Mentor Sentences

My husband dropped me to school today and, being the gentleman he is, he carried my book bag into my learning space. He has a sweet habit of letting the kiddos know he's been in the room in their absence by leaving a quote or powerful word on the whiteboard.  Today was no different, except that it was.  He wrote the first few lines of High Flight by John Gillepsie Magee, Jr and as I read them I realised what a gift my husband had left me. (He's a gem! Really!)

I found the rest of the poem and started our literacy block by reading it to the class.  It's a beautiful poem:

Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth  

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings; 

Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth 

Of sun-split clouds, --and done a hundred things 

You have not dreamed of --Wheeled and soared and swung 

High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there 

I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung 

My eager craft through footless halls of air... 

Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue 

I've topped the wind-swept heights with easy grace 

Where never lark or even eagle flew -- 

And, while with silent lifting mind I've trod 

The high untrespassed sanctity of space, 

Put out my hand, and touched the face of God.

 The discussion following my reading was nothing short of astounding. The inferring, visualisations to help clarify, the use of morphemes to clarify, identification of metaphorical language... I let them talk without interruption until I was asked what I knew about the poet. I shared the little I knew and this changed the discussion. They read even more into the poem and made even more inferences. The word 'prophetic' was even used!

That was just the start of our lesson. I then wrote out the first two lines (as one sentence) on an anchor chart and we talked about what we noticed. It was a pretty mechanically focussed discussion and that was OK by me. I have a few kiddos who need to review parts of speech.  We marked up the sentence and made a few more observations about the role of the co-ordinating conjunction.  It dawned on a couple of kids - after we talked about the co-ordinating conjunction and what the two simple sentences would have been - that a sentence MUST have a verb. Woah! Yes! They must. For some of my kiddos this was an earth shattering revelation. I can't wait to see how they transfer that epiphany.

I'm not actually sure about the adjectival phrase...

Any helpers?

We then had a go at verbally replacing a few of the words to form new sentences and talked about how we could use this structure or even just part of it in our own writing.   Tonight for home learning they are creating new sentences modelled on this mentor sentence. In hindsight we would have spent longer on this. Next week we will.

So, it wasn't what I had originally planned for this morning, but I am SO glad I threw away strayed from my lesson plan.  I've been reading about mentor sentences for a while now. I've been fascinated and inspired by some of the programmes I've read about and work samples I've seen, and whilst I'm not comparing this lesson to those, I am pretty proud that we had such a great lesson.   We will follow it up tomorrow to share some of the student created sentences and recap what we noticed.  Should be interesting!  I'll ask if I can share some of them here.

Do you use mentor sentences?

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 2 Know the content and how to teach it.
Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning.
Standard 6 Professional learning.

Inquiring about Inquiry

I'm not sure about global trends but here in Australia we're all about the inquiry.  Which is great if anyone in the room understands what that means and I'll freely admit (now) that at the beginning of last year I wasn't 100% clear myself.  I asked a few questions of my colleagues and crammed in a whole lot of reading.  By the time I asked the original VRPs to come up with inquiry questions of their own I thought I was top of it. Well maybe not exactly on top of it. More like alongside. And so, alongside the VRPs I refined my understanding as they did.  

This year our teaching team has restructured the way we are teaching Humanities and Social Sciences    (HASS) to start the year learning inquiry skills (through 'action learning') as a priority.  Sounds obvious doesn't it?  Yes, well, moving along.  :\

For one legitimate reason and another the VRPs' HASS lessons have been largely scuttled so far this year. Time and energy for HASS?  There has been very little. From what I've seen though, this years' VRPs have been struggling with developing inquiry questions. So today I posed the question: "what is an inquiry question?" and asked them to spend ten minutes in pairs categorising a series of questions as inquiry or not. I did this on padlet.com (which as you know is one of my favourite web 2.0 tools) as you can see here:

Created with Padlet

Our action learning area is Asian geography... Can you tell?

Regrouping we discussed why each question is or is not an inquiry question.  You will notice that there are a couple of questions that weren't unanimous, and these prompted some rich discussions about the characteristics of inquiry questions.  

