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?