Thinking about Book Clubs

One of the exciting parts of my school's literacy programme is the inclusion of book clubs.  Not just as extension for our high flyers but for everyone.  I'll admit that it's part of our programme that I'm not brilliant at implementing but I have big plans this term to improve that.

One of my existing book club groups has not loved their experience so far; I know that this is, in large part, my fault. I haven't given them as much guidance and input as I should have done. With this in mind I've created a couple of info graphic style posters and hand outs.

This first one is in response to some confusion about how a book club is meant to run.  If you click on the image you'll be able to download a copy. (I think? Please let me know if you can't!)

This second one is a quick little 'cheat sheet' to prompt the sorts of discussions that can happen in book club. Again, feel free to download it if you like.

What do you think? I'm keen for feedback.

Edit (August 17th 2015): You can read my follow up post here.

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 4 Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments

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

A Tool Box

As I grew up I loved to spend time with my dad. His work took him overseas more often than it left him in Australia so our time together was particularly precious. I rose before dawn to go running with him; I helped out in the garden way more than any teenager would want to do; I spent my holidays filing and photocopying in his office just to be near him. My favourite thing though was to help when he crafted something out of wood. It didn't happen often, but when it did... The results amazed me.

More than the results, his toolbox fascinated me. It was just an ordinary ol' tool box, but in the deep recesses of that box were tools that enabled him to take a lump of wood and create something beautiful or useful or... Just different.  It wasn't the tools that caused the change, that was Dad, but the tools enabled him to do it. 

Dad's toolbox was crammed full of tools and each time he pulled one out he explained its name and its use.  I was thinking about that today as I wandered the aisle at the shops seeking inspiration for my reading block. I was in the tools section (yes, I was getting desperate creative!) and could hear his voice patiently explaining the difference between a coping saw and a tenon saw.  

If this were a daytime movie there would be soft lighting and rousing music playing at this point, to alert everyone that my moment of brilliance is fast approaching.

At the end of the aisle was a pile, nay a mountain, of  red metal toolboxes - you know the old style ones?  A more obvious message there will never be. Dad, in his inimitable way, was reminding me that all I need to do is teach my students what the tools are and how to use them so they can fill their own toolboxes with the ones that work for them.

So what did I do? I bought a bright red metal toolbox and will take it to school tomorrow. Each time I introduce a new  tool (or strategy)  I will put it in the toolbox to remind us all that we can use it.  It will stay there ready for us whenever we want to improve our use of it, or compare it to another tool.  My bright red toolbox will sit at the front of our learning space holding the tools that will enable us to create beautiful, useful or even just different understandings. 

Dad would have turned 64 today. I hope he knows that he still helps me fill my toolbox.

Tweet tweet!

Follow me at @markeetarp
Or my class at @the67vrps

Do you tweet? I, personally, tweet and so does my class . I can't say I'm the world's most proficient user of twitter, and my class are still REALLY new to it BUT...

And this is a really big BUT...

It's fantastic! Get on it!!!

Just a sampling of reasons. (I'm sure there are a myriad that I'm not mentioning.)

• I've connected with a whole range of amazing educators I wouldn't otherwise 'know' or be able to learn from/with.  I am building my own PLN.
• Hashtags rock. No. Seriously. I could go on for quite some time about them but here are two great examples: 


• #hackhameastps: This is my school's hashtag. Primarily used by staff (and classes) this hashtag serves as a filter for things that we want each other to see. It might be our literacy coach @MelissaThiele1 passing on a great resource, or one of the other 6/7 classes (@MsLipczyksclass) sharing their latest media studies learning.
• #mathphotoaday: Every day for the month of June, my class will be tweeting a photo of a particular Maths concept.  We've used a google doc to arrange who will do what, and when. So far, admittedly it's only June 4th, it's been great. Our very first photo (about division) was 'favourited' very quickly by a Grade 3/4 class in Canberra. As you can see from the photo above, the very next day the same class tweeted back with the fact family for this particular division fact.  Amazing huh?

