Poetry Slam

I enjoy poetry and love sharing this with the students I teach. Unfortunately, the minute you utter the words ‘poetry’ you can hear the groans and look of boredom spreading over their faces. I find it a little upsetting that children these days have no idea about well-known poets or poems. In the past I have taught my year 5/ 6’s ‘The Highway Man’ and the ‘Lady of Shallot’ with great success. With The Lady of Shallot we created a whole cross curriculum unit on it and even performed the poem to other classes using mix media to tell the story.

I try to immerse my classes with a range of poetry. Whether it be through guided reading, handwriting, word study activity or even as a class read. I think it is important for them to experience and learn how important poetry is. I am much the same when it comes to Shakespeare and believe that there is a place for him in primary education. Probably why I loved this Ted talk and why I wanted to do something like a rap or poetry slam unit.

 I loved the idea of linking music and writing and being able to describe the characteristics of poetry in jazz, rap and hip hop music. There were so many wonderful ideas swirling around in my head and it also made me realise how easy it was to create a cross curriculum topic on this that could also incorporate, history, geography, art, values etc.

As a class this is what we wanted to achieve by the end of the unit.

• Introduce students to spoken word poetry: Slam Poetry
• Give them the opportunity to create and perform poetry
• Practice working in a group and speaking in front of the class
• Learn and understand some poetry terms and techniques

In groups students identified basic poetry and literacy elements. They looked at Eminem, Notorious BIG, 50 cent, Andre 3000, Tupac, Snoop Dog and many more. For most of these raps/songs, I gave them snippets of the words rather than the whole thing. We also looked at poems and did the same-  Robert Frost, ‘Road less taken’, Langston Hughes,’ I dream a world’, Mya Angelo, and others I felt that they should know of.

From that I introduced poetry slam. I showed them EliseWilson

To This Day Project - Shane Koyczan

If I should have a daughter -Sarah Kay

My students really surprised me at how well they could articulate the message in these three slams.

I spent a lot of time discussing the techniques (as well as I could) of a poetry slam and looking at how rhythm and rhyme were important. We looked at how certain words were ‘stress’ ‘speed up or slow down etc.

After this, students were given 3 things they could slam about in their groups. In the end most decided to slam about ‘bullying’ as Relationships was our Value and we had taken part in “Pink Shirt’ day. I also think Shane Koycan’s slam left a huge impact on them.

It was a fantastic unit and I know the class and myself thoroughly enjoyed it.

 I did record them but somehow lost all of them! As I did this last term and only blogging about it now, I have tried to get one group to record their slam but we have had a few illnesses in the class! Here is what they wrote though.

Standing with a friend who is being bullied doesn't mean you have to take a punch for them.

We feel alone- small and weak.

Scared to go out and speak.

Every day the pain keeps increasing.

All of their pain they keep releasing.

The kids need help but who’s gonna give it?

All day every day we sit and wonder why somebody doesn’t stop it?

Then I realised I am somebody.

Calling someone ugly won’t make you prettier.

Calling someone stupid won’t make you smarter.

Calling someone a loner won’t make you popular.

Calling someone fat won’t make you skinnier.

Why do you do it?

There’s no reason.

Shadows leapt up behind me.

I never know who it is?

Was it a Friend?

Was it a teacher?

Before I could think I was 6 feet in the air.

The sun blocked my eyes but a few features could be noticed.

Long hair

Pierced ears

Big nose

Big mouth

Yellow teeth

I felt a dribble of spit flickering at me.

The eyes…

I couldn’t see something was covering me.

Across the distance 3 shadows became smaller.

I felt the wind sweeping through my right ear but nothing on the left.

I was let go

I felt great

I felt alive

I was free

Free from pain

We walk into the darkness hardly to see, they punch me they kick me they through me to the ground.

Every time someone calls my name the harsh words jumbling in my brain.

Our bodies crumple into the ground being deteriorated into little pieces.

Guided Reading

I have always enjoyed taking guided reading. I never found it onerous and enjoyed the time I spent with my groups discussing books, text, online websites, poems, passages etc. Having spent the majority of my teaching career in the UK, comprehension was a big part of our guided reading programme. This was because in the past year 6 students had to take a reading comprehension test for their SATs. Therefore when I moved back to New Zealand, I continued to teach guided reading quite similar to how I did in the UK.

