Best simile ever....

My one my delights has came up with this unique comparison writing about a blind taste testing with a carrot.

" Yuck, yuck, yuck, it tasted like spew left in the sun for a year."

Sure put a smile on my face mid sample marking!

Kids say the darndest things!

So... on duty today a gaggle of students come to find me to tell me there is a (new) boy peeing on the tree. By the time I get the story he appears so I go to talk to him. The conversation happens and the reply I get is, "Well, what are the trees for?"

Are we Creating a Culture of Sofalising?

Sofalising - communicating socially using technology.

As I was enjoying a holiday coffee in the beautiful small town of Oxford, I came upon this term in the August Next magazine. It is a term I had not yet come across but the idea has been batted around for a while. The fear is that future generations will be incapable of verbal communication, preferring to talk through their fingers.

I know that many schools are placing a huge emphasis back onto oral language, as we know that good oral language is the backbone to good written language ability.

I think their may be two reasons for this "slip" in oral language ability:

1) The discussions I have had around this, in particular the school I was previously working in and with another teacher from a different low socio-economic school, identified the need as coming from lack of experiences. This is true. I think as life gets busier, the purse strings are pulled a little more and expectations become more demanding, it is harder for parents to find opportunities to spend quality time sharing a variety of experiences with their children (and maybe lack of imagination....).

2) Children are spending more time indoors using technology instead of being outdoors playing with/visiting neighbours and socialising with every Tom, Dick and Harry as the run errands. Now I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Life has evolved. Change is normal. The reality is that children are growing up with the entire world in their very own living rooms and they are using social media platforms daily.

So where does this leave us? Some would say that it is imperative we get the children out of the house. Easier said than done. I believe a balance of social skills needs to be taught to students, both online and in a real life social context.

When I completed my studies in Linguistics, one of my biggest takeaways was that language (as with most other things) evolves. Old English is practically indecipherable - but that is what our modern English is based on. Our language continues to evolve (not so long ago google was not a verb and the word 'versus' did not exist as it used by many children today). Oral language trends in schools can be delayed, but probably not halted. Children may lose the ability to socialise exactly as we know it. Does it necessarily have to be a bad thing?

Celebrating Literacy

What a way to end a fab literacy week! (Though the fun won't stop there - next week will take more of a Dr Seuss theme.)

A Mad Hatters Tea Party

Just some resources I want to bookmark for myself!

Just came across these and want to come back to them. Looks to be an effective inquiry process and learning spaces/philosophy at this school.



http://inquiryelearning.wordpress.com/about/

http://www.stonefields.school.nz/

Writing inspiration...

As I was on my commute home today I was thinking about my writing programme. Last term my writers were flying! This term, something has happened and I'm just not getting quality. I was thinking about where had I gone wrong?

Two students each week write a 'Monday Journal' onto a google-site set up between our class and our e-buddy class in a different city.  (This is their personal writing for the week, and I run workshops and use shared writing and reading as vehicles for teaching other writing, eg Report Writing). Those two students write directly onto the site, and on Friday they Skype each other and read their work and give feedback. We've completed one round and begun the second round where our focus has shifted to giving quality feedback. This is about the time where the wheels fell off.

Although the students are becoming great critics, thinking about what is good writing and what areas a writer needs to work on, they are not transferring the skills into their own writing.

I have tried giving the students a small tick-sheet, with all the things we've learnt about so far, to glue in their book and tick off as they add it to their writing. The written prompt hasn't worked for the majority of students.

At this stage, I'm wondering how do I get that tick sheet imprinted in thier mind. I'd love to be creative enough to create a poem or song that will stick in head - but I'm just not sure that will cut it.

Update Sept 2012:

It turns out I may have been a bit harsh! Most students are thinking about quality and, when compared to earlier writing, have improved greatly.

It was a very timely 'stumble-upon,' that the Core-ED email was sitting in my inbox when I got home. There, was a video featuring Jo Fothergill who I met at EduCamp Invers in 2011. As I chatted with her then, my philosophy of writing began to grow. She inspired me to make changes to make writing more appealing to reluctant writers. Watching this video has re-inspired me and reminded me that when things aren't working, they need to change.

I particulary like the quote she used, "If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got."

It's time for me to make a change. I might just have to put my poetry hat on(!) and try it.