Having agreed on our list, everyone reviewed the questions they'd already posed.  They shared their review with a partner,  and had to justify their decisions. Along the way some wonderfully rich inquiry questions were formed. We quickly ran off copies or took photos on ipads/ipods of the list for everyone to take home as they were to pose a series of questions for home learning tonight ready for review and choice tomorrow.   I'm excited to see their questions tomorrow.

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 2 Know the content and how to teach it.
Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning.
Standard 6 Professional learning.

What's Old is New Again!

I wonder if wandering through antique or collectibles shops is a fascination you're able to develop with age? It seems to me that people either love doing it - and always have - or hate it with a passion.  I'm lucky that my husband loves it as I do. (Or I made a good choice, either way.)  We have a few local stores to whom we willingly (and regularly) hand over our time and money.  It's a rare visit that I leave without finding something: whether an antique spoon or tea-cup (I collect both), a quirky book from the early 1900's (my husband collects those) or some ephemera to use in my Way Back Wednesday lessons.

Today was a little different. Today I found books for for ME. Well, for school but that's kinda the same thing right? 

The first pair are from 1955.  One is called The Ideal Book for Boys while the other is The Bumper Book for Girls. I haven't quite decided how I will use these yet.  Having skim read the stories I will probably ask the kiddos to work in groups and give each group a copy of one story from each book.  The language used, and the gender stereotyping is vastly different to the texts the kiddos currently read so after some initial analysis I'll also provide contemporary stories to compare and contrast.  The Australian Curriculum is quite explicit in asking for this kind of analysis, and the gender concepts that will be discussed will support many of the ideas behind our single gender programmes (e.g. boys don't have to be physically strong to have strength). 

The other three are from a 1960 Science Service series and are called Earth, Maps & Mapping and Crime Detection. These little gems will be used as part of our Science as a Human Endeavour learning about how scientific knowledge changes over time, and how science influences human interaction with each other and with Earth.  Oh boy are they perfect examples of how scientific knowledge has changed over time. In Crime Detection the 'hair & fiber' section makes no mention of DNA; in Maps & Mapping electronic computers are lauded as having brought much nearer the realisation of the dream of a truly accurate triangulation network of the entire world; in Earth we can learn of the world's smallest TV camera which is the size of a flashlight. 

 Some things never change though. 

"It seems  - but has by no means been proven - that the earth is getting warmer." (Earth)

What artefacts or ephemera do you bring into your learning spaces?

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 2 Know the content and how to teach it.
Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning.

How Do You Use Twitter?

In the words of a dear friend:

"I do, very much, love my job. You are challenged, inspired, frustrated, intrigued, entertained, flustered, provoked, humbled and more….and that’s all within an hour!"

(Thank you Katie Havelberg.)

So, I'm really frustrated to been put back on the bench by my doctor. I want to be at school. I miss my kiddos and my colleagues. 

One colleague I particularly miss, because she moved school this year, is Aimee Lipczyk. Yesterday she tweeted that she was talking to her class about the benefits of Twitter and called for people to chime in.  I don't know how her lesson went, but with the plethora of ways to use Twitter in the classroom I can imagine.  

Twitter, like most social media platforms, seems to polarise people.  Love or hate, there is no middle ground.  There are no prizes for guessing on which side of the fence I fall.  So following the mini twitter discussion prompted by Aimee, I did a bit of digging to find what other people are using Twitter for in their classrooms.

Here are 28 of  some of my favourite uses - some of which I use, others new to me (but will probably show up in our learning space in the near future):

1. Networking with other classes.
2. Sharing on the spot learning with parents (and the world).
3. Live tweeting excursions or incursions. 
4. Connecting with authors.
5. Microblogging 'aha' moments.
6. Using hashtags to take learning deeper.
7. Summarising a lesson's main point in 140 characters or less.
8. Becoming politically active.
9. Using hashtags to facilitate research.
10. Sharing student/class blog updates.
11. Comparing global differences.
12. Finding a class for Mystery Skype.
13. Following the news.
14. Twitterchats
15. Creating a class Twitter newspaper with interesting retweets/#hashtags
16. Building a sense of community.
17. Running social action projects like #Socktober
18. Asking for expert opinions.
19. Connecting with professionals.
20. Writing serialised stories or poems.
21. Using a hashtag to compile resources.
22. Sending out inspiration into the world.
23. Hooking up with other classes around the world and using Google Earth. 
24. Shout out to the teacher's network for authentic data to share with students about current topic of learning.
25. Twitterpolls.
26. Keeping a research diary.
27. Making friends! 
28. Being involved in challenges like #Mathsphotoaday

A word cloud of these 28 ideas. Fascinating to see where the emphasis lies isn't it? 