I spent more time focussing on them sharing their ideas and thoughts to see if they understood the text or passage they were reading. Making sure they could identify and comment on structure and organisation of a text. We would discuss the writers’ use of language and their purpose and viewpoints and the effect on them as readers. Alongside them learning to re-tell, describing and locating information. I wouldn't do all the above in one session usually only focussing one and something that group needed to focus on. This is something I have always done and had success in.

As a school, we have taken on board a whole school reading programme. While attending this reading course, I was surprised at how rigid and planned out some guided reading sessions were. It seemed teachers were planning all these elaborate questions and follow up activities.  If we are teaching children to read, why are we getting them to spend more time writing things out then actually reading? Do we really need students to complete a worksheet to see if students have understood what they have read? And if not why are we using these time fillers? I am not a big fan of worksheets so my students never went away and completed reading activities (instead they do a range of different activities that they pick). I gained a lot of insight about my students during my sessions and believe that reading is about learning to love books and to me worksheets turn students off.

Teachers were still getting students plough through a whole book where you were never allowed to read the next chapter until next weeks guided reading session. To be honest how many of us would cope with that?  I am not against children reading a whole book, stopping and starting sporadically doesn’t really help develop a passion for reading.

So far I am enjoying this reading programme mainly because it wasn’t that different from what I was doing in class which made me feel quite good about my reading programme! The students love it and so far we are having great success.

Once I have more time I will blog a post about our whole class routine and group routine.  

Slow Writing

Twitter has been a constant source of ideas and inspiration for once again it led me to a different way of approaching writing.  Anything about writing usually grabs my attention these days as for the first time in many years I had no answers as to why my class struggled with writing.

I had a class that orally produce wonderful ideas during shared writing but when it came to them independently producing their own work it was like pulling teeth. We had the vocabulary wall; I modelled sentences, used creative prompts, media etc. but the harder I seem to work the less engaged they became. The last thing I wanted to do was turn them off writing so I began to question what I could do. Thankfully a tweet from @redgierob  came just at the right time.

Slow writing is getting students to slow right down in order to think about their technique.  The idea is to get students to slow the hell down and approach each word, sentence and paragraph with love and attention. Obviously they’ll write less but what they do write will be beautifully wrought and finely honed’. David Didau 

Thankfully my class was already clued up on different types of literacy elements thanks to all the work we did on this during our poetry slam unit. Therefore I didn’t have to spend any extra time teaching them these concepts.

In our first lessons there were a few hiccups. Because it was set out as below, some of my students completely forgot everything I had taught them about a sentence and tried to write a sentence on one line! Once we got over that hurdle everything started to come together.

Sentence one must appeal to the senses.
Sentence two must use three adjectives.
Sentence three must start with an adverb.
Sentence four must contain a connective.
Sentence five must use exactly three words.
Sentence six must be a question.

I used some short films courtesy of The Literacy Shed (which I love!).  We used the Ghostly Shed as I knew it would grab my boy’s attention. The great thing about these films were that most were less than two minutes long and there was no dialogue meaning the students had to use the music and visual to ‘read’ the story.

I spent the week working on this and each day I would add six more different sentences so by the end of the week we had four different models up on our board. As my students became more confident in this process they began to mix the sentences around. Students also began to realize that there was usually a pattern to the six sentences and that it was quite easy to create their own.

What transpired was some amazing writing. Even better, I had students who usually struggled with writing now enjoying it and telling me how easy it was to write!

When things don't go to plan.

End of term and I have spent some time reflecting about the classroom.

What I have noticed is that most of the class are very independent in their learning. They know what to do, when they need to do and where they like to learn/work. The only frustration I had were a small group of students that still couldn’t complete all the week’s task in the allocated time span. To be honest it was driving me mad. When I started this ‘independent working hour’ I set the week’s task pretty much the same, so routines were set and then expanded on that. I explained orally and in written form so they heard and could visually see what they needed to do. Each day I reminded them as well, yet I still have this issue.

I felt like I was hitting a brick wall and began to question what I was doing wrong. Why couldn’t this small group of students complete their set tasks? The tasks themselves were not difficult and were set for them as individuals. They had over 5 hours in the week to complete them therefore time allocation and the amount of tasks were not an issue. So where was I going wrong?

It was in a staff meeting where we were learning about another school and how they approached this that it finally hit me. I naturally assumed by the end of term 3 everyone would be independent learners. Not once had I thought that I should still be directing some of them still.

