Edublogs nomination

http://elearningr14.blogspot.co.nz/

I have a teacher who I have the pleasure of working with at my school.  She is full of ideas and reflective practice. I really enjoy following her professional blog to get ideas and use it to reflect on what I'm doing also.  That's why I would like to nomintae this blog for Best Teacher Blog 2012.

Inspiring!

Unused resource

All teachers have an amazing resource in their classrooms. At times I find this is a resource to be neglected in some classrooms by the daily grind of trying to get through the content that needs to be covered by a certain point on the term. What am I talking about? KIDS!!!
Children are far more powerful at teaching each other than some people realise.
The other day I came cross some of the children in my maths class having a learning discussion about the strategy they had just learned. After discussing what they learned they realised that some people in their class were still having trouble. I asked them how they could tackle this problem and what they needed for me to provide to make the solution possible.
I came back to this group a little while later and found them having a great discussion about their learning. They were using materials in ways I hadn't thought of and at the end of the day every single person in the group understood how the strategy worked and when to use it. I could see right away who didn't understand the strategy we were covering and could ask questions to guide the children in the right direction. From there they explored the strategy further. I found that maths was the easiest subject area to apply this too to begin with but I'm working on applying this to reading also.
Here are snippets of the discussions I heard:

There is huge benefit in putting children into groups of mixed ability and getting them to teach each other especially because they will have different strengths, different view points about the same subject and different ways of thinking about the same problem. I found that it made the children who understood the problem think about it in different ways to make the children they were teaching understand what they were talking about.
So try it. Stand back and watch what happens when the children are left to teach each other. Its fascinating!

Starting the movie process

There's no point going to conference if you're not going to use all the ideas. I find that if I don't use my new knowledge right away I loose it. So I decided to start using some of the movie making know how I learned from Helen King during ULearn 2012. After teaching two of my math groups I asked the children to "Assume That I'm an Idiot" (thanks Glenn Capelli for that one). I asked my children to create educational videos to teach me how the strategies work. To be completely honest I underestimated how valuable this tool is. Some of the children who hardly say boo during group discussion were putting on their best teacher voices to tell me all about their maths strategy. I was able to watch these video creations and with in minutes I could see who needed more help and who was ready for something a little more challenging. BRILLIANT! Easy and quick assessment that uses the children's strengths (if they want to write, they can write or if they want to act/draw/sing/dance...they can). I have also started something similar with our reading programme. I have explained to my class that hey need to make sure they really understand the reading strategies we are covering curing our group sessions as they will be making videos to teach other groups about how the strategies work. I must say I've never had such attentive listeners during teaching sessions. We'll see what they come up with once we have finished but for now here are some photos of some of the children beginning to put their videos together. If this is only day two, imagine what I can achieve by the end of the term?! Starting the Movie process on PhotoPeach

Spread the word

I have just attended the ULearn 2012 conference in Auckland. I have come away from this full of passion for my job and what I do. There was a buzz in the air the minute I walked into the conference centre. I was among MY kind of people. I was in a room full of teachers who were willing to give up their holidays to learn and to develop professionally, but I think we have walked away with so much more.
This was my first ULearn. I was expecting to walk in find some new resources to use in my classroom and to listen to some interesting speakers. I walked away with a spring in my step. I had a new found love for my job. Yes the keynote presenters were interesting but they were also inspiring and passionate. I was able to talk to people who were on the same wave length as me. I was able to meet people who make a difference everyday and who LOVE doing what they do. This was infectious. Every person in the conference loved what they did and this made me want to spread the word about the people who rarely get mentioned by the media.
Stuff.co.nz asked their readers to contribute by writing a short piece about why they love teaching. I decided that I would comply and write something that would hopefully help people see who actually teaches their children. NOT what is usually portrayed in the media.
Most of the people on the front line are passionate, for them teaching is life.
Here is the link to the article that will hopefully help the wider public see that teachers are AMAZING and they have our future in their hands. Appreciate them!

