One down...

Thirty nine to go. And already the idea of it ending makes me sad. I have 21 delightfully challenging and interesting young people in my care, and I adore them!  My classroom is a peaceful and inviting place. My team comprises four very different individuals which makes collaboration interesting and productive. The wider staff is fun and supportive. The leadership team is great.  I love my new job.

I cry every single time I read this.
It deals with death so beautifully.

Some highlights so far:

1. Meeting my class. Starting to make connections. Watching tears well in one little man's eyes when I told him that I believe in him. (I said it many times because he didn't want to believe me; it was a little bit like that scene in Good Will Hunting where Robin Willliams' character tells Matt Damon's character that "it's not his fault".) 
2. Allowing my class to see me nearly cry while I read a picture book to them. (Yes, they are year 6/7s but nobody is EVER too old for good picture books. And this one is amazing.) 
3. Reading to my class. Reading with my class. Setting up the class library (well, more like guiding the children through the process because it's their library so they did it all). Starting our reading journals.
4. Reading the students' end of week reflections. (I insisted on at least one positive comment and one comment about future growth.) 
5. Collaborating with the other teachers in our 6/7 unit. Love it.
6. Hearing, from a parent, that one of my students already loves me (always gratifying right?) and is boring the family senseless with endless commentary about "things that Mrs RP said". I'd better keep that in mind hey?
7. Setting up a Facebook group for the parents of my class. Within 24 hours I have nearly half the class represented. How awesome is it that I can communicate so easily and directly with my parents?
8. The school's very well developed value system and use of Play is the Way. (If you're unfamiliar with PitW, I highly recommend you check it out.)

There are so many more, but off the top of my head this was a good start. In case it's at all ambiguous... I love my new job.

Let's Frame 'Em

I mentioned in my last post that I collected content for our end of year gifts by asking the children to make three positive comments about all the other people in the room. I love this project. The kids love this project. Their parents love this project. It's a winner. Take a look...

And it's so simple.

1. Collect as many positive comments about each child/teacher as possible. I've done this a couple of ways: by giving each child an A3 sheet printed with the class list with room for to write their comments next to the names; interviewing each child individually whilst sitting in front of my computer and typing their comments directly into a spreadsheet. It really depends on the age and ability of the group.
2. Collate all of the comments about each person into one digital file. Add the person's name.
3. Use one of the web 2.0 tools such as wordle.net to create a word cloud.
4. Print.
5. Frame.

The little hints that I have to share about each stage: 

1. First up let me tell you that this is the hardest part of the whole task:
1. Some kids just don't invite positive comments from their peers. You know the ones I mean: little Johnny who is still learning about social skills and personal hygiene. (Note: I'm not suggesting that little Johnny can't be described positively but that his peers aren't necessarily the ones who are going to do it.)
2. Getting appropriate comments without spilling the secret is, in the case of some children, impossible.  Again, you know the ones I  mean: the ones who think 'you're phat as!' is a compliment.
3. Getting comments that are one or two words long can be tricky. I encouraged the use of adjectives or two word noun groups.
4. In a class of 31 students and 2 teachers that's 32 lots of 3 comments. That's actually a lot of work for some kids; especially if you ban words like nice, cool and epic. (Which ,of course, I did.)
2. Can be time consuming and mind numbingly boring. (Also very funny. I had to laugh at 'he is learning not to hit me in the face so much and nearly always apologises now'.) Be mindful that if you are using wordle.net that the more frequently a word appears in the list the bigger it will be in the word cloud. If you want the person's name to stand out you need to add it however many times to make it appear most frequently.  Also... I used this stage to add any characteristics that I wanted to encourage.
3. There are a few around. I like wordle.net for its simplicity. It's a bit clunky and I get frustrated with having to reset the 'custom palette' BUT it does exactly what I want it to do, for free, pretty easily.
4. With wordle.net you can't save directly to a file (unless printing to a pdf in the print dialogue box) so I use a snipping tool to then save as a jpg. I then inserted the jpgs into a publisher document to get the exact size I wanted for the frames I'd bought. Have a play to find what works best for you.
5. I bought small inexpensive frames for the kids from Ikea. I glued a little slip on the back saying that these words were how their classmates and teachers had described them in 2013 and that we hoped it reminded them of the awesome time we spent together. 

