Authentic Learning

When I was a kid I remember learning about stuff but never really connecting the learning to real life. Some of the topics we learned about didn't really seem real.
I must say that I work in an amazing school! We had decided to teach the children about their contributions to the world around them. So to teach the children about charity we had the Auckland rescue Helicopter fly into school, we will be having the flying simulator in at school so the children can learn how to fly, we will also be going to visit the helicopter hanger and that's all just this term.
I have never seen the children so excited and motivated to learn and so willing to put so much effort into helping others.
We are planning a big fundraising event for our charity of choice (Rescue Helicopter) and the ideas that the children are coming up with are fantastic. They have been writing about their experiences of seeing the helicopter fly into the school, they have been researching different items you can hire for fundraising, they have been enquiring about the costs, they have been reading about the Trust and they have been waving money collection buckets to raise funds for this charity.
This is real topic study! This has soaked through every subject area in our class and the learning that the children are gaining is phenomenal.

Science

Science is amazing. It makes us questions everything. Why is the sky blue? How does our heart work? How does a light bulb produce light?
I've been thinking about my kids wonderings lately ... so I thought I'd answer a couple of their questions and in the process add some more.
My class went to the Science Road Show yesterday and we had a blast. Having that exposure to science experiments and not only looking at them but being able to touch and explore, filled my kids with wonder. It was fantastic to see them so excited about learning. They wanted to see everything, touch everything, understand everything.
I think we need to expose our kids to science more often. They don't have enough opportunities to experiment at such a young age.
Today that was my mission.
Who would have thought that water and a few paperclips could achieve just that.
Today I carefully placed one single paperclip into a container of water and asked the kids to do the same.
It took them a long time to figure out how to do it but they managed.
In the process we discussed how this was possible.
Here is what they understood from it all:

All we needed were some paperclips and containers with water. Now there really no excuse to experiment!

Wonderings

 A little while ago I created a wonder window in my class.

Here the children can write their wonderings. Anything that comes to mind that they want to know about. The other day I took a moment to have a really good look at these wonderings and there were some amazing questions there. For example: Why is static electricity called static, because static means staying still? or Why are we human? Why don't ships sink? Who made the first movie? Why is the sky blue? ... etc
There is some great thinking there. I found that the kids are full of fantastic wonderings. They are always questioning the worlds around them. They want to know how things work, why things happen and so on.
I do wonder sometimes if we do our kids justice? How often do we actually take the time to listen to what they say and what they ask?
It got me thinking about child directed learning and what we have been trying to move towards in our classroom. We strive to make our students passionate seekers of knowledge.

Graphic organisers

As I mentioned before, we've been learning about charities.  The charity we have been focussing on is Auckland Rescue Helicopter Trust. 

Today we looked at how helicopters work. Instead of telling the kids to display what they learned in their books I got the kids to show their work in a template I created using Draw in Google Docs.

The children collected the information about the forces at play and placed their findings in the template. I thought that four medium sized boxes would be enough space for the children to show their understanding without intimidating those who don't like to write. Graphic organisers are great like that. 

I was pleasantly surprised. The discussions that the children were having were fantastic and even my more reluctant writers displayed their what they learned. Most filled the boxes I gave them and added more because I just didn't give them enough space as I was later told.

This is the template I created:

This is what some of my kids created:

So what do you think? I was blown away!

Genius

One of my colleagues  mentioned this quote to me,
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” 
― Albert Einstein

It really made me think!

I  think that every child has something that they are great at. They are not always the best writers or mathematicians or readers (which is what we test in school) but they can be amazing singers, painters, dancers, problem solvers, lateral thinkers and more.
Do we make these children feel valued?

What the?

