Why hello February 28th

#28 days of writing has been a great challenge for me. I’ll admit, I didn’t quite achieve 28 full days of writing. Time (which is my nemesis) and a rather embarrassing incident with a mandolin slicer type gadget saw me with a great ‘hitchhikers thumb and trying to explain to students that ‘no my arm wasn’t broken but yes I did need a sling’.

I have to admit, I am more comfortable with writing all my jumbled thoughts up. I say jumbled as like other fellow bloggers, I feel totally inadequate comparing my writings to others. It’s something that I lack confidence in and know I have a fixed mind set in (which I know I need to change). It was one of the main reasons I avoided doing my masters – thesis!

What this little challenged did allow me to do was connect with other blogs. To read and reflect what their lives were about. How they saw the world and what they saw as important, interesting or even infuriating. It was another glimpse into how different we all are.

It also gave me the courage to reply more to other peoples posts which I thoroughly enjoyed doing. I write my blog as more of a reflection of how our school is changing and how I felt about it. But like anyone I do enjoy the fact that someone may read it and comment. Secretly I am getting excited that I have had nearly 1000 views. Small and insufficient to some but a little highlight for me.

I will continue to try and blog weekly and want to do a ‘Mum Sunday’ blog where I talk about being a mum/teacher and insights I have gained now having a school aged child. I never thought that being a mum would give me a whole new insight into how I view education!

I want to continue to read other blogs and must compile a list to read but also comment on them even if it is just a ‘thanks, loved reading this’ comment. And maybe write my own blog reflection.

Have to admit this was easier to do that Feb Fast which I would have totally failed in the first week!

Why are we clock watching?

I have an issue with time these days especially in primary- no exams. Why are we teaching to time limits so much more? #edchatnz

My life revolves around time. I have a set time I get up, set time I wake the kids up and a set time I leave the house if any later my life goes into disarray. I am constantly clock watching whether at home or in school. Everything I do revolves around time!

It wasn’t until #edchat this Thursday about community involvement comments about time- a lack of it, I began to wonder. Why is it we constrain ourselves to time? Being a primary school teacher I don’t really have any time constraint compared to secondary where exams or assignment may play a big part in this restriction.  

It seems to me we are all restricting ourselves more and moaning about how we don’t have enough time. But what is stopping us in the primary sector?

We talk a lot about students learning in their own time, students who aren’t quite there ‘yet’. And we know not everyone learns at the same speed, time or way yet we still insist on this sometimes. National standards dictates our time and decides what students should be doing by a certain year and if not they are considered ‘below the standard’. School Terms dictate us as well. We are always moaning there are never enough weeks to get everything done. Why should the end of a term mean the topic is finished?

Why are we clock watching our education?

Logical Thinkers

I will admit I am no maths buff and maybe there is an answer out there already for what I am trying to find out.

Thursday for me, means rotation day (here) where I teach a 30 minute maths lesson to all five classes in our team. As it is mixed ability and quite short, I have decided to do hands on maths that can be differentiated for all. Also I like that I can incorporate our Value this term which is Relationships and our Disposition which is Team Player into the mix with a lot of buddy and team work.

Today we looked at a problem on Nrich called Nim- 7.

While the children were playing and trying to work out strategies I sat back and listened to their conversations about the game. What surprised me the most were the children who solved it and their logical reasoning behind their answer. During our set maths lessons, I take the more able group of year 3/4’s for maths so I naturally assumed they would be the first to come up with  an answer  and be able to articulate their reasoning’s by modelling their outcomes. However, in nearly all the five classes this didn’t happen.

It was actually other children who found a solution faster. When asked a ‘What if’ question they were also able to explain the answer using what they already knew. This got me thinking about the way we teach maths. I’m not a big fan of grouping and while teaching these maths groups it reminds me why I love the diversity of different learners in a class room.

I think sometimes we miss opportunities other students can give us when we ‘box’ all the same types of learners into one class. We are inclined to think because someone knows their ‘numbers’ (and in our case it is mainly just about addition and subtraction) they are the better mathematicians.

But I also wondered if students who are more critical or logical thinkers can be disadvantaged here.  When students think critically in mathematics, they make reasoned decisions or judgments about what to do and think. In other words, students consider the criteria or grounds for a thoughtful decision and do not simply guess or apply a rule without assessing its relevance.

I began to wonder if my more able students maybe have a tendency to just apply the rule.

