Years End

Now that we are reaching the end of the year I thought I would review our progress. The weblogs have been very successful. By widening the audience and getting feedback from around the world it has caused the children to take their writing more seriously. They are putting more thought into what they write and they put a lot more effort into polishing them.

The next step is for them to take ownership of their blogs. Currently it is the blog that they are doing as part of their schoolwork. What I want to see is that they log on from home and publish because they want to. I am ensuring they have the skills to log on independently and am encouraging them to do it in the holidays. They will all be travelling so they can keep in contact with each other. If I see it happening I'll know I succeded.

The school play is looking very good and the further we go the more control they have over it. It's been amazing to listen to the conversations on timing etc.

We had to drop the kiwi spotting as we ran out of time. All the parents have been commited to shearing and their has been no-one to help.

Next year I hope to extend the inquiry approach into the senior reading programme. The weblogs should help as they are now considering themselves to be writers and are more interested in what other writers do. I intend to use this in encouraging recreational reading . The second thing (fingers crossed) is that we will have broadband and we can now get seriously into web based research. I am working on what I call a wise steps approach. But it's a work in progress and I hope to clarify my thinking while lounging around at the swimming pool in the holidays.