Easy, a little time consuming but SO well worth the effort. I wish I could share the photos I took after I handed them out because the reactions were beautiful.  They have a longer effect too. A few weeks ago I ran into the mother of one of my students from last year who told me that it's still on her daughter's wall (a year later!) and that her daughter will often take it down to look at when she's feeling stressed about life. Gotta tell you: hearing that made my day. 

Should you ever decide to give it a go and run into trouble please get in contact and I'll see what I can do to help!

End of the Year Blues

I hate the end of the school year. Loathe it. Absolutely detest it. Not so much as a parent, but as a teacher it just sucks the life out of me.  I'm tired, I'm emotional, I'm done. And yet, as much as I desperately need the luxury of learning to sleep past 5:45am I don't want the year to end. I am not looking forward to the bell ringing at 2:30 on Friday. I dread that moment. In fact, I'm pretty sure I had a nightmare about it last night.

I know I'm not alone in this feeling, although you'd never think that if you listened to early morning staffroom conversations. I'm not sure why other people don't like the end of the year but here are my reasons:

• I love my job. I love the challenges, the opportunities, the variety. I often feel like I'm cheating somehow: how is it right that I get paid to have this much fun? Holidays are great'n'all but, for me, my job is just as enjoyable as most holiday time. (Which may say more about my holiday plans than anything else?!?!)
• I love my kids. Sure, there are times they drive me to distraction, but on the whole they are amazing. Both of my classes are astoundingly wonderful. I'm blessed with two groups of kids to love. I will miss them all terribly. I know this, because I still miss last years' kids terribly.
• I'm not a fan of packing up. This isn't to say that I'm a messy person, just that I MUCH prefer being creative and setting up awesome learning spaces than pulling them apart. Empty classrooms at the end of the school year look tired and forlorn. Interesting isn't it that the exact same space with the exact same furniture will look exciting and full of promise in a few weeks?

AFS offers programmes in more
than 80 countries around the world.

• I suck at goodbyes. I've known this for a while. When I was 17 I did a year long AFS student exchange to Honduras in Central America. The day I left my host family to return to Australia the airport security had to escort me through the departure gate because I was so distraught from the farewells. Some years later, in a volunteer role with the same organisation I was required to be at the airport as our international students returned home after their exchange here. I met most of these kids for the first time that day at the airport. I always cried before them, and usually long after they'd left because watching their goodbyes was so freaking difficult. I am not good at goodbyes. As a contract teacher I'm not sure what next year holds for me and so I will be leaving this school at the end of the school year not knowing if I'll be back next year. That's a bucket load of goodbyes. Argh!
• I'm not good at being still. Or doing nothing. Or relaxing. My husband really struggles with this. He can pull up a chair, pour himself a glass of wine and quietly watch the world around him. I, on the other hand, need to be doing something while we sit there: I'll chatter, I'll be researching something (on my smart phone), I'll be scribbling notes for some idea or other (usually also on my smart phone), I'll be playing sudoku (again, on my smart phone... I sense a theme here), I usually have a book in my bag ready to whip out at the slightest sign of prolonged sitting, I'll be people watching, I'll possibly be silently assessing the phonological development of some unwitting stranger, I'll always be moving. (Yes, I'm that person who has the radio and TV playing at the same time while I read.) So, y'all can imagine how I love holidays. The end of the school year means holidays. Lots of holidays.
• As I mentioned, I'm a contract teacher. Nothing else needs be said really.

So there we have it folks. I hate the end of the school year. 