• There are literally hundreds of twitterchats each week. Free, fun, fast, friendly professional development on a topic of my choice? Um, yes please. I've been tuning to one in particular: #teacherwellbeingchat (Sunday at 8:30pm Adelaide time which is GMT +13.5) A teacher here in Adelaide facilitates a chat each week about a range of topics that all relate to teacher wellbeing. It's a great chance to check inand start the work week all zen. :) It meanders from sensible to silly and everywhere between. There are an absolute plethora of chats to try... I have a long list.  This blogpost talks about the importance of twitterchats. 
• Global connections - you know the kind that we all talk about being so important for the kids in this day and age? -  are very easy to make over Twitter. My class has now interacted with a handful of classes around the world; some close to home and others across the globe.  The content has been somewhat superficial to start with, but it's a start and the kids are excited.  Next we're planning to use twitter to get involved in a mystery skype session (ten minutes of asking another class questions to work out where they are located).

Lakewood is in Canada.
Woodend is just down the road.
(Mr Lamshed used to teach at our school.)

My last reason for loving twitter is that the last two days I've been able to follow the general gist of  Edutech 2014 without being there. Gotta love a hashtag that makes it possible to follow the back channel of a conference! 

Amusing sidenote: a few weeks ago I had a rather heated discussion with my principal (@bobthiele13) because he's uber keen for our whole staff to get on Twitter and use #hackhameastps as a way of supporting ongoing professional development etc. while I was trying to make the point that not everyone likes or feels safe in the very open environment of Twitter so we can't force them to do it. Well. Haven't I shot myself in the foot of that particular argument? Since that discussion I've jumped up and down with excitement over things my class is doing on Twitter (yes, physically jumped) IN FRONT OF HIM. And now I've blogged about my Twitter-love. Oh dear. There goes my credibility with that point. Maybe he won't read this... 

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 4 Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments.
Standard 6 Engage in professional learning.
Standard 7 Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community.

Student Voice

My school is part of a pilot project aligned with the South Australian Teaching for Effective Learning  (TfEL) Framework. We're looking at ways we can (do and should) use student voice and engagement to design learning programmes, and ultimately education systems, that intellectually stretch students and create powerful expert learners.

One part of the project involves seeking direct feedback from the kids about their learning. How do they feel about the learning activities they're doing? How do they learn best? What would they like to change about the way we 'do' learning in our class? Doesn't sound overly challenging or out of the norm except that we have to do it explicitly everyday and keep a record of it.  Other than an end of week written reflection (that is in students' diaries and goes home to show parents) most of these conversations are usually quite spontaneous and informal in my classroom. Whilst I act on what I learn from the conversations I don't keep particular records of them. Well, I didn't. I do now of course!

One way that I've found to keep a good record of the kids' feedback is through Socrative.  Socrative is a 'student response system' that is available on whatever device you want to use, either through the website or apps. I set a 'quiz', open it to the kids, they submit their responses, and Socrative emails me a report of their responses. I set questions like "I am still wondering about..." and "I learnt best when I..." and "The lesson would have been better if...". I have also started to include a silly multiple choice question that relates to something we're doing the next day. The kids LOVE it.  It's quick, simple and instant.  I put the teacher screen up on the board while they're doing it; it shows how many kids have logged into the 'quiz' and how many have submitted. It can also show the names of kids and a live coverage of how many questions they've finished.  

The report is a simple table that lists all the answers. (If you've set multiple choice questions (and listed a correct answer) the table marks those questions for you.) In terms of the way I'm using it: I have a daily record of this feedback. I'm able to scan all the answers to a question to spot trends and anomalies. I can quickly see what needs to happen more or less. Patterns emerge easily.

This isn't the only way I collect feedback and data but wow! It's certainly one way I'm particularly enjoying.

