…another week down, and here we are with another Crew Rowling break down!
After a long weekend of rest, recuperation and sunbathing in the garden Crew Rowling were feeling refreshed and ready to attack the work set from a different angle, meet any outstanding deadlines and crack on to meet this weeks!
Our Crew Classroom has been busy with members of the Crew logging in and checking the ‘Crew Deadlines’ spreadsheet, supporting students to manage their time, meet deadlines and most importantly gaining the huge sense of achievement when you can tick something off your ‘to do’ list and say ‘I’VE DONE IT!’
The satisfaction of going from red to green.
Each week I have been outlining the deadlines Crew have for each week. This has been shared with them in order to provide a visual aid of all the work outstanding alongside the due date and a colour code so you can say: Nope, i’m not onto that yet. OR Yes, smashed it!
In previous weeks much of our hangout has been spent with me going through each of the students individually and asking for a yes or no for each of the pieces of work outlined. As you can imagine, this has been gruelling for the likes of Faith who is superduper organised and even keeps her own second list to ensure she doesn’t let any go under her radar!
I’ve therefore been asking students to mark this off themselves once they complete the tasks and this will help them to manage their time and (hopefully) become more productive. I have to say this week they’ve amazed me!
Especially Charlotte! Having suffered some technical (and motivational) difficulties, we were gathering up a long list of work which was outstanding from previous weeks before even getting onto the current weeks deadlines in order to check them off. But she hasn’t let this stop her in her stride this week, piece after piece they’ve been submitted and crossed off the outstanding list and this week… WE EVEN SMASHED THE WEEKS DEADLINES IN!
This is a huge achievement if you consider that in previous weeks Charlotte had only completed 1 or 2 pieces of work! I have been so impressed with her perseverance and determination to catch up this week. We have also loved having you in Crew Hangouts more frequently!
Speaking of hanging out…
After our Crew Check In where both Cerrina and Logan expressed some difficulty with the work they were completing, i caught them using the Hangouts feature in order to gain the support of whizzes Harvey and Ben!
Hearing the discussion from the students as they worked through tricky calculations and Spanish Lingo was incredible! Even I learnt a thing or two!
Well done guys!!
About those ‘challenges’!
Well as you can see… Crew Rowling would stop at nothing in order to ensure they could meet the deadlines and would even work as a team to do so! No more problems here!
What we did find however, was that some Hangouts were more productive than others, through no fault of the students, but the use. We therefore got together and decided on the following protocol for gaining support from a friend via Google Hangout:
- Be polite and respectful. You must stay engaged throughout the call! (and remember to thank them for giving up their time at the end)
- Listen to the information given.
- Make notes- You may wish to ask clarifying questions during this process.
- Share your screen with the person you are speaking to, this will help them to support you further.
- Share any work you are currently working on so they can see where it is specifically you need further help.
We’re hoping that these 5 simple steps will help ensure that supporting a peer via Google Hangout isn’t an onerous task and stops you from making progress too!
Again, we’re going to review this next week to see if there are any amendments. So far, so good!
The Rowling Quiz
In line with our Friday Challenge, this Friday I created a quiz for the Crew as a bit of fun and some downtime before the weekend commenced. The quiz consisted of 5 categories:
- TV/ Film
- School Subjects
- Sport
- Music
- General Knowledge
A mixed bag of questions, the win was anyones for the taking! But… it was GIRL POWER! Charlotte, Lily and Faith shared the winning score of 16 leaving the boys wallowing in self pity! As a consequence of being our lowest scorer of the week, totting up a total of 6, Layton was nominated to host next weeks quiz! I am looking forward to being able to take part this week!
Upcoming stars in Crew Rowling
It all seems a very long time ago now, but this video from The Edge Foundation captures some unseen footage of Crew Rowling in action in Wales at the very start of the year! Crazy the changes that can be seen already!
The week ahead
Lots to look forward to! More deadlines to work towards, more Crew Hangouts (Tuesday and Friday), more structured ways to receive support from peers, but most importantly… more staying home!
Look after yourself everyone, stay safe.