievement Objective, “A Positive and Responsible Attitude to Self”. The key competency was Managing self with a particular focus on understanding what it means to be part of a learning community.
I outlined my expectations of how I wished my class to learn:

1. Academic: Taking ownership of their learning through:-

• Finishing tasks
• Persevering (sticking to task)
• Asking questions
• Participating
• Understanding and acting on the learning strategies being modelled in class, for example, Learning Intentions and Success Criteria thinking skills etc.

2. Behaviour: Taking ownership of their behaviour through:-

• Listening
• Being prepared – for example having their pencil – books etc. ready.

3. Classroom Environment: Taking ownership of their environment and showing respect through:-

• Keeping the class and their desks tidy
• Being kind, helpful and thoughtful to everyone in the class.

4. My Own Expectations:

• For the children in the class to take responsibility of their own learning, behaviour and environment throughout the day despite having a variety of different teachers in the class.
• To provide an environment, an expectation, and an understanding in my class that the children can learn through having awareness of what it requires to become independent life long learners.

I began the process by brainstorming to identify what they understood about classroom and personal behaviour and what exactly did it mean to “Manage My Self so I can learn better?” Students came up with the following ideas.

• Keeping my class tidy
• Finishing my work on time
• Thinking about what I am doing
• Listening on the mat
• Following instructions when given
• Looking after my own things
• Being prepared
• Being helpful
• Asking questions

After the initial brainstorm the children chose the goals that they felt were the most important for us as a class to concentrate on, and these became the basis of my assessment.

The Goals:-

• Finish my work on time;
• Put my hand up when I want to ask a question;
• Keep my class tidy by putting things back where they belong.

To assess the children I used a before an after template for each goal. The template had two rows of five boxes for each goal. The boxes were labeled "always", "often", "sometimes", "not very often" and "never". The top row of top boxes was used at the start of the project, while the bottom was used at the end of the project.The children were asked to colour one box they felt was appropriate to show where they were at, at the beginning of the project and another colour and box at the end of the project.



I allocated and counted points for each child using the following scale:

1 = never; 2 = not very often; 3 = about half the time; 4 = often; 5 = always

I added the number of children in each category and correlated scores with the SWELL Competency Poutama using the following scale:

15 points = level 8, 14 points = level 7 and so on with Level 1 being 8 points or less.

I did this at the beginning and at the end of the project.




Following the initial assessment I planned a number of lessons in order to support the children’s understanding about Managing Myself.



- What does it mean to ‘Manage Myself”
- How we can manage ourselves in the class.;
- Why we need to manage our selves in the class?
- What are the consequences of managing ourselves in the class?

We also worked on a class motto so that the children felt that their class and every one in the class was an extension of their own family.

“Room 1 is our home away from home
And every one in Room 1
Is my family away from home."

Always all our brainstorms and ideas were written up in the children’s topic book or published and displayed in the classroom. The initial brainstorm was broken down further as follows

• Keeping my class tidy - how? - Pick up and clean after myself
• Finishing my work on time - how? Focus on my work by not talking
• Thinking about what I am doing - how? - Knowing the learning intention and criteria
• Listening on the mat - how? - Pay attention to the speaker and put hand up to talk
• Following instructions when given - how? - Understand the instruction
• Looking after own things - how? - Keep my things in my desk bag
• Being prepared - how? - Having my books and pencils ready
• Being helpful - how? - Help someone who doesn't know something
• Asking questions - how? - If I don't know something ask teacher or someone in the class

These became our classroom goals to aspire to on a daily basis. For example our daily Learning Intention might be:

We Are Learning To: keep our class tidy
Success Criteria: putting equipment back where they belong.

The daily Learning Intention was decided on in the morning and displayed. At the end of each day we had a class reflection to see if we were successful. If not then the children would elect to keep the same goal for the next day. The classroom reflection at the end of the day became a vital key to the children’s engagement by making them aware of their actions. It allowed them to think and verbalise what they had done during the day.



The second part of the reflection was to think of new things they learned during the day and slowly over the term their answers became more detailed and specific. This part of the day had become an important time and the children insisted I included it daily in our timetable and reminded me If I had forgotten!















Because of the age of the children it was important that their knowledge of the Swell Learning Poutama was clear, this was done through drama activities and or discussions with a buddy, through art work and writing in their story books, then placing themselves where they thought they belonged on the chart.




Part of our daily ritual was to revise our learning Intentions about managing myself, a checklist was kept on display for the children to reflect on.

When I am Managing My Self do I? ------

• Do the best in my work
• Finish my work on time
• Ask for help when I need it
• Help others
• Keep my class tidy
• Listen when others talk
• Ask questions if I don’t know something
• Think about and give ideas
• Follow instructions straight away
• Look after my pencils and books so I can be ready for the lesson

To allow the thinking and reflecting process to continue daily and assess the children I formulated these questions to be used In our story writing.

• What does it mean to manage myself by making the right choices?
• What are some ways I can manage myself in the class?
• Why do I need to manage my self in the class?
• What are some ways that I can be helpful in the class?
• My goals for managing self are?
• List the class goals that you wish us to follow and how we can do this?
• Ways that I can manage myself at school but out of our class?

We used the following Learning Experiences in our class:

• Play acting games to show how we manage ourselves in various situations
  e.g. propose a situation and in their group to think and solve the problem and present to class.
• Games, art work etc that allows them to work, solve problems together, etc.
• Artwork showing themselves in different situations and the work was then displayed.





