I'll take my wins where I can get them!

Sometimes, when you least expect it, you have a real win. The other day I was in a year 1/2 classroom for 40 minutes. If I'm honest it was such a flying visit I can't remember a single child's name (actually, that's a lie: there's one and I'm sure you can imagine why) but it was a fantastic visit.  (And it was in front of a pre-service teacher which adds to the win as far as I'm concerned! Another strategy for her to take away from her experience!)

I broke the class into groups of four (ordinarily I'd let them do this themselves, but I didn't know them, they didn't know me and I only had 40 minutes) and told them that the activity we were going to do was actually designed for an older class but that I was pretty sure they'd do a good job. Nothing like ramping expectations!!!

I explained that one person from each group was going to come to the front of the room and study an image for 30 seconds while the other members waited silently. This first person would then return to the group and start drawing what they remembered while another person came up and looked for 30 seconds. Rinse and repeat until all four members have contributed to the drawing. At this point I gave them 30 seconds to discuss their drawing as a group and make changes if they wanted to. Then they chose one last person to come and have one last look before they made any last minute changes.  

Keep in mind that this whole process was silent except for the 30 seconds of small group discussion.

Oh. My. Goodness.  The pre-service teacher and I were amazed.  Have a look at the source image and then the copies:

Year 1/2 Solar System Memory Team Copies by Markeeta Roe-Phillips.
Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

The concentration and determination shown by these children was incredible and our discussion afterwards surprised me. I asked them to share with a partner what strategies they used to get the image into their brain and then out again, and then those partners shared with another pair and again with the group. The responses included:

• I paid close attention to the things on the page and tried to remember them like photos in my head.
• I have a book about space at home so I already knew the names so I just had to remember the shapes.
• I knew we were drawing space because I was the last person so I already knew what I was looking at so I was just looking for things on the sheet that we didn't have on ours.
• I just tried to remember it, I don't know how I did that.

So this prompted a discussion about prior knowledge. A number of children thought that using prior knowledge was cheating! I reassured them that it wasn't cheating, in fact it was something that good learners and thinkers use a lot to help them learn, understand and remember new things.  Lots of darling little ooohs and aaahs! 

We talked a lot about memory and different strategies to help us remember things. And then I congratulated them for having a great metacognitive conversation. "A great meta-what Mrs RP?" Got 'em, hook, line and sinker!  So we talked about how good thinkers and learners also think about how they think and learn, then quickly transitioned into a quick collaborative narrative building session. Oh boy. This teacher's lil' nerdy brain was doing a happy dance for  quite some time afterwards.

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

Fractured circles

Robert Delaunay, 1912-1913,
Premier Disque
Private collection

Another art lesson I enjoy teaching on relief days is called Fractured Circles. Well, that's my name for my version of this activity because it reminds me of a series of quilts my mother made with the same name. It's based very loosely on a number of paintings by Robert Delauney, an artist who helped introduce colour into Cubism.

Fractured circles is another simple activity that can be finished in one session with loads of potential for expansion. The finished products look great on their own but even better displayed as a group.

The premise is quite simple: the children each create an artwork of concentric circles which are then cut into quarters and swapped with other children. The resulting artworks are all connected but also fractured. The class I was teaching the day we created the art in the photos had a broad range of fine motor development and so there was a range of support given in that regard. The concept of the patterns continuing around the whole circle also required a LOT of discussion.

I've created templates that I'm happy to share (just leave a comment and I'll email it to you - I'm still trying to learn how to link to a document... tips are also most welcome).

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1.1 Physical, social and 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 & teaching strategies of the teaching area 

Standard 3.5 Use effective classroom communication

Standard 4.1 Support student participation

Positive and negative space

I spent two fascinating days relieving in a grade 2 class right at the end of last term.  Amongst some other cool teaching and learning activities we made positive and negative space art pieces.  They were great fun to make and look fantastic.  

As you might have come to expect, the inspiration for this came from Pinterest (here).  I pinned this some time ago and promptly forgot that there were instructions. When the time came to use the idea I just ran with the visual image and 'had a go'. Oh well. Ours are a little different!