Having said that, the holidays will give me the chance to catch up on writing all the blog ideas I've had lately. And sleep. And hang out with my OWN kids. And spend time with my husband. And finally sort out my office space. And catalogue my books. (Yep, I'm that kinda geek.) And see my teacher friends who are also too busy during term to do more than wave across cyberspace. And ride to the new coffee shop with my delightful neighbour. And crochet my awesome Very Hungry Caterpillar (my husband bought me a kit, and whilst I'm a complete noob at crocheting, I'm chaffing at the bit to give it a go). And well. I think I've made my point. I hate the end of the school year but I'll make it work for me. 

This post doesn't relate to the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers in any meaningful way because it's just a vent. Thanks for letting me getting it off my chest! 

Composite Classes...Yay or Nay?

Our current mainstream education system groups children based roughly on age and year level (with year level being a - usually- pretty arbitrary measurements of how long a child has been enrolled in formal education) rather than any real reflection of development or ability. We know that children develop (physically, emotionally and intellectually) in their own ways and other than some broadly reliable generalisations (boys develop gross motor skills faster than girls, while girls grasp fine motor co-ordination) at their own pace. If we follow this point to its logical conclusion: all age based groupings comprise a broad range of development and abilities. So, if we accept this as true and hold each individual child's development at the heart of our profession the debate about composite classes confounds me.

Whether I'm still too new to the teaching game to know any better, too idealistic to see, or simply too enthusiastic to care, I really like teaching composite classes. (I like them as a parent too. Scoff away, I actually do. They've been great for my kids.) Whether the reading age range is 6 - 13 in a year 3 class or  6 - 15 in a year 3/4 class, the challenge of meeting needs across a broad spectrum already exists.

Sure, the challenges that arise in delivering a mandated curriculum with year level specific outcomes are interesting but not insurmountable.Often, at least here in Australia, the curriculum demands development of big ideas and concepts rather than specific content. And when specific content is described, there are always ways to combine; extend; offer smaller groupings or independent learning activities. These are the good challenges of being a teacher! (They certainly beat the challenge of sending home children to homes where they're neglected or worse.) These challenges offer us the chance to be creative and make connections between learning areas and topics. These challenges allow us to step up and create amazing learning opportunities. These challenges allow our communities to see us as committed, passionate professionals.

Working together in a 5/6 class

Conversely, the range of development in a composite class offers a plethora of opportunities: scaffolding lower achieving students through working with higher performing students; extending higher achieving students through peer demonstration and tutoring; a broader variety of social groupings; peer mentoring and coaching; leadership opportunities; the possibility for broader diversity in ability groupings for instruction; necessary differentiation leading to more highly individualised leaerning plans... The list is practically endless.  Composite classes reflect reality; very few other situations in our society group people based solely on age because it's not an overly useful distinction to make. We aim to prepare our students for life after schooling; composite class structures offer another tool to do so.

So why the debate? And why the defensiveness that schools show in choosing composite class structures?  Yesterday I read an email from a local school about the class placement process for next year that included a very defensive (and almost hostile) announcement of an ongoing composite class structure. It made me sad to see that the school has such a negative attitude about next year's class structure because it has to include composite classes. Isn't it time for schools to embrace this concept and make the most of the opportunities on offer?

About Those Goals I Shared...

I just realised that I never checked back in to report on the goals I set myself last term and we're already halfway through the first week of this term. Oops.  Better late than never.