Our syndicate is focussing on charities this year. We looked at what a charity does, how they work and why we need them. From this we have began to focus on one charity that will then be our focus for fundraising.
So before we get into the planing stages of this year long project we needed to find out what our chosen charity is all about.  I have started the children up on an inquiry learning project. They have been working in small groups. At this stage (while we are going through the note taking steps) I have given the information to the class. I thought it was simple and easy to follow, however, after asking the children to read the information I realised that it didn't seem so simple to them.

I talked to some of the children around the room about what they were reading and although they understood the main points of the text a few didn't understand specific words.

Now when I was a kid I was expected to go and find the meaning of words in a dictionary myself. Mind you English was my second language and early on in my NZ school life I didn't understand many words at all, so I got loads of practice looking for words in a dictionary. What I found interesting was that some children in my class were completely stumped and didn't know what to do. When we discussed what they could do to figure the meanings of these words out they looked at me like I was from another planet.
"You mean you aren't just going to tell me?"
I thought that they would have figured out by now that I don't make things easy for them.

So my question is... what is happening that our students are increasingly achieving less and less in vocabulary tests and are becoming more confused by dictionaries (and I don't just mean the paper ones, online too).
I worked with a group to find meanings to words and for the first part of the exercise they managed to track the word down and even read the definition but that was it. Nothing seemed to settle and the meaning was not applied to the text. I had their little eyes looking up at me as if to say, "here it is, I found it! Now will you tell me what it means?"
We struggled for a while but we got there in the end. I endeavour to keep giving my students interesting vocabulary to figure out the meanings of. I will keep using difficult words when I speak just to expose them to something different.
But next year I will need to start again...

So what do we do? How do we increase our kids vocabulary and how do we continue to develop these skills that our kids seem to be loosing?

Google what.....?

Today I decided to sit down to set up the kids folders in Google Apps. Going by Jacqui's advice I got the kids in the ICT suite and got the kids into their buddy groups. From there the children took turns to set up their folders in their Google accounts.
Now I thought I was doing a good thing using a time when the kids had a computer between the two of them where they could watch a buddy do it and then try it them selves.

Boy was I wrong...
Mrs Tauroa mine won't work... Mrs Tauroa I can't sign in... Mrs Tauroa my password doesn't work... Mrs Tauroa... Mrs Tauroa...
After we finally had everyone signed in I went on to explain how to set up collections. Going through everything step by step would be the logical thing to do right? Well not if some of the kids aren't listening.  
I had a student teacher with me so it didn't go as badly as it would have.

I shared this with Jacqui and told her how I got on even though I worked with groups, as it turn out Jacqui meant that I probably should have worked with a group at a time but not in the same day. She meant with one group a month...

After this experience.. and others like it I have realised that I have a tendency to jump straight into the deep end. Maybe that's why experiment so much, that's how I learn.
I did the same thing with Space Day last year. I planned it, thought hard about what I wanted to do and after having loads of second thoughts..... did it anyway.
Even though some of the experiments don't go so well I still learn heaps from each one.
So what did I learn from this experience?

Set the kids independent work and have a SMALL group with me working on setting up their accounts.
So that's what I'll do next year...
On the positive side everyone in my class is all set to go for our technology filled week.

Risks

So I've been told that I should start recording my thoughts, ideas and teaching practice.
I guess I should start by introducing my self. I'm a primary school teacher. I have been teaching for almost  5 years.
I was born in Russia and have been living in NZ for 16 years. I think this adds an interesting element to my teaching. The kids seem to enjoy listening to stories about my past and about my culture.
I've been trying to apply new ideas to my classroom for a while now. It was quite scary to experiment at first but now it seems to have become part of my teaching.

The most interesting thing I've done this term is create pretend trenches in my classroom for ANZAC day.  The children and I focussed on what ANZAC day meant to us and what life was like for the soldiers who fought in WW1. I was quite nervous about doing this at first as I didn't know how my kids would cope with it. In the end I decided that if it didn't work then I could always put everything back. I was pleasantly surprised by my kids.
The work they produced and the understanding they got was pretty impressive.

I think the moral of the story is that risks do pay off...