I don’t really know if all my muddle thinking makes sense or has any validity but today did make me think. Why was it that a lot of my students who would be in the lower groupings of our maths could see the answer to a problem a lot faster than my more able? Maybe because it was more hands on and they could visualise the answer?

End of Year Report

Reports throughout my years of teaching have gone from handwritten to typed, three to four pages of written comments about EVERY subject to 1-2 pages of short, sharp and to the point comments. Schools comment on their values and now look at aspects other than reading, writing and maths.

As a school we have moved away from our previous report system to a new one. We already had a very simple format that didn’t involve a lot of writing (which I loved) but it was labouring in the fact that the computer system we used wasn’t very user friendly.

 Because we changed over computer programmes, we couldn’t transfer our old report template over. Also rather than making more changes in two years which would cost quite a considerable amount the decision was made to create a new report format to take over to the new site.

I have to admit the report looks great.  A4 double sided, atheistically pleasing and straight forward. All our assessments are computerised and therefore automatically update into the report. As I now teach year 3/4  I have to deal with Interim and end of year reports. This tells me straight away which report I need and for what child. It calculates attendance and puts in all the necessary information regarding National assessments and even tells parents when their child’s next report will be sent out. What could be easier?

Reading, writing and maths comments are of a decent size and we have added in next steps for parents so they can help at home. Our Values and Graduate Profile are simple click in the circle to show them where they are at so very easy to do.

I also like that we have changed the wording in our reports. I was never happy with the ‘below standard’ word as we all know students learn at their own pace and some may just not be there ‘yet’. I like the wording ‘Learning Towards as I think it is more positive. I am still not too sure about the ‘Effort’ comments of ‘improving’, ‘expected’ and ‘Consistently high’.’ Improving’ I don’t mind but the word ‘expected’ I am not sure about. To me it sounds like we are saying that no effort was actually put in as that is what we think your child is capable of anyway.  Maybe it is just me? I find the whole notion of how some teachers decide what ‘effort’ level a child should have very interesting (maybe a post on that one day).

My only other issue was the ‘General Comment’ only two lines. I guess some teachers would love that but the teacher/parent in me always feels this is the most important part of a report. As a teacher and a parent it lets me highlight other areas or attributes a child has that may not always come through in the reading, writing, and maths comments. Let’s be honest not every child is going exceed these areas and it is one area that teachers can add to that makes a student shine.  And as a parent that’s what I want. It also gives teachers the chance to really talk about the student where the other comments are what they can/cannot do academically.

So I made a comment about this. The only issue by allowing another line (which I still don’t think is enough space) we would then have to create a new page. So my question is do ALL other schools for every report have the Learning Levels of the NZ curriculum on them? As my theory is, take this off more room for the comments. In the other areas we comment where they are so do we need this? Could it be placed on a separate piece of paper?

Ideas?

Male, Female or just an effective teacher?

Like some other teachers last night I watched the Sunday programme and the discussion about ‘Boys only classes’. To be honest none of it convinced me at all. What frustrated me straight away is that the class had a male teacher. Why did the school feel that a male teacher compared to a female teacher would be more affective? Are we then saying that all female schools should only have female teachers as they will perform better?

While the environment in which children are nurtured clearly affects the way they turn out, research into gender shows that there are significant physiological and behavioural difference between boys and girls from birth. (Anne Moir & David Jessel: Brainsex). Brains play a lot in this but it is the makeup of it. They have the same functions like vocabulary, mechanics of language, Visio-spatial perception and emotion (bearing on performance at school) but research has shown that the male brain is more specialised, with each of these four crucial functions being located in just one hemisphere, whilst in female’s three of the functions take place in both hemispheres (Anne Moir & David Jessel: Brainsex).

At five a boy is typically less able to sit, to concentrate, to listen or to communicate than a girl and has a greater need for variety, stimulation and physical activity. Therefore, the early years of schooling girls do perform better than boys.  And I am in no doubt that schools acknowledge this and play to both sets of strengths so that all pupils are able to achieve well. The problem is by the end of year 1 some boys have already switched off education. Girls typically do this by the end of year 4. (This is UK research I am not sure if it would be the same in NZ).

Even before my own son I have always been interested in Boys Education. I taught in East London and usually was given the more ‘disruptive’ boys in my class and (when we used to set) taught most of them for Literacy and Maths. If result were anything to go by, I as a female teacher did extremely well educating these boys. But it wasn’t just their results, they also socialised better and were in less trouble then they have ever been before. I not talking about silly antics on the playground I am talking about full on fights, chairs flying, knife welding 10-11 year olds that on many occasions I had to restrain.  As my head teacher said, they left our school as a completely different child to the ones that entered.

