Why I keep on going..

Teaching can be tough - especially when you are sick. I've been really struggling for the last month or so. I've not been sleeping, and to top it off for the last three weeks I have been really sick with a virus. Awesome - just what you want when you have 29 year 8 students in your care 5 days a week. It's been a tough few weeks - and I've not been enjoying being sick, and trying to teach. BUT then Friday happened. 

It is all worth the effort when I have one of those days that reconfirms why I do what I do.  Friday was just that, one of those days. Usually when I do the roll I use it as an opportunity to discuss different things, this gives all 29 students in my class a chance to have their say.

I have been trying to make sure we keep on top of our Growth Mindset learning, and took Friday's roll as a way to discuss learning pits and I asked my students to identify what was their biggest learning pit. Writing and Maths topped Ruma Tahi's list. Being that we stream maths at BIS, I took the opportunity to put a focus on writing. 

When I attended #EducampHB I met some passionate and enthusiastic teachers from Russell Street School - they talked about #Poutama and differentiation in a way that I had not contemplated before. Basically the question they put to us was -Why have 29 narratives, or 29 paintings all looking the same?  There is a better way to do things. 

Recognising Ruma Tahi identified their own learning needs to be focused on Writing, I decided to use the inspiration I had been given by the #Poutama boys and let my kids lead the way with the text type. We had a discussion and the students came up with this list of ways they would write about our current concept of Sustainability.  They decided they wanted to start small with only 10 minutes of writing after morning tea. 10mins ticked by...a few minutes of sharing, then Ruma Tahi blew my mind....they asked for more writing time! A class of students willing to dive into their learning pit, struggle and find their own success, it's what I got into this teaching business for. 

CHOICE and acknowledging where the learning needs to happen is what really motivates students

My day didn't end there - we went on to have an spectacular Science session (ooh alliteration) where we made models to represent different types of rock 

Yes we made Fudge - BUT it was the grandparents and parents that came to the lesson to help out that made it a truly different type of session. It was incredible to see my students interact with their grandparents and parents, and to hear them explaining about the types of rocks we had been learning about, and how the rock cycle works without any prompting from me. 

To top it off the discussion and feedback after the lesson from my students was outstanding. They told me it was a great lesson because it wasn't just science, or cooking, but also maths! Their only complaint was that we should have made more fudge. I can't thank the Science Learning Hub enough for the session lesson plans! 

An experienced teacher and someone I admire posted this photo on my Facebook page this week - Just when I really needed it.

  I need to remember I am there to make a difference to "My Kids" so that they become life long lovers of learning! 

Facing the fear and doing it anyway.

I have spent a huge portion of these holidays thinking about how I am going to fit everything in this term. We have a full on timetable as part of the normal term - chuck in Marlborough Mako's taking Rugby sessions with students, Stage Challenge, our girls self defense program, Arts rotations and Technology sessions I am left without much time with my students. 

Last term my students made baby steps towards planning their own timetable. With a little inspiration from Kerri Thompson and Learning my Way  my students had a check list of tasks to complete as part of their literacy and inquiry project. They completed Must Do, Should Do and Can do tasks. Self management never looked so good! This was a great step in the right direction students were engaged and driven to achieve their goals but it still had me thinking about the level of student interest in what we were doing.  

When I think of learning experiences I have had and had the most success with it was when I was learning about something I was interested in. Case in point - I made my first patchwork quilt these holidays - I learnt a lot along the way. It wasn't easy there were failures but I had something to hold in my hands when I was done. I felt proud of myself and a lot of others commented on my hard work. Ever the teacher, I wondered - How can I do this with my class? 

 

My personal inquiry when I was at teachers college was about Authentic Learning experiences outside of the classroom - and if they were worth the effort of teachers. I proved to myself & the teachers of the classes I was following that visiting the museum, art gallery or local attraction really led to meaningful learning experiences for the students. They all learnt more when they were learning away from the 'normal' classroom experience. 