I started the lesson by introducing the concept of positive and negative space in images on the interactive whiteboard. (I found this website helpful to refresh my understanding of the art concepts.) We pointed out negative space in the images around the room and talked about how important it is to forming the positive images we see.  I demonstrated the very first steps of the project and talked explicitly about my expectations. We also talked about symmetry (the shape needed to be symmetrical and drawn with the axis of symmetry on the fold mark so that it could be easily cut out) and patterns (I asked for the coloured paper to be covered in an artistic pattern).

Being a grade 2 class the range of fine motor skill development was quite wide. You may be able to see the range of complexity in the patterns the children created. The challenge of cutting out the shapes amused the whole class for a few minutes, before becoming quite challenging for some children. I helped those who needed extra support with both the cutting and positioning of their positive and negative spaces. 

This particular lesson worked well in a relief situation for a number of reasons:

• It was reasonably quick so we could start and finish it in one session.
• It's not a messy activity requiring huge quantities of resources.
• It introduced and developed understanding of an important and discrete art concept.
• It allowed all students to be successful.
• It could be linked to other maths concepts (symmetry, pattern etc.) very easily.
• It could be used to look at other art concepts (colour etc.) easily.

I can see myself repeating this lesson with other classes. Do you have a  great relief art lesson you re-use?

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1.1 Physical, social and 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 & teaching strategies of the teaching area 

Standard 3.5 Use effective classroom communication

Standard 4.1 Support student participation

Another confession...

I have a confession to make: I've been putting off writing on this blog.  This past term I've been a relief teacher and, on more than one occasion, fell into the trap of thinking of myself as just a relief teacher which meant that anything I taught was just relief teaching and of little value.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see the implications that kinda thinking has for this blog.

You know what though? I'm not just a relief teacher. Or just a contract teacher. 

I. Am. A. Teacher. 

So, my months of self-doubt and questioning are over. A couple of shares to get this blog going again:

• Remember how one of the things I love about relieving is learning from other teachers? Well, I recently stumbled over these photos that I took a few months ago. If you're a fan of  Look Say Cover Write Check as a spelling activity, this is an awesome way of doing it. Using an A4 card folded into thirds you can make neat little folders that can be stored easily and reused for the whole year (or quite some months at the very least.)

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• I taught design and technology (school wide) for a few days early in the school year.  One of the age groups made trioramas with models made from air dry glue (the recipe for which I found here on pinterest). I asked the students to show me something they did or somewhere they went during the holidays. 

•  I took a four week contract in a reception class at the end of term 1 while their regular teacher was on long service leave. I was very conscious of leaving very clear notes about what we did while she was gone and so I started gluing small slips into the students' book explaining what we had done. I hand wrote specific notes about each child when I glued them in. I was particularly pleased to be able to communicate so clearly with the regular teacher about progress and  how I differentiated the children's learning activities. It took only a few minutes because I used my lesson planning notes. I hope to continue this practice as I move into my new contract.
  I think it also serves well in demonstrating my engagement with  a slew of the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers.

So, I'm back. I'm excited to be sharing a grade 3/4 class with an inspiring teacher. I have a .4 contract for the rest of the year and will also be available for relieving for the other three days of the week.  It's going to be a busy couple of terms,  but now that our house renovations are coming to a plateau for a few months it will be manageable. Stay tuned!

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?

Finally.

All through my education studies we, as undergrads, were told how hard it was going to be for us to secure employment as teachers. The message driven home was that unless we were prepared to move to the outer boondocks we'd be extremely lucky to work in anything close to a fulltime capacity for quite a while after graduation. Like a lot that we heard at uni, this little gem of (mis)information was not particularly helpful or relevant to me.

I finished my studies in July, registered as a teacher a couple of days later and started work - as a temporary relief teacher - the following week. Since that first day the total number of days outside of school holidays and weekends that I've not worked is two. Two days in over a term. Not bad for an inexperienced newbie who thought she'd be lucky to work one or two days a week!

I stumbled into a school which was rather keen to find new blood (in the relief teacher sense). On my 5th day of teaching they offered me a two week position which later extended to six weeks. Another four week position followed and then another six week position. All back to back, and all in the same school. I realise that this is not the standard experience of a new teacher BUT... BUT... It is my experience and I love it! After all the years of studying and looking forward to being in my own classroom... I LOVE IT!

Whilst I don't technically have my own classroom yet because I'm minding other people's classes I am teaching in the same classroom with the same children for extended periods. Finally I am IN THE CLASSROOM.