Numeracy

Scratch

• Linking technology with our numeracy program: I've read, and I've surfed, and I've played with a whole bunch of apps BUT I still don't feel particularly confident in this area. The best numeracy lessons in which technology has played a part have been ridiculously simple. (Not that simple's bad, it just feels like I'm letting the team down by not pushing the boundaries more.) One lesson I gave the class free rein to use the computers to create a 3D shape and demonstrate their understanding of that shape. There were triangular based pyramids hand drawn in MS Paint, there were rectangular prisms built in some Lego programme I wasn't even aware was on the computers, there were videos created on Scratch and a whole range of other offerings.
• Reflection during maths lessons: The whole class is regularly explicitly reflecting at the end of lessons. I either ask a specific reflective question or simply ask the students to reflect on their learning (and because my co-teacher is much better at this reflection caper than I am, and has been doing it all year, the kiddos are pretty comfortable with it). There is something incredibly satisfying to hear the students identify the strategies they've used and make links to other strategies and contexts. Sharing their reflections is such a powerful activity: it's almost possible to actually see the  links being formed in their brains as they listen to it each other. I. Love. It. 
• High quality assessment tasks: I may not have blogged about the development on all of these goals but I did a blog specifically about this one. You can read it here.
• Number sense development: I haven't had terribly much practical progress on this goal at all. I've been reading a pile of papers and articles but I'm still trying to synthesise the information into something practically useful. Some of the articles I'm reading give rise to other questions; for example this article by Heike Weise which links number development with language which set alarm bells ringing as I considered the literacy development of the students with weaker number sense.  I also found a not-insignificant school of thought that claims that number sense can't be explicitly taught, but "is a way of thinking that should permeate all areas of mathematics teaching and learning" (Reys 1994 quoted in Berch's 2005 article on Making Sense of Number Sense) which is both reassuring and terrifying. *sigh*  I think my challenge with this goal is related to the age of the children I'm teaching and my perception. I need to keep looking and learning. In the meantime I'll keep reinforcing basic number sense through all of our learning activities.  (As a side note, I did a great problematised situation - with a grade 2 class a few weeks ago - that demonstrated place value wonderfully. I can't take all the credit for it, as I 'borrowed' the idea from Ann Baker, but I will say that it involved over 2000 popsticks and less than 20 children counting them. I'll share photos when I get a chance.) 

Literacy

• Explicit teaching during guided reading: I've been linking specific teaching focuses from our literacy genre and using Sheena Cameron's Teaching Reading Comprehension Strategies work to guide my planning and teaching. I've been linking my texts to our history and science topics which has really helped as well. I'm still not super confident in this area but I'm improving. 
• Improved use of resources during writing activities: With my assistance the students are each creating their own Writers' Tool Box to use as they write. In a folder (that they keep in their desk drawer) they are compiling pages of helpful words and tips: synonyms for said/went/good/bad etc., lists of conjunctions and contractions; challenging spelling words and... Anything else we identify as useful. I encourage them to refer to their toolbox instead of asking me for help when they need writing help. It has some value, but I'm sure we'll keep refining it.
• Edublogs: You can read about that saga here. It's an ongoing challenge.
• Proofreading:  Um. Yep. Can't say as we've progressed at all here... *sigh* What c
  an I say? Watch this space?

So. Not an all around success but certainly not no progress either. I'm constantly learning. There have been a multitude of other new areas of growth over the last term alongside these goals I identified. I feel like I've grown and am eager to keep going.  Next steps in my learning?  I want to learn how to use ipads/tablets in the classroom in a meaningful way; I want to reflect on my planning process; I want to become conversant in the new geography curriculum; I want to learn how to be intentional about work/life balance... The list is endless really.  Anyone have any suggestions to help me prioritise?

I worried a bit about my priorities in this blog so I 'wordled' the text. (Did I really just turn a noun into a verb... Ugh! Ugly ugly ugly. Sorry!) Pretty relieved by the result though... I think the emphasis is in the right places. What do you think?

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 6.1 Identify and plan professional learning needs
Standard 6.2 Engage in professional  learning and improve practice

Standard 6.3 Engage with colleagues and improve practice

Standard 6.4 Apply professional learning and improve student learning

Artists in the making...

Met oorverband
Vincent Van Gogh 1889
Courtauld Institue of Art, London

At the end of last year, I taught a short unit about Vincent Van Gogh. Very short! In just under two weeks we learnt a little about him as an artist and person, viewed a number of his pieces and recreated one. Well, we didn't so much as recreate it as use his style to create our own.