How do YOU use Twitter with your class?

Note: @the67VRPs is our class twitter account.  (Please feel free to follow us.) I run it through tweet deck on MY laptop and always check it carefully before mirroring it to our TV so that I can be sure of the content/contacts etc.   The kiddos devise their own tweets from the account and name them so that if it's a direct conversation with a student from another class it can be tracked.   

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 4 Create and maintain safe and supportive learning environments
Standard 6 Engage in professional learning 
Standard 7 Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community

Family BBQ

One of my professional development goals this year is to establish and maintain better communication and relationships between school and home.  Don't get me wrong, we developed great home/school relationships last year. It happened organically though. I'm confident that it would probably happen again this year but I want to be more proactive.

I've planned to hold one social event and one learning event for our extended VRP family each term. Last night my family and I hosted the first ever VRP Family BBQ. For anyone new to the blog: VRP is the name my class goes by.

The story goes a little like this: our school has a  single gender program alongside the mixed gender classes. In our year 6/7 unit last year there was a boys class, a girls class and then two mixed classes. I taught one of the mixed classes.  Very quickly the children noticed that two of the classes had strong identities simply based on their single gender nature but the two mixed classes?  Well not so much.  Someone noticed that RP (I'm Mrs RP) sounds a lot like IP which through a bit of mental gymnastics lead to us becoming the VRPs.

Yesterday was - in the words of most of the VRPs - stinking hot.  Even with the air conditioner on, our learning space was 27C after lunch.  I was a bit nervous about the number of people who might pull out because of the heat but, having bought several kilos of sausages and pre-cooked several kilos of onions (by which I mean my husband did them), I wasn't about to cancel.

I'm so pleased I didn't. Families of about a quarter of the class came. Nearly 40 people in the extended VRP family came together in our learning space to share a meal. My husband cooked the bbq, and everyone else brought salads to share. The adults enjoyed getting to know each other, and the young people relaxed and had a few laughs.

Before everyone arrived I pinned up the 'working papers' of a maths activity that the VRPs have been working on this week.

Using at least one of (+, -, x, /) and "5" exactly 4 times make 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10.

Each of 0, 1, 2 etc. have their own sheet of butchers' paper on which we've been recording number sentences as we discover them. I thought it would prompt some interesting discussions between the students and their parents.  It sure did.  Discussions, a wee bit of confusion, and competition! It also prompted some rich conversations about how the VRPs learn: the different entry points for learners at different points on their journey; the places of mental discomfort for all; the open ended nature of the problem; the ambiguous nature of the problem; the obvious collaboration and discussion.  Parents asked questions and our young people proudly demonstrated 'wisdom' as they explained their thinking and the benefits of our learning program.

It was a fantastic experience. The feedback on our Facebook group has been wonderful:

"Thank you so much for your efforts, time and food prep tonight. I really enjoyed being able to chat with some other parents, being a working Mum I haven't had much of an opportunity to do that."

"Thankyou for a lovely evening. Really nice to meet other parents, children and you (not as a teacher) and your family. Thankyou for your time and organizing this event." 

"Thanks for a great BBQ Markeeta and your assistant Geoff. Good night now to go geocaching."  (We had a long discussion about geocaching, and how we might get involved as a class, and possibly hold a geocaching event as our next social gathering.)

"Thank you Markeeta for a wonderful evening. We thoroughly enjoyed talking, & laughing, with other parents & students as well as you, your husband and your children. I was sooooo glad all the cakes were eaten (as our household is on a "health-kick" & dont need the temptation in the house hehe). The kids had a ball! Jackson & Amber had so much fun playing chasey with a heap of kids whilst Max liked 'chillin' with the older tweens/teens in the "Oasis". Thank you again. " (I wrote about our oasis here.)

There was actually very little planning involved, and the benefits far outweigh the costs. I can't wait for next term's event. (Did I mention that I love my class? And that their parents are a pretty awesome  bunch?  Well, if I didn't... I do. And they are.)