• Children sat in a circle and identify ways that they can contribute to the class, e.g. keeping classroom tidy, speaking quietly, helping others, follow instructions.
• Published writing which was displayed.
• Photographs depicting pictures the children at work, at play, during prayers, assembly, mass etc.
• Write a “I can Manage Myself” song.
  
  
  
• Different topics that we can brainstorm and they can write in their own words and decorate e.g. “Ways to stay Fabulous in Room 1”
• Brainstormed words that empower, e.g. “POWER WORDS” and displayed.
• A weekly “Star of the Week” was chosen to be the ‘teacher’s special helper.’ The children recalled positive characteristics about the child and we would write them on a special paper which was displayed and then taken home at the end of the week.

These activities were used to build self esteem with them selves and develop confidence with their peers to work together and help each other which aided in managing themselves academically and socially.

Strategies used to support children to focus on Managing Self included ...

• Using the same vocabulary e.g. ‘are we managing our selves?’
• Encourage all children to talk about their progress
• Encourage children to think about their goals
• Reflect on what they have done during the day
• Encourage children to help each other
• Encourage them to take ownership of their learning, behaviour as well as working as a team
• Personalise the learning process

Results:

Outcome 1. Engagement:

SCALE: 1 = never, 2 = not very often, 3 = about half the time, 4 = often, 5 = always

Mean level of engagement of students ...
Offered ideas - 3.6
Asked questions - 4.1
Listened to and thought about other's ideas and responded respectfully - 4.2
Used positive body language related to task - 4.4
Persevered in order to enact related task - 4.2
Showed evidence of being active learners outside school time - 4.2
Showed interest in directing their own learning - 4.4
Had behavioural issues that impacted on their learning - 2.6
Showed evidence of using what they have learnt - 4.3

Overall mean level of engagement = 4.1

Outcome 2. Competency:

Number of students who were ...
8. Proficient experts - at start [1]; at end [7]
7. Beginning experts - at start [0]; at end [1]
6. Proficient practitioners - at start [2]; at end [4]
5. Beginning practitioners - at start [1]; at end [6]
4. Proficient apprentices - at start [5]; at end [2]
3. Beginning apprentices - at start [1]; at end [2]
2. Proficient novices - at start [3]; at end [1]
1. Beginning novices - at start [11]; at end [1]

Competency effect size = 1.60
Standard error = 0.22

Conclusions:

Implementation: How can students be supported to develop the ability to manage themselves at the year 2 level?

Before implementing this project I set out of plan of how I would put it into practice and the results that I expected to achieve at the end;

• awareness of managing self;
• monitoring themselves;
• achieve independence.

The first step was to identify the children’s prior knowledge of ‘managing self;’ We worked as a class to form goals to enable us to learn better e.g., we are helpful and kind to others, keep our class tidy, looking after our belongings etc. We worked to further break these goals into Success Criteria for daily goals that we would reflect upon as a class.
Learning experiences were implemented daily aimed at building self confidence, building a cooperative positive atmosphere where we could work and solve problems as a team.

Engagement: How engaged are students when they are involved in identifying classroom and personal behaviour protocols, and will this lead to improved learning?

The data shows that there was a large movement in the children’s engagement from the beginning to end of the project. The significant areas of improvement included "Asked questions", 78% and "Offered Ideas", 71% both of these involved confidence and interaction in the classroom. Other significant movement was in "Persevered in order to complete task", 75%.

Behaviour showed a positive improvement of 25%, this was not as significant as other movements however it shows that the children did not consider themselves improved in this area.

The reason for growth may be contributed to the length of the project from Term 1 to end of Term 3 enabled the children to:

• Gain a further understanding by the end of the project.
• Children gained confidence to ask questions and offer their opinions.
• Different and varied learning experiences kept them engaged and motivated as well as allowing themselves to monitor and reflect on their learning.
• Children had a long period to practice new skills.
• Children gained awareness that by managing themselves in the class equated to improved learning.

Competency: What is the growth in competency that can be expected from students around adherence to classroom and personal behaviour protocols?

Knowledge came from growth in awareness of their own and others strengths by setting their own goals and following them. Ultimately the knowledge came from taking ownership and acting on their personal and class goals.

The data shows that the children gained awareness and self confidence in their own abilities with (56%) movement in "I finish my work on time".

They gained an understanding of protocols expected in the classroom, with the highest movement being "keeping the class tidy", with a (59%) movement.

The results also show that there is a link between Engagement and Competency, for example in "persevered in order to complete task", the criteria in the Engagement Assessment, is compatible with the Competency Assessment criteria, "I finish my work on time". Also, "Offered Ideas and Asked questions", is compatible with "I put my hand up to ask questions".

Final Conclusion:-
This research project has proven that success in managing self for young children by;

• Setting personal and group goals that empower them to take ownership and strive for and achieve their goals on a daily basis.
• Through daily discussions, allow them to constantly reflect about their successes and reflect on what they need to improve themselves.
• Encourage them to question and problem solve as a group.
• Build confidence in their strengths and abilities.
• Use their peers as mentors to aspire to.

Even though the research project ended in Term 3, the continuing success of the children to manage them selves is dependent on constant repetition of what they have learnt. We are continuing with their goals and reflections, I am introducing new ways to manage them selves for example working with a buddy more, mentoring each other and continuing to encourage them to always strive to do their best in all areas.

For me as a classroom teacher this project has been invaluable for it has allowed me to reflect on my own teaching practice and has permitted me to focus on how I personally manage my self in the classroom, and search for strategies to improve not only the way I teach but the way that I relate to the children in my class.