I feel strongly about letting students learn about something they are passionate about. I didn't run a genius hour, passion project program last term because of my fear of the timetable. This term I am serious about focusing on personalized learning for my students. Face the Fear and do it anyway was my motto my first year teaching. I wonder what happened between then and now. Why am I risk adverse? What happened along the way that stopped me from trying new things? I have become a grownup teacher - moved on from the teenage rebellion I had when I was a PRT?

This term I need to remember this is what I am passionate about - authentic, hands on, learning experiences for my students. I want school to be a place they are happy to come to, and be a place where students feel safe enough to take risks with their own learning. I want to let students explore their ideas and passions so they can solve problems & make a difference to the world around them. 

Thus Maker Space LabARTory was born. This is my version of Genius Hour, passion project. My students will have their own project they will research and present to the class. The name came from conversations with Kimberly Baars @MissesArtech and from a flyer my Mum gave me from an Art School in Melbourne.  It got me thinking about what I could offer my students to inspire them to be creative, innovative and forward thinkers. The aim of our Maker Space LabARTory is that they will make something, or teach others something. It can be based in Science, the Arts or in Technology... what that something is is completely up to my students. They are limited only by their imaginations & our ability to locate or source materials. I intend to help find my students mentors using the Twitterverse. They will share their journey on Blogs which are also a new addition to our tool belt this term. 

I am a little scared, but I am more excited. Heck - Face the Fear and do it anyway. I aim to be a google type teacher - chuck my ideas out there and if they don't work we will modify and edit along the way. Nothing worse than an Apple type teacher - saving everything until it is perfect before sending out my iLesson to be consumed. 

Happy

Some weeks you just have to focus on the happy. A wise piece of advice I got this week from @GeoMouldey

So here are my GREAT things that happened this week!

1. I got an Easter present from my secret buddy. My first EVER Lindt Bunny. Our school has a secret buddy society and all the staff have someone they have to be 'nice' to for the year. Secret Buddy's are reveled at the end of the year function. It feels good to give, and it's exciting to receive!

2. I graduated to the next level of teaching P4C - small steps.  We got a new resource at school and I ran my first Philosophy session from it. "Philosophical and ethical inquiry for students in the middle years and beyond." by Chesters et al. I had a great discussion with my Y8 students using Bob Dylan's Blowin' in the Wind as stimulus for thinking. My students had some awesome ideas about what Dylan meant by "The answers are blowing in the wind." 

3. I found clipboards for $2 each and decorated them to put on my classroom wall to make a display for "Great Writing" - I always want to display students work - but have found it hard - looking forward to putting the display together and getting some student's everyday work on the wall! 

4. My class got out of the classroom and we went on our first field trip of the year. We visit the local Museum and dressed up in WW1 uniforms to learn more about ANZACs and the war. There was some great learning, and loads of things to be hand on with. It did mean almost 90mins of walking for my class - but it was a great day, and we enjoyed being outside together. (Loads of complaining - and 'Are we there yet!") I feel lucky to live in a small town where we can get out and WALK to the museum. Looking forward to next weeks visit to the local War Memorial. 

5. We stream maths at BIS - and I have one of the lower classes. This week they successfully added & subtracted DECIMALS! I have never seen kids so excited about maths. This term I taught written form instead of the Numeracy project - and my students have had success after success. They feel confident about maths - something these guys probably never had had. When they solved addition problems for 7 digit numbers there were high fives all round. 

6. #TWIMA - I introduced this to my class a week or so ago. We did 100 dreams in 10mins - I have never seen so many smiles in a classroom. EVERY single student left with a smile, and went on to try and make their dreams come true.  When we got the email on Friday morning Room 1 were so excited that their writing would be in a book & that there was a possibility to create music to go along with it really made some of the class really excited. 

The more I wrote - the more I realised that my week wasn't as bad as I thought it had been.

What were your happy moments this week?

After 8 years at school

This year I am teaching year 8. You would think my students had school kinda under control by now. After 7 years & 8 weeks at school you would think they know the general rules & expectations of how a classroom runs and can work independently to complete work to an acceptable standard. Alas - I am beginning to think I have set my own expectations of my students way too high.