http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff-nation/7803356/Why-do-you-love-teaching-The-power-to-empower

Feedback

Last week we had a teachers Techie Brekkie. We arrived at school a little bit earlier than normal (for some it was earlier for others not so much) and worked on some of our online tools. While some were creating buttons for their wikis, others had started a discussion about blogging and how they should be managed.
I'm not going to discuss just blogging this time though. I think it is really important to remember how our children respond to each other's work.
This is a skill that needs to be specifically taught to our students. We need to take the time to teach them about how they communicate on the internet and the foot prints they leave behind. We give feedback verbally during class sessions to practice giving constructive feedback in a positive manner. This gives me a chance to instantly respond to what the children say. I generally teach my students the "tick and a wish" strategy that I learned from a Neil MacKay workshop I attended. Generally the children give their buddy some positive feedback followed by something to work on (I think you have used some great adjectives in your story but I wish you had used more fullstops.) We talk about the wish needing to link to our Learning Intention or to our Success Criteria. This isn'e something that comes easily to everyone and does need constant practice. I was recently really impressed by how my children have been responding to each other during our speech practices. They were great at looking at the criteria of a good speech and relating everything they said to these criteria.
It's great when you can see your students using the skills you taught them :)

Screen free week

I decided to have a screen free week in my class to start off the term. I was finding that my children didn't really appreciate the technology that the school provided for them. So I decided to see how they would cope with out our iPads and laptops. The results were pretty impressive.

The initial reaction from the children was not surprising. How will we look up meanings of words? How will we find information? What will we do before school? It was as if the world was crumbling around them. I explained that we were not doing such a great job of looking after all these amazing tools that we have in our room. We left them on the floor where people could step on them. I have had kids drop a laptop (I know you cringed when you read that). The behaviours were getting quite reckless, even though they got regular reminders about how to hold the computers when they carried them and how to pack them away. So this prompted me to take the technology out of my room to show the children what life would be like with out them.
After a few days with out screens my first realisation was that our kids don't use some of the skills that are second nature to us. They live in the computer age. Technology is as natural is breathing to them. This got me thinking. How often do I use a dictionary to look up a word? When do I go to a book to find information about something? Well it's not very often. I go to dictionary.com to look up meanings and use google to look for information. So even though the kids life line (technology) was taken away from them for a week, it was still a very valuable experience. The children learned or remembered some new skills that were being forgotten. I also saw them become more aware of the people around them. A lot of the bickering over technology stopped. The changes in my students were huge. Of course not all children took this on board but I had enough kids take on a more mature attitude that they now remind the others of the right thing to do.
I had the children reflect on the week and leave a comment for me on our class blog (http://kidblog.org/Room265/room26pvs/screen-free-week/#comments). Over all I think they found it a positive experience although they were VERY happy to see them back. It made us think about how we treated out technology and what we used it for. Now we can learn from this and re-write some new guidelines about the use of technology to promote a more responsible attitude towards these amazing tools we have in our room.

Demands of blogging

We had a great Professional Development session today. We talked about the current trends in e-learning and what is happening in schools today. I really enjoyed some of the thought provoking discussion that took place because it let me evaluate what I am doing in my classroom. My current challenge is this whole blogging thing.
At the moment I find it difficult to find enough time in a day (as well as energy) to do all the things that I want to do. Blogging for my self is something I need to get into the habit of doing. For me that will come with time. What I have been thinking more and more about lately is blogging for kids.

I use kidblog with my class (http://kidblog.org/Room265/). Please come and visit us by the way, the kids love to see your comments.