 For the full article click here.

Thanks Jo!


 

One Day...

"One day Boris, we'll have computers in our eyeballs, phones in our ears and internet in our teeth."

Reflection upon term 3

Well, we've now had two full weeks in our changed classroom and it seems to be ticking along quite nicely. I'm enjoying having the freedom of literacy workshops - it feels more flexible and that if I need to spend a little more time with a group, or a particular child I can do that. I feel I have better tabs on where everyone is at and where they are going. I would say though, that all of my targeted workshops are based on hard assessment and I think that is important.

The six page plan is actually working very well and as long I have a direction in mind for the week, it's not hard to whip up the formalities throughout the week. I usually try to plan Monday-Tuesday/Wednesday, then revisit the needs for the second part of the week.

One thing that I have noticed is that the children are often choosing diffferent places to sit, but not neccessarily different people. I have started taking short videos around the class so I can analyse them a bit more - but my first step is to give more direction about choosing sensible people to sit beside. Many of the children have identified this as an area of need for them.

I think the children are enjoying more responsibility and are generally stepping up to the mark (today was hopefully a one-off!). We are doing a Friday review for both literacy and numeracy, in the form of a WOW factor - something postive, and a Hot-Tip - something to work on. I make an effort to take those home and read them over the weekend so I clearly know where the childrens heads are at, then we re-read and remind on Monday when they glue them into their books.

The first week, the children really didn't have too much direction. So we looked at what a good reflection and goal setting was. This week, I'm blown away! (Although we still need to work on adding 'because..')

Some examples of WOW factors:

• I enjoyed sitting by other people because it helped me learn.
• I learnt to subtract by slitting numbers into parts so I could use tidy numbers.
• I enjoyed learning the three rules of speech marks.
• This week I enjoyed soing to group sessions.
• I thought my recount was cool because I used language features.
• I learnt how to jump the number line two different ways.
• I think that I made a good choice of book becasue it was very similar to the kind of person I am.

Some examples of Hot Tips:

• I need to choose to sit by myself sometimes so I can get my work done.
• I need to move onto my next times tables level.
• I need to use a ruler to rule my lines. (!!!!)
• I need to use more language features.
• I want to be more involved in reading.
• I need to sometimes sit beside a boy. (???? less distraction?)
• I need to help others by not telling them the answer.

The ultimate planning template

I'm always on the quest to find/develop the best template for planning.

Alongside the changes with flexible spaces in the classroom I wanted to run more workshop based learning as I'm aware of the diverse range of needs across the classroom - in particular within the area of literacy.

This meant I really wanted to run my weekly reading and writing plans together along with personalised learning options. (Previously I had been running my personalised learning tasks as week long tasks but found most students needed more scaffolding so I changed them to daily.)

This is what I've come up with so far. It is a work in progress and I will reassess the managibility of it as I go. My biggest issue that I can already see - but not sure how to get around - is that it will be 6 pages long each week. One page for the overview plus one page per day.

What do you think?

I've just had a middle of the night thought! Theoretically, I could just put the day part of the plan up on the board and the children "sign in" directly onto the plan if they're going to participate in a workshop. They will also be able to see their must-dos and can-dos, saving me the time to re-rewrite them....

Inspiration and wonder - an impromptu post

Earlier this evening as I was working on my relievers folder and outlines I was thinking about many of past and present colleagues, teaching friends and aquaintences etc - their strengths and weaknesses.

I was also thinking about the fact that I was working on a Friday night in the middle of the holidays (I have taken a holiday already and another next week) and how I, along with many others I know, go above and beyond to seek development, change and provide quality teaching programmes for our children.

But that also made me wonder, do you get job satisfaction from doing the bare minimum?

All of these thoughts crossed my mind before I checked my email to see that I had lots of feedback via twitter and blogger regarding my previous blog post about learning spaces.

It was so refreshing to see that others I look to as role models and inspirational colleagues are interested and care about what I'm doing too.

That gives me job satisfaction because I know I'm having professional conversations that are moving me forward to provide my students with an engaging environment and teaching programme. It also engages me. I have job satisfaction - I love my job as a teacher.

But it still doesn't answer my question. Chances are, if you're reading this, then you too, do more than the minimum. But do you know someone who does? Are they happy in thier work?