Typically girls will be keen to learn; boys need a little bit more convincing.  I spent years planning the majority of my lessons especially writing around the boys in my class and what they enjoyed. Due to the makeup of one year group, I changed a whole scheme of work and re wrote the entire Year 5 units for every subject so that it focussed more around the boy’s interests.

I’m not doing this to ‘brag’ but to highlight a point Does the gender of a teacher really matter? These research findings revealed that the gender of teachers had little apparent effect on the academic motivation and engagement of either boys or girls. For the majority of the children, the gender of the teacher was largely immaterial. They valued teachers, whether men or women, who were consistent and even-handed and supportive of them as learners.

As I only have 28 minutes I am stopping. In the end as many mentioned on Twitter what it comes down to an effective teacher regardless if it is male or female.

Steve Biddulph, Bill Rogers, Lucinda Neall, Ian Grant, Celia Lashlie are all great authors who have written about boys education. Well worth a read.

Mum Sunday

This is where I hopefully will post the other side of me. The parent side -that has a child in education. As a mum/teacher I am terrible at being the mum of a school aged child. I admit it and I know that I can’t switch off my teacher side when it comes to my own children’s education. My husband hates it and on many occasions has clearly voiced his opinion on this. Even my colleagues joke about what I am like.

I’m not all guns a blazing on the teacher’s my son has I am just (as my husband puts it) passionate to the point of frustration. I don’t expect that because I am a teacher my children would be academically bright. And yes, this comment was made to me by one of my son’s teacher in regards to the fact she was very surprised he hadn't done better in an assessment as I was a teacher!

Like any parent, I just want the best for him. What I give to my own students, I want to see this happening with my son. I’d be such a hypocrite if I didn't. I work full time, never get to meet the teachers therefore I want to develop a relationship with them so that I know they have my son’s best interests at heart. Yes, I know there are nearly 25 more students in the class but as any parent will tell you those other 25 are obsolete. And as a teacher I am very mindful of this in my own class.

The reason being is my son struggles academically. Sport, art and creating are his passions and something he excels at. However reading, writing, mathematics are things he has to work hard at and I can already see with writing and maths he has slowly turned off and is beginning to hate them. I spent a lot of time learning about ‘boys education’ well before my own son was born, so I know that even before year 3 boys can be turned off learning. This is what I don’t want for my son.

This is something I am very mindful of in my own class. I can see the students who struggle in certain areas and I want to help them to see they can do it. I’m a fixer- I want students to enjoy school, enjoy learning and realise they can do it. I want them to know that they can be anything they want to be. I tend to question what I can change/do in my own teaching when it comes to students succeeding. 

My first gripe to his year 1 teacher was the fact he was being sent home reading books that were more ‘girl’ orientated than boy. He didn't want to read about girls and teddy bears. I queried this and wanted to know why. One way to engage boys into reading is to give them books that interest them. Something my own school has thought a lot about and purchased a whole lot of PM books that were more boy orientated. I know a lot of schools do this which is great!

We are all the same, as adults we read what we enjoy, what interests us. Yet when it comes to children we expect them to read what we choose. Yes, we need variety and children should have this as well but shouldn't we be encouraging a love for reading first? Doesn't a love for reading then develop a desire to read more of a variety of books?

I love the fact that another one if his teachers allowed him to look through all the books and choose the ones he wanted to read. The excitement he shared with me that evening was amazing. And he wanted to read them all at once!

Children are like adults, we know what we like and if we are interested in it we will be keen to learn. 

What is it that makes a teacher?

I have a friend who has recently moved here from Australia. She came with her partner as he (like many) is part of the Christchurch rebuild. She is a teacher and wants to find a job

Now this isn't uncommon most people want to work. But I know the hurdles she is going to face. The issues with registering herself to be a New Zealand teacher and Nova pay hassles and not to forget that she has no knowledge of the New Zealand curriculum.

I have posted before about my issues, frustrations and share annoyance about the whole thing. Hence why I suggested she came and volunteer with me in our team. That way she can slowly get to grips with how things work in New Zealand.  It’s what I did and from there managed to get relief work then a job.

Talking to her it got me thinking. Does understanding a certain curriculum make you a better teacher? Most schools she handed her C.V in just to do relief work seemed to change their tune when she said she was an Australian trained teacher. Not one school queried anything else just the fact she wasn’t trained here.