The next day I decided to experiment with this idea. I had started to think about next term and how I was going to approach the idea of allowing individual students the freedom to work inside or outside. This was a great opportunity to introduce this and discuss again what an independent learner was. We talked about what the word independent meant and how this related to the classroom and their learning. We discussed how we could’ see’ and ‘hear’ an independent worker and what ‘self-managing’ their own time was about. I then asked them to reflect and decide if they felt they were independent learners. As I expected most agreed that they were and a few felt they were not yet there.

Looking back now, I should have spent more time teaching this phase at the beginning of term 3 but as I was taking time off work I rushed through this part and assumed those in question would soon ‘get it’. Although I knew everyone was going to become ‘independent learners’ in their own time, I guess I never assumed that it might take a few students a lot longer than the rest. This small group have now become my ‘directed’ learners where I tell them what they have to do in the allocated time slot. They understand that until they can self-manage their own time they will stay on this level. And it is working!

My ‘independent learners’ are now working on their next level of being given the opportunity to prove they can self-manage their time in a responsible manner to be allowed the choice where they can work which will included outside the classroom. I have decided to create lanyards for them so they are easily identifiable to other members of stuff. I am thinking that on the back of them it will outline what they should be doing therefore teachers can see this straight away.

So what have I learnt about myself?  I need to remember to give my students time and to realise that they all won’t get there together.

Maths Outside

Sometimes when I finish a unit of maths, I tend to find or develop a mathematical scavenger hunt in the classroom. This is a fun way for me to see whether or not they have understood what we have been learning.  It allows me to listen to their conversations, thought process as well as their written work. And it is so much better than doing a test!

I tend to do ‘loop’ questions. This is where they read a question and work out the answer. Their answer will lead them to the next question and lead them back to their starting question. This way they automatically know if their question was right or wrong. It also gives me insight into how they fix/change their mistakes. And it makes students realise what mistakes their making.  

This time I decided to let them develop their own scavenger hunt. We talked about all the mathematical vocabulary that was around the room and how we could use them to create questions relating to objects inside the classroom.

We looked at a range of questioning techniques and went back through our maths book to view our next step questions, question we had asked and set questions we had worked through in our lessons. Giving us an idea of what ways we could ask a question, how to incorporate two step questions and how to make sure our questions were going to extend our thinking.

In pairs the children set off and explored the school environment to develop their questions. I set a few ‘musts’ to keep them on task. From there the students set off and got created. After a set amount of time we gathered back together and discussed ideas and thoughts.

While I had been walking around and prompting ideas, I also set some of my own questions to model with them. I develop some very simple questions and we discussed why these would not be suitable for us (aiming for stage 5/6 questions) and how we could change them to meet the criteria. I also gave them questions that met our criteria and we discussed why these were suitable.

Students then spent time editing and working through their ten questions with their partners so they meet our ‘success criteria’. Once finished the students them typed their questions and answers up. On Friday, my actual class will use them and feedback to my maths class about them.

Mark for quality not quantity

I am a BIG fan of quality marking.  I am pretty much a teacher that believes if we are expecting children to complete something in their books then we should be marking it and rewarding it with an appropriate response. Not just a ‘well done’ or ‘good’. And yes I know it is sometimes near impossible to mark work every day but then I also raise the question ‘why do we have to have written work in books every day?

There has been a big shift in the way we mark and many teachers have taken to using a whole range of methods to assess. Used properly, marking and feedback are essential tools for ensuring that children learn more effectively and understand what they are aiming for, and they can provide strategies for success and ways to move forward.

Research (‘Inside the Black Box’ Paul Black and Dylan Wiliam, 1998) has shown that there has been a tendency to mark for quantity and presentation of the work, rather than for quality. We have all been victims of that red pen scrawling’ please keep your work tidy’ or ‘you must write more’. The problem is how does that help the student? What do they gain from comments like this?

 Mathematics is one area I think we undervalue quality comments. We tend to only mark these books with a tick or a cross (or a dot)? Why are we not asking student’s questions based on the lesson? Next step questions to move them on?  Solve a problem, another question to cement the learning? Ask them what their next step would be? Or a range of HOTs (higher order questions) to get them really thinking.

Children need to be given a clear idea of how to improve their work, move forward in their learning and achieve their goals. If we continue to just tick, write ‘well done’ or ‘good’ how are we as teachers moving them forward? What we need to learn to do is have manageable and effective ways of marking and provide feedback to pupils so that they can move forward in their learning. Children need to understand their achievements and know exactly what they must do next to make progress.