Jenny Mosley and her excellent system - a review from www.anseo.net
Wed, Sep 22nd 2010
This lovely review was posted by Rozz on her great website - www.anseo.net
September 22, 2010
Hello and hi to all after week 2 back in the classroom!
The summer holidays are but a blip in my imagination! My class are settled in and so am I. Have been doing lots of work on my termly plans with my partner teacher. She is doing her “dip.” this year so it is great to have someone with lots of motivation and ideas to work alongside!
I originally read about Jenny Mosley when I trained as a teacher in Wales, 5 years ago. If you haven’t heard of this amazing woman, then I would advise to go google her or buy one of her books. I would recommend “Quality Circle Time” (the blue cover) as it gives an excellent background to her subject and contains your yearly scheme of lessons and lovely little extras. Her website is www.circle-time.co.uk and I have purchased stickers from it. They all reinforce the Golden Rules too, which is nice and I give them out every week for a class member who made a particular effort at keeping the Golden Rules. The class (if they are old enough) will vote for the student who has improved! I can say that this Golden System has benefited me hugely in creating an inclusive, democratic and fun classroom. I have never had a “bad” or “troublesome” class in the 7 years I have taught and I think I have this system to thank. Over the next few weeks, I will tell you about each aspect of this system. I would love to hear from anyone who uses it and loves it as much as me! I also welcome teachers who have struggled with the system or are struggling with behaviour within their classroom.
Quality Circle time is a reward/sanction behavioural system with built in listening systems. It can be broken down into
1/2 hour lesson of Circle Time each week.
6 Golden Rules
Golden Time- once a week
For listening systems, Jenny also recommends the “Think Pads” and ” Bubble Time” or “One-to-One time”. More on these soon!
The Golden Rules
On the first day with your new class, have a class discussion of why we need rules within a class. The class come up with rules that are needed in a class and you make these into 6 golden rules. These Golden Rules are all positive and will set the theme for your circle time lessons. The children make posters and you can put them up in full view of the children. For the first week, you will need to bombard the class with these rules. For the first week, there are no sanctions for the students. I do find this first week difficult because your children will no doubt be hyped after the holidays and try to push all your buttons! Instead you will have to try to be positive all week! Notice when they are keeping the Golden rules and make a big deal of it. The children should be so comfortable with the rules that they should be able to recite them by heart. I have tried this with all classes and even my junior infants could recite them eventually! The Golden rules can be simplified for the junior section of the school. Jenny Mosely devotes a full section to the “Early Years” as they are called in the UK. She speaks more on this in her follow-up book (red cover) “More Quality Circle Time”.
Next week I would like to tell you about Circle Time. Please tune in! Till we meet again.
Rozz
http://www.anseo.net/2010/08/jenny-mosely-and-her-excellent-system/
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