So is knowledge the only thing that makes a good teacher? I always recall a University professor of mine telling me that excellent grades don’t always make a ‘great’ teacher. What you can put on paper isn't always the same as what you can do in classroom.

I believe that if you’re a passionate teacher you can teach anywhere. I don’t think having knowledge of a certain curriculum actually proves how good you are as a teacher. There is a lot of the UK curriculum I see here in NZ. I notice a lot of teaching ideas from over there have become popular over here. The Literacy/Mathematics shed, Alan Peat, Ros Wilson, Pie Corbett to name a few. On Twitter Chats you hear about ideas that other teachers are doing all over the world that are similar to those right here in NZ.

So does curriculum knowledge make you a better teacher?

Swimming in the deep end.

I am swimming in the deep end at the moment. Like most teachers at the beginning of the year, everything suddenly seems to pile up and your ‘To do’ list seems to be getting longer rather than shorter. Changing year groups has been a challenge for me. A challenge I was happy to take on but boy it has been hard.

My first problem was that when I taught year 3/4 in the UK they technically were a year older than my students are now. Year 3 over there are 7 turning 8 where over here mine have either just turned 7 or are about turn seven. This is actually quite a big difference in regards to maturity and it is becoming very noticeable to me. I am actually teaching a group of children I have never taught before.  Even what they ‘should be doing by the time they enter year 3 is completely different to that of the UK.

I am going to be very honest; although I love the year group and new challenges I have to face, I am beginning to doubt myself. Teaching year 5 onwards, I was always sure of my ability. I knew what I needed to do and how to ‘tap’ into the students I had. Now, I’m not so sure.

This week, I feel I have blundered my way through writing and maths. What I thought the students could do they couldn’t. What I thought they should know, they didn’t. It has been a massive learning curve for me and part of me feels like I have failed my students already. The other part of me knows what I need to do next week to rectify this and make sure that I cater to all my students correctly.

The unknown is hard to cope with. I want to challenge my students but not to the point they begin to they find the challenge to hard and turn off. How do I find that balance? In writing I want to introduce them to a variety of vocabulary to become more descriptive. To move away from the basic sentences but I am now faced with the challenge that some of my students struggle with spelling and writing even a basic sentences. This is territory I am not used to.

Maths is the same; I have gone from teaching Stage 7/8 to now Stage 5. My idea of what they can do is very different. Even a simple activity where I placed A3 sheets around the room became a challenge as I forgot for some of them looking up; reading the question, transferring the information into their books is a process in itself.  Even the realisation that some do not know their 2.5.10x tables has been an eye opener.

I enjoy challenges but I do worry that I am way out of my depths sometimes. This along with the combination of now working more in a Team rather than as an individual teacher has given me a lot to think about. So this weekend I will be doing a lot of work to try and get next week ‘just right’. To make sure that I have planned lessons correctly, that cater for the diversity of my groups and develop activities that will teach them but also challenge them.

I know for at least a few more weeks I will continue to swim in the deep end but hopefully as the weeks go by, I will manage to slowly get myself back down to the shallow end where I will feel that everything is going right and I feel comfortable with myself and my ability.

Having Initiative- Yes, they can do it!

 

 

So this was todays question from  @kerriaattamatea for the #BFC630NZ. As a teacher and a mum this is something I work to instil in the students I teach and in my own children. But are we doing enough?

I watched my maths group come into my room yesterday and noticed straight away those who have initiative and those who didn’t. They were the ones still standing, looking around and I ‘m guessing waiting for something. As I sat their watching I couldn’t understand why they just didn’t find a seat and sit down.

My two reasoning’s were;

Friends have yet to arrive or all the seats by their friends are full

They may have to sit next to the opposite sex

It’s like the children who are at the bottom of a page and ask you what they do next!

This is something I am struggling to understand with this year group. Do we mollycoddle them to much in year 1/2? Am I just so used to older students I have forgotten how this age acts? Do parents play a role in this?

Looking around at school today I began to wonder whether as teachers we take some of this away from them by wanting the classroom to work for us rather than the students. My class last year didn’t line up. End of each break, they just went inside and carried on with their work. They didn’t need to be told what to do yet this year new teachers new rules. They have to line up and wait for the teacher to tell them what they have to do. Have we stolen their initiative?