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1 Know students and how they learn
Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning
Standard 7 Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community

Book Club

I have precisely 28 minutes until my ride to book club will be here. I love my book club. Admittedly it's all about the books but that's OK right? My book club girls are awesome, and the bookshop where we meet is fantastic. (Seriously, if you live in Adelaide you really should check out this shop: Mockingbird Lounge on Broadway in Glenelg.) A night out in the middle of the week away from kids, partners, work and life isn't too hard to handle either!

I haven't started book clubs with my class yet this year, although I have plans to do so in the next couple of weeks. Last year I ran a couple. Every student in the school will ideally get the opportunity to have at least one book club experience each year. Ideally. Until we 'up skill' all of them that's not overly realistic.  I'm hoping to run more this year, but we're a little way from that yet.

My first group this year will probably comprise girls who were all successful (and enthusiastic) "book clubbers" last year. I discovered last year that an enthusiastic first group meant that the second group were excited before they even began. These girls are all skilled in articulating their metacognition around reading strategies and synthesis well.  Listening to their discussions was inspiring.

I wonder how I can create this experience sooner for my lower level students?  I wouldn't give up my book club for all the tea in China, and my "book clubbers" last year gained so much from their experiences... I feel like I'm cheating some of my kiddos.   Can I run a book club with a picture book? Or a range of picture books? Focussing on an author - almost as an author study?  What would that look like?  What about an early chapter book like Boy Vs Beast?

My ride's here... I'm off to book club. Have a great night!

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1 Know students and how they learn
Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning

On point, what is it?

I was about to launch into a geography lesson today when one of my students asked me,

"Mrs RP, can you tell me what geography actually is? I mean, "on point", what is it?"

And sirens went off in my head. So many questions and comments ran across the ticker at the bottom of my mental news feed:

• What on earth do you mean?
• Gosh, I'm glad you felt safe to ask that!
• How did we get to a point where a year 7 student doesn't know this?
• How did I not know that she didn't know this?
• How many other students don't know this?
• What do I do now?
• Where is my butchers' paper?
• This fluid change of direction is going to stress my kids with ASD and anxiety. Gotta keep an eye on them.

I asked the rest of the class if anyone could answer her. Dead silence. I mean... Crickets.

So I threw out my lesson plan.  I had a chuckle because all I could think of was @Venspired's poster:

We pulled out the butchers' paper and broke down the word into morphemes.  Many of my kiddos are taking a purely morphemic approach to their spelling capacity matrices and so they lead this part of the lesson. We started with geo in the middle of the page and brainstormed as many words we knew with this in it. We tried to find a link, but got stuck on geothermal so we did the same for therm. It grew from there. There were pages all over the place as we built our understanding of various morphemes. Eventually our task minder reminded us what our original question had been and we were able to return to geo and come up with an early understanding. 

Not satisfied with this, we wanted to check.  Individually we used carefully chosen search terms to find online definitions. We combined these with what we'd already discovered and then shared our findings with a partner.  Each partnership then shared with the class and we developed a working definition: 

"Geography is the learning and knowledge about the world around us and people's relationship with it."

This isn't too different from ACARA's definition:

"Geography is a structured way of exploring, analysing and understanding the characteristics of the places that make up our world, using the concepts of place, space, environment, interconnection, sustainability, scale and change. It addresses scales from the personal to the global and time periods from a few years to thousands of years."

It wasn't what I'd planned but you know what? It felt great to throw out my plans and follow their lead. Our next lesson will be much more successful as a result anyway. (And how stupid do I feel for not checking that they knew this basic concept?)

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1 Know the students and how they learn
Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning
Standard 4 Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments

Feedback On My Feedback

I recently received some feedback about my feedback. Actually, I received two almost polar opposite pieces of feedback about my feedback.  I'm ok with that for reasons that will become apparent.

Before I go into the feedback let me share a little about the feedback to which they're both referring:

Whenever I collect my kiddos' 'learning' (whether it be their reading journal or a glogster draft) I will make a couple of comments about what I've noticed and then suggest a 'next step in learning' (NSL) they could focus on in their next activity. It's NOT a mandate. It's NOT a direction. It's a suggestion. As time passes and my learners become more self-directed I expect them to also identify their own NSLs.

It typically looks something like this.