A journey of learning spaces begins

Learning Spaces Term 3 2012 on PhotoPeach

I've been thinking a lot about learning spaces and creating an environment in my classroom where children can make choices and gain independence over the spaces they choose to work in for different tasks. I've been working on independent/personalised learning for a little while and now the routines and expectations are in place I think it's time to work through this stage.

I'm ready to begin attempt one(!) starting in the new term. No doubt this will be a journey and there will be tweaks and changes to come, especially when the children arrive - their input will be vital in this becoming their space.

Medieval Helpdesk

Teachers take the plunge daily

Quote: We expect teachers to reach attainable goals with inadequate resources. The miracle is this: they often do.

And my belief is they do it with passion, pride and because they love it.

Love this video - a metaphor for teaching?

Personalised/Independent Learning

I've been trialing with my Year 4/5 students independent learning. Many other teachers call this personalised learning, as I did too when I first started using the concept. I'm still not sure that independent or personalised are the best words to describe how this looks in my class. I'm still working on the ultimate name..... differentiated, specialised, customised, individualised..... self-directed, targeted....

At the moment, I'm running this time during my reading block. While I'm teaching my reading groups, the rest of the children are completing word study, handwriting, journal writing and blogging tasks. At the beginning of the week I present the children with a list of must-dos and can dos. I have found that many of the children in the class can successfully manage thier time and begin completing the can-do tasks. However, some don't even get half of their must-dos done because they don't yet have the concept of time-management.

The other problem I was having was that often things would crop up during the week and they would not be on the list, and by the following week the idea was 'out of date.' This was temporalily fixed by leaving space on the list for tasks to be added to. Or, school events and class tasks for specific students would crop up and by Friday there was not enough time for many of the tasks to be completed. This left the students feeling like they had underachieved and not rewarded for their hard work because they had not got to the can-do activities. What to do.?.?.?.

Fortunately, a very timely opportunity came up for me to go and listen to some interesting 10 minute presentations at a CAGE (gifted education) meeting. Here, I heard the amazing reports of year 2 students successfully completing daily timetables. These students were then spending time each Friday to reflect upon thier time coming up with a WOW factor, and a Hot Tip (next step). Then they would set a goal and write a letter home informing their parents of thier goal.

A year 3-4 teacher was doing something very similar with her students. Each day she presents must-dos and WILDs (What I'd Like to Do) to her students via Edmodo. The students were then able to upload their work the site and parents could access it via home as. This teacher also talked about James Nottingham's Learning Pit. Her class instead, had a Tightrope for Learning which was represented by a string across part of the room where each child had thier photo joined to a body. By pegging themselves upright the teacher could clearly see who was finding things too easy and could then approach the student to put them in the wobbling zone - pegged sideways. If the child was upside-down the teacher could clearly see they had fallen off, again, indicating to the teacher she needed to make time to catch up with that student. I love this idea and I think it would effectively within a classroom.

Next steps...

• Build in a Friday reflection and goal setting
• Utilise our school Ultranet site to present daily tasks
• Include more 'fun' personal experience can-dos

Inter-city Superclass (feat. e-buddies)

Tuakana Teina - Buddy Learning

Room # City1 – Room # City2

Communication Form: Skype

Purpose:

·         Work collaboratively with others (known and unknown)

·         Share work with a wider audience

·         Give feedback to refine and craft writing and reading skills

·         Develop oral communication and confidence

·         Develop confidence using e-learning tools

Buddy Writing
Monday – two students from each class write a journal (recount/personal retell) entry, recording and adhering to the class learning intention and success criteria.
Monday – Thursday – the student may rework and refine their writing independently, or with a buddy in their classroom.
Friday – the students need to make sure that Skype is set up and logged in, ready to make the call at 9.30am. One student from each school is “on camera” at a time, sharing their learning intention, success criteria and their piece of work. Then they request feedback from their buddy. Their buddy then repeats the process. The off-camera people then swap places and repeat.

The purpose of having the off-camera people is to provide support (technical and prompting) to their classmate if required.
 

EduCamp Dunners = AMAZINGNESS!

Wow! My mind has been blown. What a great day at EducampDunners 2012.