Do we make excuses for them also? I have the same expectations for my new class that I did last year although now and then I am told they won’t be able to this or that. Why? Have we suddenly decided that students can only start to do things at a certain age? Do we have a fixed mind set when it comes to what we think students can do?

I will admit I do think parents play a role in this. I am seeing parents doing more for their children than in the past. Not allowing their children to fail, to think, or even try. Maybe as parents we need to realise that we are doing more harm than good by not letting them think for themselves.

We don’t have bossy, opinionated students we have ones using their initiative and trying. I like these types of students. The ones, who will give it a go, take a risk and do things without the need of me.

If we don’t foster an environment where students use their initiative how will they cope in the real world?

So I guess the question is what are you doing to encourage this in your classroom?

 

Teaching in a team- My thoughts on how it is going (so far).

Teaching in a team, having different students, planning together is not new to me. It is something I have done in the past. So this year trying to plan, teach, learn more like a MLE hasn’t really fazed me. What is hard is trying to do all this in a single cell classroom.

Unlike the other 3 teachers who have access through two doors to each room, my room does not do this. It is in the pipeline to take away the wall but that may not happen until term 2. This is not to say I can’t incorporate ideas of MLP into my teaching and learning but I have been doing this already.

What I would really like to experience is that ‘openness’ . Getting to grips with over 50 students in one area, more teachers, and really seeing how this works and feels. I am doing the best I can but there are roadblocks being in a single cell room.

We have tried some team teaching and having all the students in one room but to be honest space was an issue and it didn’t feel that comfortable at all. Teleport them into an actual MLE and I know for certain I wouldn’t have felt the same.

I think one of the great things about planning as a team and working more closely with others is I don’t feel alone. I’m not sure if it’s just that we have ‘chatty’ teachers in the team, others like me who like to talk, say ‘good morning’, pop into each other’s room (yes in a MLE we would all be in the same room). I have enjoyed this and something I had missed since returning to NZ as my previous school our rooms were very close to each other you always ended up chatting.

It has also raised a lot of questions, ones we are still trying to answer. Working out how to tackle reading and writing groups, what we would do for maths, how would be teach the rest of the subjects? I have thoroughly enjoyed our Thursday rotation day (here) and although I am not teaching the other subjects, I like that the students are actually getting taught them once a week. We all know how sometimes throughout the term certain subjects can get side lined or is not taught as well. So it does make sense using the talents of the team in this way.

Even though we are into week 3, it still feels like I am finding my feet. We have started moving students for reading, writing and maths. I have the same reading and writing students (mixed ability) and different maths students (streamed) which I would still love to be mixed ability (something I am used to teaching) but we also have teachers who have strengths in certain stages so doing it this way are we making better use of our talents?

For me, I think it is more the teaching of year 3/4 I am finding harder to get my head around rather than the whole MLE as I have completely forgotten how much younger these students are, how much they wriggle and move and how the smallest things really do matter to them. On the plus side, I have realised that my son actually is a typical Year 3 and they all only have one volume and they only hear the first and last word of any instructions and nothing in-between!

Taking it slow

Twenty-eight days of writing hasn’t quite panned out how I would have liked it to. While trying to be creative and show off my culinary skills in the kitchen, I succeeded in taking quite a large portion of skin off my thumb when slicing carrots. Hence for the last week or so I have had my hand in a sling and thumb bandaged up making me look like a great advertisement for hitchhiking.

Although still very tender, my doctor has allowed me to forgo the meaty bandages for a slim lined model. Thumb is still out of action but I am able to do a lot more than before and typing isn’t quite as hard.

Besides feeling rather silly about the whole thing, the hardest part about this ‘little’ accident was how frustrated I got not being able to do my everyday things. While dressing my wound, the nurse actually commented on the fact that until we can’t use a body part we don’t realise how vital that part is. I have been learning the hard way how often I use my right hand thumb!

Sheer frustration is all I can say. I had to rely on others to help me, simple things became quite hard to do and for someone who is quite stubborn and independent it drove me mad.

I had no idea how limiting my everyday life could be without one thumb. All those who have broken legs, arm wrist, etc will also understand this.  Obviously I am going to casually link my thumb incident into reflections on how we teach students. We all know students can find things challenging and hard and as teachers we are all aware of this. Or are we?

I could still do things, just not the way I would normally do them. I had to find alternative ways to tackle the everyday things, even writing (where I still can’t hold my pen the correct way). This really got me thinking. I see myself as a teacher who is aware that all students learn differently. I look at my lessons and try to see alternative ways some of my students may want to learn this. I am aware of students who may find certain subjects a challenge and try to find ways to engage. I am very aware having a child of my own who struggles to learn the ‘traditional’ way that we can’t ‘box’ a class into one way of learning or method of learning.