Most students sign and date it to say they've seen it and more often than not they demonstrate some level of improvement in that area pretty well immediately. I can't tell you how often I've been asked for a mini-lesson based on suggested NSLs. 

The first bit of feedback I received ran something like this: "What are you doing!?!? You don't give that much feedback on everything do you? You're mad! They won't read it anyway. What a waste of time!"

The second bit was: "Thank you so much for the feedback. *** loves it!  The NSLs have been just the push to go harder and further that she's needed." 

It in onerous sometimes, yes, but isn't it what we're meant to do? Give feedback that celebrates what our kiddos are already doing and helps them move forward? Invite them to think about ways they can develop?  

I'm always looking to improve the feedback I give. I know I need to get better at the 'compliment' part of feedback. You might notice in the feedback above that I've tried (not hugely successfully) to notice and name the fact that this student regularly writes persuasively. Yesterday I read a post written by the fabulous Two Writing Teachers about compliment conferences and I'm determined to pull some of their strategies into my practice. Check out their awesome info graphic about it: 

Check out Two Writing Teachers amazing blog at
https://twowritingteachers.wordpress.com

So, you can see why the polarity of the feedback didn't bother me.

How do you give feedback?

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 5 Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning
Standard 6 Engage in professional learning

Not Unpleasant, Just Hard

Sometimes teaching is hard work. Not unpleasant, just hard. I'm finding this week hard. I'm tired, the kids are tired. Routines and expectations are still unfamiliar. Things are't quite where I thought they were. We're still learning how to be a cohesive unit. It's hard. Not unpleasant, just hard.

That isn't to say that we're not having those exquisite little moments of delight or progress or peace. We are. Oh. We. Are.

I have one young man in my class who, for a variety of reasons, struggles with self-regulation. Today,  during a break, he had a small social struggle. Like all kids do.  For most kids, this would have rated about 1.5 on the richter scale. For my young man it was more like 6.5 and threatened massive aftershocks.  BUT! BUT... But... My young man allowed me into his space and accepted my (very minimal) help to reframe the issue. He then took a timer into our 'oasis' (an Ikea mosquito net hanging in the corner of our learning space, filled with cushions) and 5 minutes later re-emerged ready to reengage with learning. I openly acknowledged his choices and resilience. No fewer than eight students joined in with their own observations of how impressed they were.  For a young man who doesn't show much social emotion... His smile was so big it hurt!

I have another young man who likes to be heard. He makes some brilliant contributions to class discussions, but often is unaware of the other 24 students eager to participate. A longstanding challenge for this young man it's causes a range of extended social issues for him.  Other kids simply don't want to hear anything he has to say because, well, to be blunt, he never shuts up. This afternoon he asked for my help to become more aware of when and how he does this. He asked! You can't say no to that kind of request.

One young lady in my class brought her mum into our learning space after school. Arriving a couple of days after the year started this young lady is clearly not feeling a lack of belonging or group identity. The pride on her face as she gave the 'royal tour' was delightful.

It's hard sometimes, but that's OK. Sometimes it's the hard parts that make it worthwhile.

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1 Know students and how they learn
Standard 4 Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments

Way Back Wednesday

Every Wednesday afternoon my class gathers for a chat.  We spend a whole lesson talking.  If I'm being totally honest: we often spend lessons talking but that's quite a different blog post. Today I want to share one of the best parts of our week: Way Back Wednesday.

The basic idea is that I present the class with a small group of artefacts - often a photo, sometimes a song or video, even a concrete object - that somehow all relate to an overriding historical event, concept or time period.  What happens after that is the part I love.  The children start talking.  Really talking. After some coaching in the early weeks of the school year they have started to ask questions and make statements like:

Museum of Australian Democracy

"Who took that photo?  And why?" 

"What does that mean for the Aboriginal people who are alive today? How do they feel about it?" 

Daily Telegraph

"Ned Kelly wasn't a hero. He was a criminal! Just because he was doing it for his family doesn't make it right."

Powerhouse Museum

"The way we treat asylum seekers before they are given the ok to be refugees is just the same way that the government treated people with the White Australia Policy."

Pretty amazing huh?