The days highlights for me:

• Meeting a new colleague from the Canterbury region and discovering EduCampChch is happening very soon!
• Gawker - classroom timelapse, great way to assess on-taskness, cliques, 'attractive' areas of the classroom
• Teach cybersmart instead of cybersafe
• Learning about Daily 5 and CAFE, some concepts worth adopting, in particular stamina and developing learning stamina + indepence aspects and children self-managing literacy times
• Sharing about inter-city ebuddies via skype and using writing as the vehicle (learning intentions and giving feedback), and later having a discussion with someone who admired the idea and referred to it as a long-distance super-classroom
• Talking about and seeing a flexible learning spaces within a classroom (I just love the concept of flexible learning spaces!)
• Touring classrooms and absorbing effective classroom practice - reflected by the actual classroom space and displays
• Catching up with a fellow colleague (now e-colleague), and planning our next steps for our e-buddy (skyping) classes

My do-able next steps:

• De-clutter the classroom and remove my desk space
• Create visual for "iPICK good fit books"
• Pitch some cost effective ideas and fundraising ideas to colleagues to up the digital learning opportunities and integration of e-learning
• "Gawk" into the classroom

My future dreams:

• Replace most of the childrens desks with tables and provide tote-tray type storage areas

Techonology in the classroom

I'm thinking about Interactive Whiteboards in the classroom and wondering if they are past their purpose? Is it possible that schools would be better spending their money on more smaller devices (laptops, tablets, netbooks) in the classroom and maybe a projector with a screen? This would allow for more children to be interacting more often with technology and learning tools and allow for more personalised learning.


The costs outlined below are what I could find on-line not inclusive of educational or multiple-buy discounts. The prices outlined are only an approximation (a wild guess, really!) by someone who has not had purchasing experience!

Potential Option 1:
1 Interactive Whiteboard                          $5000 +
                                                                  TOTAL = $5000 +

Potential Option 2:
Projector                                                   < $1500
8 classroom netbooks                                $400 x8
                                                                  TOTAL = $4700

Potential Option 3:
Projector                                                   <$1500
8 classroom tablets (ipad)                          $1000 x3
                                                                 TOTAL = $4500

Potetial Option 4:
Projector                                                    <$1500
5 classroom netbooks                                $400 x5
3 classroom tablets (ipad)                          $1000 x3
                                                                   TOTAL = $6500


So where does the money come from - the ultimate question!
Here's a fundraising idea that I think might just work. Ultimately, the teachers, along with the students and families are going to benefit from having the technology in the classroom. So why not have your teachers run a series of workshops on something they are good at, be it music, art, blogging, computing in general, sewing, creative writing, cooking, fitness circuits..... The list is endless.
If say each teacher ran three workshops over three weeks at $10 a head (per night) and got even just eight people to attend, that's $240 for each set of workshops. Say there are eight teachers (or teacher aides, caretakers, administration) participating - BOOM, there's nearly $2000. Imagine if you charged a little more, or got more people attending!

Jill Eggleton - Writing Course

For me, one of the biggest everyday occurences that I stuggle with is teaching writing. I'm forever looking for the best way! I don't know why writing is so challenging - but what I do know, is that I'm not the only person who finds it to be like this.
Is it because children work at such different paces? Is it because there are sooooo many different needs? Is it because it's not a black and white science? Is it that I havn't found/adapted/produced enough meaningful writing activities? Is it harder to teach writing in the senior school? (My theory to this one is yes.....) Or, is it just me?

I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to go to a writing conference by literacy guru Jill Eggleton. It was eyeopening and helpful in many ways. (Unfortunately, my biggest challenge has not been solved - I will continue to fight the groups/not groups, fixed/flexible groups, timing issue.) I had four major take-outs:

• quality not quantity, encourage short pieces of writing that can be well re-crafted (also, length puts a lot of children off)
• there is no good writing, only good re-crafting
• Writing is about a message - always positively feedback to this. Writing isn't spelling.
• You shouldn't DO writing. Instead, writing should have a meaningful context. Eg, "We are going to try and convince the principal that we should wear mufti, so to do this we need to use the structures and features of an exposition/persuasion." OR "We are going to be learning about the moon. In order to present our information, we need to know and use the features of report."

Where to from here?

