And good morning, everybody.
STUDENTS: Good morning, Mrs Parra.
Very nice. OK, first of all, let's see who's here.
I went in for the first week and just got to know the children.
I did a lot of one-on-one activities with them, diagnostic tasks,
but more just socially sitting and talking with them
so they learnt to trust me and they were relaxed around me as well.
I think that was really important.
I have a child with English as a second language
and he has just come back into Australia.
So he's just picking up English now. He speaks Mandarin at home.
And then I have a child with special...autism,
and there are a couple that are yet to be diagnosed with it.
So I have a range of students in my classroom that I have to cater for.
OK, we need to all sit down with our arms crossed and legs crossed.
Hally, on your bottom. Good girl.
-BOY: Excuse me, miss. -TEACHER: Yes?
I find that I need to work a lot one on one
with both my ESL and my special needs children.
And what will work one day won't necessarily work the next day.
It's a lot of different things that I have to do with them.
But I find just talking to them, taking notes each day,
what worked, what didn't work, then I can take that on to the next day.
Very good. Now which is the last house, Pahta?
Very good.
With my special needs student, one of the strategies
that I'm using is a lot of visual aids.
And most of the stuff that I do with her is visual aids.
We have a little booklet, she sticks on what she wants,
what she's going to do.
She comes in each morning and we do that
and then we have a visual timetable set up.
And that actually works as well with the ESL children.
A lot of the time, they don't quite understand what I'm saying
and that's when they will get quite frustrated
and where the behaviour issue comes out.
So a lot of the time I use the visual aid with him as well.
We need to find out who the characters in the story are.
So who had a face, eyes and a mouth?
-Remember. Shhh. -REUBEN: And a nose.
TEACHER: Remember, Reuben, they don't have to have a nose.
I've been taking notes every day on them.
My first day in the class - I've only been in there a couple of weeks now -
I came in, did a lot of diagnostic tasks with them,
just name writing, cutting samples,
just so I can see myself where they're up to
instead of taking, you know, word from the previous teacher.
So a lot of my own assessments so then I can start my planning
for the rest of the semester.
I will assess what worked one day,
take notes on what did work, what didn't work,
but I won't necessarily rule out what didn't work
because one day it might, you know, not work the next day,
it might be fantastic.
So I just take a lot of notes, anecdotal notes each day
and go with that.
Just assess what I'm going to do the next day with them.
Just little things like Integris reporting.
They're things that you don't learn at uni
and don't even really talk about at uni.
So you come in and it's really... Wow, it's an eye-opener but good.
And you pick it up and everyone's so helpful.
OK, Wyatt, where are you going next?
You can go to puzzles with Hally.
I thought it was going to be a lot easier, actually, than what it was.
But that's the tricky thing.
You have to, to an extent, stick with the routine
that's already established, especially at such a young age.
And with the children with special needs,
they are so used to a set routine.
If that gets muddled up, you know, it's...it could be a really bad day.
So I've just gone in, changed little things at a time
instead of all at once because I did do that last week
and I noticed they just all came in and eyes, hands were everywhere.
Eric.
I know you're playing nicely but it's just getting too noisy, OK?
We're going to swap over in five minutes, OK?
There's lots of things that go on in the school as well,
like the resource night where we got to print and laminate everything.
I don't think things like that happen as often back in the city.
And I just like...
You know, you go down to the shops as well and it's like,
"Hi, Miss Parra, hi, hi," everywhere you go.
And, yeah, I think I fit in quite well.