I've kept the topics loosely related to our integrated topic for the term (or to a particularly timely issue like ANZAC Day).   Our WBW topics so far have been:

• The Eureka Flag
• The 1967 Referendum
• Women's Suffrage
• The White Australia Policy
• Vietnamese Boatpeople
• Ned Kelly
• Paper Money
• Holden
• Sydney Olympics
• ANZAC spirit
• Uluru
• The rock art of Koonalda Cave

You may have picked a theme there! Our year 6/7 unit's overriding theme was  Australian identity! As a unit we've moved now into a unit of learning that encompasses various ancient Mediterranean civilisations AND historical inquiry.  We've been unpacking the thinking and work of various professionals (archaeologist, historian, anthropologist etc.) which enhances my class' WBW discussions beautifully.

WBW has been a powerful tool for me to engage the children with the ACARA History strand of Historical Skills in a meaningful way.  We've looked at different perspectives; compared primary vs secondary sources of information; drawn conclusions about the usefulness of various sources; sequenced important events leading up to and following our particular topic of discussion; unpacked historical concepts; posed questions that have been discussed later (either at school or at home). I've noticed that these discussions have built my students' capacity for debate and reasoning in ways I never imagined; and that they are making links between these discussions and other parts of our learning program.

During our discussion I play the role of facilitator. I occasionally ask a clarifying question or encourage a response to be expanded. I will, if I notice a particular area of quiet, ask specific children for their contribution. If there's a point of debate or need for further information I will sometimes step in to resolve the issue but more regularly support the class in their own resolution. I have, on occasion, followed their request for more information by 'googling' it for them while they continue talking. (Hip hip hooray for the Apple TV!) More recently I've been encouraging the children to jot down notes on tiny postit notes to jog their memory later.  This has certainly improved since we've been focussing on summarising in our writing block.

The children's home learning task (I don't like the word homework) each Wednesday is to write a response to a reflective question that I've posed about our topic.  I usually set two questions and let them choose.  (I sometimes provide these questions before the discussion, and sometimes after. It really depends on how I'm introducing the topic and whether the questions, in themselves, include a lot of prior knowledge.) It is the only home learning task they ALL complete every week.  Their responses have improved from "I think we should have the same flag we have now because I like it" to well considered responses with references to the discussion or other sources to support their statements. Some of the responses are bordering on taking the form of a formal exposition! Can't complain about that!!

The worst part? Finding time to read their responses. These children are putting such thought and energy into their responses that reading them all is not something I can - or want to - do quickly. I try to engage with each response individually and provide specific feedback either on the development of their argument or the actual argument itself.

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1 Know students and how they learn.
Standard 2 Know the content and how to teach it.
Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning.
Standard 4 Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments.
Standard 5 Assess,  provide feedback and report on student learning.

Girls? Boys? Mixed? All of the above!

I teach one of four year 6/7 classes at Hackham East Primary School. It's a pretty awesome gig: amazing kids; part of a great team; small class; staff focus on student support; good ICT set up; and strong focus on professional development. Yep, I love my job.

Anyway, I digress. I teach one of four 6/7 classes. None of the classes has more than 24 students, in fact I have only 20. Why so many classes with so few students? Aha! Here's the particularly interesting thing about HEPS: we run a parallel (and opt-in) single gender program. In our unit of four classes there are two mixed, one boys and one girls class. (I have one of the mixed classes.) The year 4/5 unit is run on similar lines also. In the past the junior years also had single gender classes but there wasn't a huge demand for it this year. (Hopefully next year!)

Based on the work of Michael Gurian, a gender based education expert from the USA,  and Ian Lillico, a boys' education expert from Western Australia, HEPS developed a boys programme back in 2008 and it has grown from there. (To get a bigger picture of how it all started and developed, check out the blog of Jarrod Lamshed. He's the single gender legend of HEPS. He's sadly missed though: this year he moved to another school.) The whole school operates on the understanding that the philosophies around single gender education can, and should, be implemented in both single and mixed gender classrooms to better meet the needs of everyone. And it's not just lip service: our unit splits into gender (and year level) groups for maths lessons; all planning actively considers gender learning differences; at each staff meeting we discuss how to better implement one or another of Lillico's 52 Recommendations (for school reform) etc. (We're all constantly working toward AITSL standards 1, 4 and 6!)