I have some children in my class who have a number of dyslexic type needs (I don't want to label them as dyslexic because it is such a huge range of difficulties that fit under this very large umbrella we call dyslexia). These students often dislike writing and reading. Blogging is a great tool for them as they don't have the negative connotations with computers as they do with pen and paper, which is usually a struggle. I realise that not all children will jump up and down about blogging, but I have realised that some of my children have started to write about their day quite regularly. The comments they write to each other are becoming increasingly more constructive, rather than just "cool" or "nice story." Some still have some growing to do in that sense but we are getting there. This has also been great for my really bright kids because they feel like they are educating the people around them by writing interesting facts. Some of my boy's write a fact each week. They have to find a new piece of information, learn about it and blog about it their own words (NO COPYING!) So over all this has been a very valuable tool to increase children's confidence and enjoyment for expressing their ideas in the written form.
This brings me to my dilemma. I use kidblog to keep an eye on what the children are writing and help out some of the children who struggle with spelling by checking some of what they write. I don't correct all mistakes, I think it is important for them to make these and discuss what they have written with their peers. What I'm finding now though is that I can't always keep up. During the term with all the other things we have to do (MARKING, updating wikis, collaborating with children on their google doc creating flipcharts...) I am finding it harder and harder to make sure that I check each blog and approve comments.
So here is my question to my fellow educators... How do you keep up with the increasing demand to keep blogs, wikis, sites, etc up to date? What do you do to manage these? Am I being a little too ambitious by checking all these blogs?
What are your thoughts on the matter?

Empathy

As a teacher I seem to repeat, "How do you think that might make him/her feel?"

As much as we say it some kids just seem to lack that understanding. They seem to have trouble putting them selves in someone else's shoes. 

I had a fall at school a little while ago. It was unpleasant, my ankle hurt but that wasn't what upset me the most. I happened to fall over in front of my class. Now, most of my kids were lovely. They asked if I was o.k. and tried to help me up. There was one little charmer who decided to point and laugh, not only laugh as a shock reaction, I might add, but continuous laughter even after seeing that I was in pain.

This has been on my mind for a little while. It got me thinking about empathy (the intellectual identification with or vicarious experience of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another). 

So if this is a skill that doesn't come so easily to others, how do we teach it? 

My class had a discussion today about empathy and what it means. We did some role play activities to demonstrate how we might show empathy towards others. I mentioned "treat others as you want to be treated," quote that all of us have heard many times. After all this I still wan't sure if my message sunk in. 

I think this is a vital skill for everyone to learn if they are to function successfully in society. 

This triggered me to read a little about the development of empathy in children.

I found out that this is a skill that children learn, it is not something that comes to them naturally. 

From the articles I read there seemed to be a specific theme: when teaching children about empathy the outcome has to feel good and the problem has to be broken down for them to understand. 

It seems more complicated than I first thought. 

Here's my question though.... is it solely up to the teachers to teach their students a skill such as empathy or is it the responsibility of the family? On the other hand what happens when those skills aren't being taught at home?

Khan Acadamy

Was just watching 60 minutes and saw something that blew my mind.
I don't know if anyone else has heard of KhanAcadamy but I think we could be onto something here.
Here's the link: http://www.khanacademy.org/
Watching the interview with Sal Khan, who started it all, I could hear my own beliefs about education. Sal began posting online videos to help a relative with some school concepts they were finding difficult.  This is where the online classroom idea began. Sal began creating videos that cover a huge amount of topics from basic addition to Astronomy.
What struck a note with me though was not the incredible amount of published content that I could use in my classroom, but what Sal was saying about teaching. Sal believes that this could be used to help  the kids who are struggling with some concepts. The children can work at their own pace to fill the gaps they might have and then move on to the next concept when they are ready. The same goes for the children who are racing ahead of the others. It doesn't seem fair for them to be limited by what their class understands. It can be like having an extra teacher in the room to help explain some concepts to the children. Each video then gives the children an opportunity to practice each concept. The children can learn at their pace and can have content covered as many times as they need.
The only problem I see, is that the lessons don't use the numeracy project strategies, so could be a little hard to use in a primary school in NZ.  I see this as a useful tool to extend GATE students further. It can also be a great tool for intermediate schools. Would be interesting what teachers in NZ make of this. What do you think?

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...