But was I truly making the most of this? I knew how frustrated and annoyed I was that I just couldn’t do it even though I knew how to do it or it was going to longer than I was used to. It got me wondering how often students feel like this. How often we rush them through reading or a maths task because we want to get finished. But for them it may take a little longer to get there. How often do we read the visual clues from students that might show they are trying to get there but it might take a little longer than we are happy to wait? How often are we dictated by the clock or day to get things done?

I guess I am just wondering why we have to rush through the day, plan our life’s for the week and term and squeeze everything in. Would it really matter is a lesson or topic took more than the allocated ‘set’ time?

My own two cents

Reading through everyone's #28daysofwriting has been wonderful. Keeping me up way to late in the night mind you. One of the reasons I wanted to attempt this writing is to feel more comfortable blogging. I am not the best blogger and I always feel a little embarrassed about what I write when I read others. But I also wanted to read other blogs, reflect on them and try and express my ideas, thoughts, opinions in my own blog.

+Bridget ComptonMoen wrote a blog the other day that I could relate well to - allocated seats and desks! As schools all move to MLE/MLP we are told/shown about all the different ways we can set up a open plan classroom. Getting away with the single cell rooms and creating all these different spaces where students can place themselves. Modern learning environments support strengths-based teaching and can offer students and teachers flexibility, openness and access to resources. Providing teachers with an open, flexible learning environment can lead to the development of a robust, continuously improving community of practice (Core Education).

But the desks have always been something some teachers can't get their head around. Even the idea of not having their own teachers desk! I don't have a teachers desk and I love it. I work on one of the student tables and tend to mark with my students rather than at the end of the day. This was an easy choice for me but I know other teachers battle with this.

Like Bridget she to was finding the issue I had with my girls- the need for desks. My classroom is slightly different to Bridget's in that we have tables rather than desks but we were also a single cell room and not officially a MLE. In previous post I have spoken about all the changes I had made in my old classroom and what my students felt about this. Most of my students went from having to sit in allocated seats to suddenly being taught by me and having an option of where to sit. Most coped with this fine and enjoyed the idea that they didn't have to sit in the same place everyday. I was lucky enough that I had 'acquired' a couple of the old school wooden flip top desks which I was using for my 'quiet' area.

I don't have an answer but I do know my girls didn't like working on the ground. The big cushions that I had sourced were only ever used by the boys. They also weren't keen on lower tables either and voted against them. The norm isn't always for everyone.  Mornings were always interesting because you began to see how they 'allocated' their seat by placing enough items on a table to show everyone else that was where they wanted to sit. Like Bridget, I did have students find this hard as sometimes they did feel left out. I guess we forget at this age where you sit and who you sit by is a big thing.

I will admit that sometimes I felt I was pushing them into something they didn't like. I had moved away from listening to their feelings and was trying hard to develop this MLE with all the different break out spaces. The last thing I wanted to do was make them feel uncomfortable when they entered the room. I spoke a lot to my students about the changes and they were very honest with me. In the end I think we found that balance between enough tables and where they wanted them.

But I do wonder how far one way do we go? I don't want to see students sitting in the same chair on the same table with the same people all year. But I also don't want them to feel uncomfortable or worried about where they might sit. There has to be that balance and sometimes what other classes/ schools do may not be right for your class.

As we move to our new school and incorporate more MLP, our principal does remind us a lot that what we do has to work for OUR students and community. That we don't do things just because that is what other schools do or what the recent research says. In the end is having or not having a desk the biggest issue of MLE? I really enjoyed Arnika @BrownArnika commented she left on Bridget's blog and thinks she sums it up well. In the end students can learn any where sitting on anything but they can't learn if the teaching is boring, unengaging and unrelated to them.

#day6

A day late

Apologise I am a day late but Mr 6 had a birthday, first week back at work and my parents are visiting so somewhat chaotic.

Working in a team we have decided to do a Thursday rotation. We are lucky enough that the year 3 and 4’s at our school get a 30 minutes sports programmed taught by an outside agency every week. So instead of a day where everything would be chaotic with children coming in and out, we decided to plan this day as our rotation day.