I am trying to allow my students to be independent self managing learners. However I am finding that I am backtracking, explaining, re-explaining and using wait time over and over again. Small things bug me - like not following instructions and calling out. I know why these small things happen - it's because I talk to much, or I give too many instructions at once -this is something I need to work on. It's the bigger things that have been learnt over 7 years at school that I am struggling to fix.

I want students to have choices and decide for themselves what tasks they should be doing, to be able to come to work shops when they need, and work collaboratively with each other. Instead I am getting 101 questions. What should I be doing? What do you think? Is this right? Does this look okay to you? What should I do next? What are we doing next period? What do you want me to do? Just tell me what to do! These questions are from ALL level of students - low level to my GATE students.

For 7 years of their lives they have been told what to do, where to sit and what is happening next. Given the freedom of choice they are lost.

By the end of Year 8 I would love my students to be critical, creative, caring and reflective thinkers. I would also like them to be able to manage themselves to complete a cycle of inquiry and produce something they are proud of. I want school to be somewhere they want to be and are excited about the things we are learning about. I want things to be authentic, hands on, filled with creativity and FUN.

I have high expectations of my students. I believe they are all capable of these things - whether high learning needs students who are not expected to pass level 1 of the curriculum or my GATE students who need extending beyond their years.

How I am going to do this is going to be a journey. It'll either break me or make me as a teacher and as a person. Step one on this journey is establishing a joint understanding of what managing self really means. Back to the drawing board for my class, and back to square one for me.

What do you want students be capable by the end of Year 8?

What do I have to share?

Last year I didn't apply for Google Academy because I didn't think I had anything to say or share.

Then my principal said my next step was to share my journey as a teacher, and the authentic learning experiences that happen in my class - he said he was looking forward to seeing me present at conferences. Again I was lost - what do I have to say or share that others want to hear? Or haven't heard before! 

I take risks as a teacher - and am always willing to try new things out - I'm not afraid that it might go wrong - there is always a backup plan, or something else to do if it doesn't work out. I try to make my lessons interesting for all students. I try to teach students to take risks, as learning is not about being successful the first time, its about the journey you take to get there. Yet I am not always willing to take risks in front of my peers. 

Educamp seems to be the baby step I need to share my ideas with my peers. Its one thing talking to the like minded teachers at school - its a whole other thing sharing with a captivated audience at a conference.  The purpose of EduCampNZ is to learn and contribute. I am definately not afraid of learning, or contributing. Educamps are an unconference, The sharing of ideas that are tried and tested in the classroom - shared with people who want to learn more, or find out more about the tool or way of doing things. Its informal social gathering of teachers who are wanting to learn and contribute ideas. 

I really like this idea of meeting people face to face to discuss, and share ideas. I was a little jealous of all the great Twitter people I follow heading off to #educamprotovegas

One tweet lead to a meeting with the great @Allanahk  and @nickitempero. Educamp Marlborough was born!  

I am really excited to hear from others - and potentially share my own learning experiences. Those who I have told about Educamp (non twitter peeps - who I am slowly working on converting) are really keen to come along. Not long now until Marlborough & the top of the South educators get to share, contribute, and learn from each other. 

Save the Date:
Saturday 23 May 2015
Keep an eye on this space:
http://educampnz.wikispaces.com/Educamp+Marlborough

What do you want to learn more about? 

What would you contribute? 

Don't smile until Easter

Whoever decided that teachers needed to be scary, mean and authoritative really didn't think about the consequences.
Once again I've been reminded that I need to not smile until Easter. This is something I don't really agree with. I am generally a happy person, and want to make school a fun, safe place for students to be. I loved school despite all the hang ups I had with learning and I think that was because of a few teachers who made the effort to get to know me.

This first week back at school - my 5th as a teacher has been the best yet. No matter how long you've been teaching you only get the start of the year once a year - and you need to start as you mean to go on. I've started by trying to get to know my students and by letting them get to know me. I don't want to be the robot teacher who kids are shocked to see in the supermarket. I want them to know I am human and have a life outside of my classroom.

This term my class and others in the year 8 team are learning about the human brain. We want our students to know how to learn, and the importance of looking after the brain. One thing that I have found in my research about the brain over the years is that the reptilian part of our brain overrides everything.  http://www.copingskills4kids.net/Reptilian_Coping_Brain.html
Fear is one of the primitive instinctive brain functions - so if someone is experiencing fear - they have three options - flight, fight or freeze.