Mohammed Al-Khwarizmi
The 'father of algebra'

I'm currently learning with the year 7 girls. The year 7 boys are right next door, and we usually have the dividing wall open so that we're effectively occupying opposite ends of the same space. We're all aware that we're learning the same topic but we're not doing it the same way. The boys jumped in and got into 'doing' immediately. At the other end of the space we started by talking about what we already knew. From then on the boys had short snippets of instruction followed often by concrete materials and big picture problems. We looked at a short video about the history of algebra which gave the topic a personal hook for most of the girls. (It's a great little video: check it out here.) Since then we've broken it down into discrete building blocks that we're in the process of putting together. Some girls have raced ahead and are blowing me away with the way they're putting it all together, while others are still building their basic understandings. That happens in all classes though right? What's different about this is that the girls who can race ahead are racing ahead and doing so loudly and proudly while the girls who need more time are equally loud in their requests. They are taking risks and making mistakes. They're playing and having fun with maths ideas. I've never seen this sort of behaviour in girls before. Well, OK, that's not completely true: I have seen it but not to this extent. I also invite my year 7 girls and boys to share their learning as an added dimension to this process. The confidence my girls show in maths class spills into this interaction. My girls (and boys) are getting the best of both worlds. 

I'm still learning about single gender education; still working out how to implement the 52 recommendations in my own classroom. I doubt it's the kind of thing I'll ever stop learning.


This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1 Know students and how they learn.
Standard 4 Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments.
Standard 6 Engage in professional learning.

I'll just take a fraction more cake please...

In my year 3/4 class our last major push in maths for 2013 was FRACTIONS. Yep, we thought we'd go out on a high note. Actually, the kids all seemed to enjoy it as a topic and it was great to see their development. (As an aside, that's one of the advantages of composite classes - seeing such a broad range of development levels right in front of your eyes.)  

As I've probably mentioned about a dozen times, my co-teacher was our school's maths co-ordinator which was a double edged sword: she REALLY knows her stuff and is an amazing resource v's she REALLY knows her stuff and compared to her I feel rather inadequate. Of course each of those sides plays into the other and I learnt bucket loads from her. At the start of our fractions unit she told me that we needed to be careful to guide the kids to see fractions not just as 'part of shape' but as equal parts of a quantity. That really stuck with me (partly because I'd never thought about it that explicitly) and I focussed almost entirely on fractions of quantity rather than fractions of shape. (Notice I said almost because I did use shape when introducing equivalence.)

CC BY-SA 2.0 James Petts

My favourite fraction work came when I asked the class to help me with my Christmas catering. I presented a table with a long list of food items; the number of attendees I expected; and what fraction of the food unit I expected each person to consume (including different fractions for children and adults). Some were fractions of quantity (e.g. each child will eat 1/4 of a 12 pack of mince pies while each adult will eat 1/2) while others were more like fractions of shape (e.g. each child will eat 1/8 of a Christmas cake while each adult will eat 1/6). 

On first setting the task I felt like I'd let the team down - it seemed rather dry and uninteresting BUT the kids loved it. It had relevance to their daily lives at that point, and it was meaningful. I made sure the range of difficulty was quite broad and explicitly stated that I didn't want them to work from the top to the bottom but to choose their own items (and I set each child a minimum target number of food items to work on). The variety allowed the kids who need extension to find the challenges while the kids who needed support worked with me in a small group. 

The sharing and reflection session at the end was inspiring. My role was limited to very sporadic guiding through the social issues of turn-taking and airtime-hogging. So many different strategies and techniques that had not been formally introduced were shared.  So many 'a-ha' moments. So many organic 'what about if you do it like this' moments.  I always loved maths as a student but love it even more now as a teacher. The way we teach it is so very different... I wish all those people my age who hate maths because of the way they learnt it at school could sit in on some of our lessons and see how much fun it can really be.

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1.1 Physical, social & intellectual development and characteristics of students
Standard 1.5 Differentiate teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full range of abilities
Standard 2.1 Content and teaching strategies of the teaching area 
Standard 2.2 Content selection and organisation
Standard 2.5 Literacy and numeracy strategies
Standard 3.1 Set explicit, challenging and achievable learning goals for all students 
Standard 3.2 Plan, structure and sequence learning programmes
Standard 3.3 Use teaching strategies