 We looked at what we still had to cover in the curriculum and how this would tie in with us and the subject areas we all had strengths in. Being only 30 minutes long we had to be realistic with what we could teach in that time. We didn’t want children having to rush work to get it finished or come back to it later. We wanted to teach activities that would relate to our Values and our Spirit of Spreydon therefore we could incorporate this into our learning as well.

In the end we decided on 30 minute rotations of Music, Dance/Drama, Maori and Maths and Sports (one teacher had to be present with the outside PE activities). We decided that it was easier if the children stayed in their homeroom groups rather than mixing them up.

So yesterday, we began this and I have to admit it worked well. We all enjoy teaching subjects we know well and enjoy. I take the Maths and have envisaged using a lot of games and team activities. At the moment I am just looking at number activities and this was the one I taught yesterday ' Strike it out for Two'.

I have to admit it was great fun. Easy enough to do but I also had the ability to make it even easier or harder for those who needed it. Having only met this year group it can be quite hard planning activities this early on that cater for all abilities but I am glad with this one I could. It is also a very new experience for me teaching lower down. I have spent the last year teaching year 5 and 6 students who have been working at Stage 7/8 so going back to children who still needed the basics and been great and I have enjoyed the challenge.

I have to admit at the start I thought I may get a little bored teaching the same game to 5 different classes but to be honest this never happened. Every class I had, I saw ways to adapt and make my teaching even better.  From past experiences, I know when you plan together you take into account your own class maybe different and you would adapt it to suit them. But most primary school teachers only teach that one class and that one lesson. So this was slightly different. I was planning the one lesson for five classes and having to quickly adjust as I was teaching depending on the class I was taking. This will get easier as I get to know the classes though.

I am really looking forward to the rotation day although having to learn 120 children’s name maybe a challenge in itself!

Communication- How well are you doing?

Reading @Stephen Lethbridge  really touch me as a mum. His post on communication and connecting with parents especially new parents to the school just showed how much he realised parents matter but also it’s the small things.

As teachers we all know communication is important but I sometimes think we forget how vital it is. I am guilty of this and it wasn’t until my own son started to attend school, I realised how little communication we as teacher can sometimes give. Yes, I understand we need to get our own children to be more self-reliant and learn to share information but it doesn’t always work that way.

My son is your typical boy when it comes to communicating. Unless he had art or pe all I hear about is what he and his friends did on the playground. Yet my daughter would give you a rundown of the complete day, who said what, who got into trouble, what the teachers said and everything in-between!

I work fulltime and therefore can’t do the drop off or pick up like other mums can. It wasn’t until my son started school that I realised how much ‘informal’ conversation I missed out on. It’s those informal, spur of the moment chats that can tell a parent a lot more sometimes than a three way conference can because it is very personal.

I have been lucky that my child minders daughter has also been in the same class, so I have allowed her to talk on my behalf. Check-up, show interest and basically become his second mum. It made me feel connected.

Yes, the school does email and three way conferences but they are not the same. Emails can be read in a completely different way to how they were intended, three way conferences although I like them, squeeze in too much of the ‘formal’ information and not enough of the ‘informal’ . And even though I could email his teacher I felt I was the one emailing asking for updates more than the teacher was.

Obviously this got me thinking. As a parent if this is how I felt, what do my parents think of me as a teacher? When you teach year 5/6 you tend not to see the parents at all. Our school opts not to do teacher emails for various reason therefore I had to think of alternative ways to communicate informally.

Luckily the students had diaries which became more line of communication. I had working mums and dads who I rarely saw and I wanted to make sure that they kept up to date about their child. The success they were having. So every Friday, I would write a comment in everyone diary. No diary a piece of paper. I wanted them to know how much I valued them as parents but also how much I enjoyed their child in my class. Just one little thing they had done that week that as their teacher I was proud of and could share with their parents.

I also made sure that the first time I meet them or communicated to them was on a positive rather than a negative. I didn’t want parents to feel that every time they meet me, received a note or phone call it was a negative rather than a positive.

Having moved to year 3/4, I am learning even more how important it is to communicate. Mums just need it (I am sure dads do to). This year I have no diaries, so I need to think of other ways to communicate to every parent. Share with them how wonderful their child is and all the success they are having. As I said at the beginning it’s the little things that matter.

I am still thinking about how I can keep that ‘informal’ communication regular so that parents feel connected and have that connection. Ideas are floating about but at least I know tomorrow all my students will take home a little note just to let parents know something special I have noticed about their child.