If I want the students in my class to be able to learn, I need to remove the fear factor. I want them to feel safe enough to be willing and able to learn. 

This week has been about setting boundaries, and getting to know each other. Yes I have made myself clear about my expectations. Yes the students have had a say in how they want the classroom to be. Most students have told me something about themselves and their lives, and I have told them a little about my life. I believe that if we communicate how we are feeling - especially when we aren't feeling that great - and likely to be grumpy, our students will see that we are human and respect that. To them I will not a bomb that could go off at anytime.

Over the last two years I have recognised the importance of building relationships with students. As a beginning teacher I felt that I had to be in control, and I was the robot teacher who lived in a classroom. I was the teacher I hated at school. If I want to be the difference in these students lives - then I need to be different from last centenaries teachers.

This year I started as I intend to go on. I smiled when I read out my class list and welcomed my students to the Awesome Room 1. I also rang home and introduced myself to all parents in my class. I want to make positive contact with home this year. Most parents were a little weary as to why I was calling - immediately going to "my child is in trouble."

It is my mission to make school a place where my students feel safe enough to take risks, make mistakes and FAIL -  First Attempt's at Learning. I believe that if they take risks, they will become confident life long learners.

Even if that means smiling before Easter.

2015 - More & Less

Since I have had a lot of down time these holidays (no massive tripping around being adventurous). So I have been doing a lot of reflecting and thinking. Kind of goal setting in my head - I've been meaning to find some way to record my thinking. I did consider doing a vision board - after my Mum posted something on my Facebook page. But my lazy holiday self didn't want to go to school to find all my magazines, and other craft supplies!

After reading : http://chched.blogspot.co.nz/2015/01/happy-new-year-bring-on-2015.html 

I realised my blog is a perfect place to record my thinking. I need to use my blog more! 

Bridget wrote about the things she wanted to do more and less of in the Classroom - I think this is an excellent concept - which I am going to steal for the purpose of focusing my thinking. I have already written a long list of things I know I want to do - and have even managed to find a few less! 

My goals for 2015 are:

For the love of Writing

2014 was a year of trying to convince my lovelies that there was a reason to write. With 30 kids having 30 different ideas about what writing is about, and why we need to write it felt like an uphill battle.

I don't consider myself a writer - heck I hated writing at school - so I know where they were coming from with their complaints about why we had to do speeches, why we had to write explanations and why we had to write persuasively. When we finally got to term 4 and narrative writing they were worn out.

I attended Lane Clark workshop (http://www.laneclark.ca/) in the September holidays - and felt she was speaking my language. She talked about inquiry not just being about students independently, self managing mucking about. It struck a chord - I had many self managing students - a guess a few were probably mucking about. She said give them the knowledge, give them a reason and a purpose to learn! Lane also spoke about cognitive overload - and how when we let our students inquire they often get overwhelmed and click on multiple pages, click, click, click...and have no way of knowing what information is the right information for them.

You know when you go on PD and the whole time you're thinking I can't use that - this isn't just in time learning for me - we're doing stats next term and they are talking about algebra. Lane's first example on the course, was writing narratives specifically picture books to send to students in Africa who lived without books. This matched our term themes perfectly - Narrative for writing, and social studies links, especially with our new cyber safety program and Keeping ourselves Safe - all the morals in fairy tales really linked in for me.

Thus started the journey of  30 year 7 students to becoming published authors. 

I followed her advice:

I used Task Cards to give the students clear outlines of what I wanted them to investigate - with a maximum of 4 tasks to complete. I gave them Thinking Charts that clearly outlined the information needed. Then we read picture books, we read fairy tales, we watched Hoodwinked - a fairytale mashup (they asked me if it was ok they were watching movies in week 1 of the term!)

We compared, contrasted, completed think charts and really pulled them to pieces - what did they all have in common, what was the first line on the story, what was the last line... What did the characters act like, was the a commonality? Our school magically had Rapunzel production visit in week 2 of the term - and it  too was a mashup fairy tale. Perfect! We used our IT suite sessions to look into the history of fairy tales, and the purpose or morals behind them.