How do you collect this sort of feedback? How do you respond?

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 4 Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments.
Standard 6 Engage in professional learning.
Standard 7 Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community.

Sneaky little pleasure...

One of the best things about relief teaching? Seeing how other teachers work: seeing how their classrooms are set up; what resources they have (and actually use); what procedures and routines they have in place; the amazing lesson and unit plans and ideas; and what tricks of the trade they've discovered. I love it all! My days always end with a list of resources, ideas or routines that I want to investigate for myself. Sometimes I reflect on a resource and decide that it works well in that context but isn't necessarily a good match for me. Other times I'm blown away by the ingenuity of my fellow teachers. We are a creative bunch!

You know this stuff right?

So many new things to investigate this week but fairly close to the top of my list: dice mats. How much do you NOT love the sound of dice rolling across desks? The solution is so simple! Small mats of squishy PVC anti-slip draw lining. Not only does it muffle the noise but because it's anti-slip the dice don't roll away either. LOVE. IT.    The other nifty way I've seen to keep those dice contained is in little plastic containers. (You can see what I mean here on pinterest. Yes, I'm a pinterest junkie but in my defense I actually use a lot of the ideas I pin.) Just pop a couple of dice in a small plastic container and the noise is minimised and the dice stay in one place.


What clever ideas have you seen in action this week?

LOVE this calendar!

I have NO affiliation with this company but have completely fallen in love with this calendar. All of the images are children's book illustrations. They are beautiful! Imagine this in your classroom? Or even at home!  (To make it even better, it's formatted in such a way that when you're done with the calendar you can easily re-purpose the image in a 5*7 frame.)

It comes as a digital file for you to download and print as you wish. I plan to take mine to that local office superstore that I won't name (but may have gone weak at the knees at the idea of visiting a time or two) and have it printed professionally.

Go grab one for yourself from My Little Bookcase.

Cough, cough. I'm getting there.

OK, so I've been a tad quiet missing for a couple of weeks thanks to a delightful bout of some unnamed virus that masqueraded as whooping cough. Fortunately (for everyone) it wasn't whooping cough and after nearly three weeks I'm finally on the mend.  I've learnt a few things these past few weeks:

• Children have a sixth sense about their teacher's voice and grow quiet to watch it disappear.
• As soon as it's gone they make up for the loss by increasing the volume of their own voices.
• Children's empathy and concern for illness in others is matched only by their need to remind everyone that coughing and hacking is 'gross'. (They're correct, of course, but the constant refrain of 'ew' everytime I turn blue from coughing is not overly helpful.)
• Creative writing  (or not so creative, which in our case meant dictation straight from a novel) soothes the savage beasts has a calming effect on children.
• My tolerance for noise is distinctly lower after four nights of broken sleep, and almost imperceptible after five. (Good thing a school week has only five days!)
• Small group work sounds like a good idea for a teacher with little to no vocal range, except when all of the students are working in small groups and the associated noise, whilst full of rich learning discussions, is slightly higher than the five sleepless nights can tolerate. 
• My class works well while listening to quiet music: their previous teacher taught them that if she couldn't hear the music, they were too loud.  (Thanks Mrs. Jane!)
• It's OK to not plan every moment 100% thoroughly. Feeling like death warmed up has meant I've not planned quite as meticulously as I'd generally like to BUT by keeping my eye on the goals and intended outcomes has enabled me to plan  loosely but carefully. I'm still reflecting but aside from a few organisational hiccoughs (not having appropriate resources because I was slow off the mark before school and didn't collect them) I'm pretty happy with how we've traveled. I'll let you know as I reflect more.

A day off didn't kill me. I thought it might. Genuinely. I took only one day off  (and that had to be forced by my husband and a visit to hospital) and suffered through it feeling guilty and anxious. I needn't have. My class was shared by the principal (!) and a good friend so they were in great hands. And if they'd copped a shabby reliever? They would have coped. And so would have I.