• adpat my approach to writing to meet the above
• create a level 2/3 tick list of success criteria that each child can have in the back of thier book and tick off each time they achieve. Eg, I can write in compound sentences.

Just for a laugh....

The geek in me really enjoyed this....

Putting Photos onto Blogs

Today a colleague shared their opinion with me about putting photos on the internet. Although I have thought about this before, I've never really given it any major consideration. I'm of the techno generation and so it's quite a normal part of my day to facebook, twitter, blog, google etc. I've never hesitated about using these things as I've been taught about digital footprints and I have the understanding that anything I post may affect my personal privacy, my career, or other people in some way.

So the topic came about because I have set up a classroom blog and would like to put photos of the children on it. Although those students who have signed the school internet policy have theoretically given their permission, I thought it was also neccessary for me to send a supplementary note with a permission slip as I am the first teacher to set up a classroom blog in this school.

My colleague expressed this was essential, as they believed no childs photo should ever be on the internet and parents needed to have that conversation with their child and give their permission. I agree that it is not my decision to have that authority to share photos of others without permission, however, my thoughts are that photos can be shared for a purpose and the internet is a great way to share photos of events (and in this case, learning tasks).

I believe we, as teachers, need to be teaching children about safe practices on the internet (benefits as well as risks) and their digital footprint. After all, the digital world is the world that we are already in - and technology isn't going to go backwards.

I understand every person is entitled to their opinion, and I fully respect the point my colleague was making. I'm interested.... what do you think?

Restorative Justice

My school is looking into putting restorative justice principles into place. I'm undecided what I think about this - I think it's more the name than the principles that put me off. It's going to be an interesting process for me and I know that I need to go into this with an open mind and some idea of how it could work for me. (Maybe just call it something else?!?!)

My current beliefs on behaviour management are (and I feel most teachers are similar):

• Put into place good structures and expectations
• Positive praise for target behaviours and celebrations
• It's all to easy to forget the 'good' children, when the 'tough' ones demand more attention - it's important to make an effort to balance this
• Re-direct children before the behaviour occurs (if possible)
• Give children a chance to be responsible and make choices
• Teach what good/expected behaviour is at school (maybe it's different at home)
• If a punishment is absolutley neccessary, make it relate to the 'crime' (eg, if Johnny is climbing the trees when he shouldn't be, the next play time he needs to play in a particular area where there are no trees)

I have found this article which is the start of my research.
http://www.teacherswork.ac.nz/journal/volume2_issue2/carroll_lind.pdf

21st century Alphabet

Children in your class not using thier imaginations???

Sometimes I find that children can lack imagination and problem solving skills. Usually the times when it is most problematic is during writing when they "have nothing to write about" or during play times. It's usually at this time behaviour issues might arise from boredom. Well.... no longer will this be an issue in my classroom (theoretically anyway!).

I have just stumbled across SCAMPER. So now on my to-do list I have: making up a display and a box of goodies that the children can help themselves to. I think I will put into the box a camera so the children can record thier thoughts and ideas.

First though, I think it is important to introduce them to the idea and have a bit of a go as a class. I feel some fun afternoons coming on!

Awesome Learning Spaces

Sweden
http://www.odditycentral.com/pics/swedens-classroom-free-school-the-future-of-education.html

On the quest to be the best for 2012

http://www.vln.school.nz/mod/threaded_forums/topicposts.php?topic=232181&group_guid=53307

The Virtual Learning Network is a 'facebook' for teachers - setting up groups about things that interest you and commenting/disscussing with others about teaching topics. Here I have posed a question and have asked for help on Personalised Learning and Flexible Learning Spaces.

Thanks to all the good folk who have been helping out!

On the road to providing outstanding personalized learning with flexible learning spaces

Although an advert for furniture, it poses some good questions that need some thought before I dive right in!

What  type of learning do you want to encouage?

Who should use the spaces?

How will furniture and ICT be used and configured?

Can staff visualise what it will be like to work in the spaces?

Although many of these videos are aimed at older levels, I believe the principles still transfer to primary school level. I'm excited to get this project going and to modify and adapt as I need to.

I think it is so important to recognise childrens needs, wants and styles (to achieve as well rounded citizens who can take on the world at anything they desire!) We don't expect adults to fit one mould, and we should never expect children too.