Suddenly they understood the structure and purpose for writing narrative.

They asked questions all the way along - and there was no small questions, thick, thin - they all got recorded and answered.  This was a big deal for me - I hadn't realised the importance of answering ALL questions. 

Some of the questions they asked:

What is the most expensive picture book?

When was the first fairy tale published?

What fairy tale is the best? Most popular for 12year olds?

What is the most common first line, last line in a fairy tale? ( Once upon a time.....and they all lived happily ever after)

Who should we write for? Answers - Kids our age - 12 year olds!

What do 12 year olds like to read? Answers - Adventure, mystery, blood, guts, Zombies, things that aren't the way they should be, funny things

What is the difference between Fantasy and FairyTale

Who needs to laugh? Answers - sick or sad kids

That led to a conversation about writing books and illustrating it ourselves. We had looked at picture books in the first term, and had continued reading one a week - so they thought themselves experts. Room 9 decided as a whole (democratic votes all the way!) that they wanted to complete individual books with their audience being sick 12year olds - at StarShip Hospital - their idea was that when you're sick, you can't read a whole novel, so short stories or picture books would be ideal - but they felt that there aren't many aimed at their age group. They had a purpose and an audience.

I decided to do a bit of the leg work, as it was Week 3 Term 4 - and we were off to camp in Week 9. This didn't leave much time for kids doing all the work. I googled - Self Publishing - then Self Publishing NZ and found a small publishing house in Nelson. They answered the phone - and listened to my story. Dave offered us a great deal - which meant students would have to do all the leg work including choosing the font, doing the set out and cover design. I am beyond grateful for all the help they gave my class! 

This lead to a whole lot more questions - 

What type of fonts are there? (We learnt what Sans Serif means)

What is the easiest to read? 

How do books get set out? How big is the margin?

and many many more....

We use Google Apps for Education, and Harapa teacher dashboard. This task would have been a bit of a longer processes without Google Docs. I was able to drop into students work -  make comments, share video tips on how to correctly use speech marks and other tricky punctuation. I had students working at level 2 with little correct punctuation prior to this experience, who were now using speech marks and ellipsis correctly (and knowing the dot dot dot was called an ellipsis!) 

Each student had to share their work with three other classmates for 'Audience check'  - did their intended audience like what they had written - and laugh at the right places? They then self edited and sent to me for feedback. I have never had ALL of the students in my class want feedback generally there is always someone who fails to share their work - and I have to go on a mission to find their work and give them feedback. Once we decided their stories would be published - in a real life book - they went nuts! I had students emailing me after school, on weekends, and coming in at 8.30am to type up their work they had written over night. They would reply to my comments asking for 1:1 time with me, or for clarification. 

The students set themselves a deadline, and with a lot of hard work and encouragement of each other they achieved what I had thought was impossible. Completed pieces of writing ready for the final proof copy deadline set by the publishers. All illustrations were completed by students by hand. They were then scanned and added to the book document  - There was a class vote for the cover art work. 

The back cover has a blurb written by a small group of students, the inside cover has a collage of all the authors photos. 

The Proof Copy! 

Our proof copy arrived five school days before we went to camp - at the end of week 7. The students all had a chance to read their work and decide if there was any changes that needed to be made. By no means is this book perfect. I know there are parts that need editing - but decided this was their book and they needed to take ownership. 

This set of another wave of excitement - as a small group of girls decided we needed to have a book launch and signing. The girls gave themselves a set of jobs to complete for this next tight deadline. Planning and organising an event in 5 days. They designed an invitation, dealt with the guest list and RSVP's, they spoke to the school Librarian about hosting the event after school hours in the library. They even wrote a press release - contacted the local book store and newspapers. 

Books all ready for the book launch 50 copies - PRESOLD! 

The party! 40 guests, and kai to celebrate! 

For those who would like a sneak peek - http://goo.gl/8kmSOO

If you would like to order a copy of "Twisted Tales for 12year olds" please contact rmoran@bohally.school.nz