So. I'm feeling somewhat better... 

Look out world, there's only a week and a half of school left from which I intend to squeeze as much as I possibly can. I wonder if my class realises that we're working right up until the end of the last day?

Using Evernote to capture a student using a
particular strategy during maths stations.

On another, related but different, note... Isn't technology wonderful? This isn't exactly groundbreaking news but these last few weeks have reinforced for me the value of technology: both in the classroom and for me as a professional. Just by way of a quick example, I've been using my tablet to snap photos of the kids as they work. I have the Evernote widget on my tablet which enables me to upload the photos directly to a notebook - either for that particular student or for the particular project.Using Skitch I can directly annotate the photos to point out exactly what I'm trying to capture. Or I can record the children's discussions and upload that directly to their folders. Love. It. Professionally I'm forming a network of other professionals to whom I'm linked on Twitter (and elsewhere) and from whom I am constantly learning. Whether they realise it or not, this quasi-PLN has kept me company (and interested) through many nights when sleep was not an option. 

Classroom Experiments

Yesterday I moved in with the class with whom I am to spend the rest of the year. The class' long term teacher is counting down the days until she becomes a first time mother and the children are grieving her departure. She has left me a lovely group of children with a broad range of abilities, interests and temperaments. So... my thanks to her!

And so... It's not my classroom BUT I'm not handing it back to anyone so it's more mine than the other two have been. Yay! Let the fun experiments learning begin!

I'm really proud of some of the work my last class did and will share that soon but I'm incredibly excited about what I'm doing with my new class. I've been reading, viewing and listening to a flood of inspirational educators recently and I'm adopting what I can into my own practice. Let me share just one:

Professor Dylan Wiliam is a 'teaching guru' who, amongst other things, argues that we can improve student engagement and success without spending squillions of dollars and has a whole toolkit of ideas to do so. BBC2 made a two part documentary about some of these ideas which is an easy but engaging way to spend a couple of hours. Some of his ideas are of the 'd'oh,why didn't I think of that?' kind, and others are a little more inspired.  I've taken three of these ideas and tweaked them.

My new class has already learnt that during class discussions we don't raise our hands unless to ask a question. I have all of their names on 'lollipop sticks' (actually they're tongue depressors because they're bigger and I don't have to strain to read the names, oh... and it's what we had in the art cupboard!) and every child needs to be prepared for every question or point. Everyone is engaged and thinking all the time. It's not just the usual kids with the answers raising their hands that have airtime but everyone. I LOVE this way of working. I'm also making a huge effort to listen to the answer and pull another name to give feedback/add to the answer/question the answer rather than simply say 'yes, great answer'. So much great thinking and discussion coming from just this change.

As the class is new to me, I didn't know everyone's name. I provided a simple template and some scrabble letters for them to cut & paste (that was purely because I liked the look and I needed something easy to read) onto a triangular prism folded name plaque. The other two sides have the words "I'd like some help please' and 'I understand!' printed on them. (This is a MAJOR tweak from an idea to use three coloured cups to indicate understanding.) While the children work at their desk they move their name plaque to the appropriate sign OR during direct instruction I ask them to hold up their plaques. I can then pull small groups who need help while the others move forward independently. I'm not sure who more loves this idea: me or the children.

Mini whiteboards are the best classroom tool! Today the students used them while they were working in pairs to show me the outcome of their discussion; individually to show me their understanding of a particular term; and in small groups to show me a life cycle diagram. Having the whiteboards held up for me to glance around the room meant I can quickly gauge understanding and better direct the rest of my instruction. LOVE IT!

Another work I'm enjoying at the moment is Harry Wong's First Days of School which prompted me to put together a powerpoint presentation with (just about) everything I wanted my class to know about me and my expectations. It set a great tone and there have been very few surprises for them as we've moved forward.

And forward we are moving. Forward with our experiments learning.