Communication

Bit late with day 3 of writing as Tuesday turned out to be a very busy day! Second day into work and already it seems that the mountain of work that is needed doing has escalated. It’s all in a good way but I do begin to wonder how I will fit it all in.

Yesterday we spent two hours in a team meeting planning for next week and discussing how we were going to work as a team, move towards more MLP’s, ensure the students came first and what we were planning to do benefited OUR children in OUR school.

It was a great meeting but boy did I feel that my head was about to explode with ideas, questions, queries, wonderings among many things. I have to admit, I work with a great team of teachers. We are very fortunate that we seem to be all on the same path and when ideas are expressed or suggestions made, they are valued even if they don’t work.

This is important as without this open communication and respect working in a team could be very difficult. Personality wise we are very different and we need to respect that. We have worked hard to ensure that we know and understand how everyone operates. I know this is something I have to be aware of as I can get over zealous about ideas and can sometimes forget that I am not the only one that may have idea.

I have already been aware of myself in these situations and have been mindful of how I respond and react to suggestions and ideas. I actually have caught myself stopping and taking a step back. Reassessing what I normally would think and asking myself whether this is the best solution.

Although it was a long meeting with ideas flying left, right and centre I left feeling positive that we had made all the right decisions for OUR students and what would be best for them.

#day3

Growth Mind Set- A question I can't answer

When I started to write this I was thinking along the lines of explaining what both meant and how it related to me. As this was also a challenge as part of #edchatNZ to blog about Mind Set a few other teachers have already given great definitions and explanations that I felt I would just be repeating (here. and here) Then it got me thinking. Why is it in some situations we can easily move from a fixed to a growth mind set, even when the challenge or situation could be beyond our expertise or comfort?

And is frustration, stubbornness, annoyance (a lot of those negative words which to be honest are also positives) a fixed mind set or is it important to have to develop your growth mind set?

I use my son for example. For Mr 6 loves the skate board park. We have spent most of the holidays down their ‘hanging’ out. He watches with awe as the teenage boys do trick after trick on their scooters or skateboards and spends hours later reminiscing how wonderful they were. This set off his determination to be able to do what they can do.

So he spends time watching and then gives it a go. Of course many of the moves they can do are beyond him and this is where frustration set in. The scooter is flung onto the ground with the usual chorus of ‘I can’t do it’. Yet, as much as he is frustrated and annoyed, he still gets back up and tries again and again and again. At one point he spent over an hour just trying to perfect one move.

People talk about Growth Mind set as reflecting and looking at different ways to approach the task. While fixed Mind Set will only see it one way and not make any changes or decide that they can’t do it.

What got me was how determined he was to succeed with this task. Even though it took him ages and there were the occasional tears, a few grazes and a lot of sweat he would not give up. Once he achieved the first ‘trick’ he didn’t give in but moved onto the next challenge. To the point in the space of three weeks he had achieved everything he hadn’t been able to do at the start.

Now if you gave him the task of writing a story it would be a whole different ball game. He would give up straight away. So why does Mr 6 have such a different mind-set to this?

Yes, I know everyone has fixed and growth mind sets but even at the start Mr 6 struggled and found all the tricks extremely hard. But what was it about that particular task that made him persevere? He was as stubborn, annoyed and frustrated at the skateboard park as he is with writing. Yet, he never stopped trying and wouldn’t give up.

 What changes in him where he thinks he can achieve it that doesn’t when it comes to writing? And I wonder how many other children are like this?

Day 2 of 28 days of writing.

28 days of writing.

Most people do a Feb Fast and give up something instead I am taking on something?

So I weighed up the pros and cons of doing this 28 day writing task. And although I am writing this and have obviously published it, I have yet to sign up (I will though). I blog in my head, my thoughts always sound great there. I wish they would invent something (maybe they have already) that would just type up my thoughts for me. Yes, I know I could record them as I thought them but then that would interrupt the flow and writing them down would as well. I have some serious hard core conversations in my head!

This is how I came to realise that I probably could easily do this 28 day blog as I am allowed to write about anything and I have the best incentive ever- my new team. Every day this week is going to be a learning curve and we will be stumbling through a week of collaboration between 5 teachers and 110 year 3/4 students. So there is bound to be something to write about. Plus I can always reflect about my day and how I coped with the fact I am now working with smaller human beings and I’m still not sure I have adjusted to that!

My head space also still has to write about growth mind set and our two days of professional development we had which for the first time I can say was enjoyable and hands down won over 2014’s ones.

Day one done and dusted.