Van Gogh is a great artist to look at in terms of engaging student interest. For a start he was mad! Not in the wearing funny clothing and liking alternative music way but in the needing professional support way. The children in my class were quite savvy about issues around mental health and were all very curious to know exactly what he was experiencing. Of course, we'll never know for sure but these students had plenty of suggestions (most of them sensible).

And of course, building on this point: cutting off a body part to send as a token of affection aimed at winning back an old girlfriend is always likely to capture the attention of middle primary students. Yep, that's the story they heard and ran with... Let me share that they didn't hear this story from me but another staff member at the school who was visiting our room at the time. My version, whilst not quite as exciting, seems to be the prevailing belief in the art world at the moment though: he'd been drinking with Gauguin and suffered from something like an epileptic fit brought on by the absinthe and accidentally cut off his ear. I'm pretty sure they'd have enjoyed that story too! 

Following this discussion we listened to Starry, Starry Night. (As proof that my husband is correct in claiming that I rarely listen to the words of the songs I enjoy, I never realised that Starry Starry Night was about Van Gogh. Yep, I just admitted that publicly. I'll never live it down now.)  

We viewed and discussed a range of art in small groups and discovered that over time the colour palate changed and so did the subject matter. I found outlines of a number of pieces so that we could see the way Van Gogh used lines to create movement and shape. 

 Stilleben mit 12 Sonnenblumen
Vincent Van Gogh 1888
Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Examining the sunflowers

Finally, we moved to our own creation. It was early summer at the time so the husband who'd laughed so mightily at my earlier ignorance redeemed himself by having sunflowers delivered to our classroom for us to examine before and as we created our own versions of  Van Gogh's Sunflower series.








I purchased a canvas for each child so that we could double up and use these as the end of year gifts for the families. (In a school with such high enrollments of children from religious backgrounds other than Christianity I was pretty keen to send home a gift that wasn't exclusively about Christmas.) I guided the children through the drawing of the horizontal line and a rough vase shape and then encouraged them to create their own interpretations.

I'd never heard such quiet painting!

Cooperation in colour blending.

The children rotated through our wet area in small groups in almost absolute silence as they painted their sunflowers. They cooperated to mix paints, and shared beautifully. It was an absolute joy to watch.  (And terrifying at the same time, the potential for trouble was HUGE!)

Most children chose to outline and add detail to their painting with a fine black pen.

 Each painting is unique yet remains a tribute to Van Gogh's work as inspiration.  Here is just a small selection of the finished works.

 Pretty amazing aren't they?

Money Money Money

It seems fitting that in a class with a rabid avid ABBA fan that one of the two maths topics I had to cover was money. Even more fitting is that one of the concepts we needed to talk about was money around the world...

Money, money, money. Makes the world go 'round.

The concepts on the table were that money is a decimal system and that different countries use different currencies (but that they too are mostly decimal systems) and making purchases and change to the nearest 5 cents.

I discovered early in the process (within three minutes of opening the discussion) that most of my students (years 3 and 4) didn't understand the concept of money itself. Of course, they understood how to use it, but not that money is a medium of exchange with a representative value. It's actually a very abstract concept that takes a little mental gymnastics to grasp. Luckily for me YouTube abounds with funny, and quick, clips about the history of money that explain it visually.

The class comprises children from a wide range of countries and so our discussions moved fairly naturally into the currencies of their home countries.  Gotta love those moments of classroom serendipity!  Follow up learning involved handling foreign currencies, exploring their shared and different characteristics and searching a world map for their origins.

The currency we were using has been collected over a number of years from my, my family's and friends' adventures.  One of my favourite teaching moments so far has been the look on a student's face when she picked up a banknote and realised that, like her, it was Mongolian. To watch her move around the room showing  her classmates made me feel like I'd won the lottery because, ladies and gentlemen, that made all the abstract, conceptual, airy fairy talk about money MEAN something to every child in the room. Five minutes later we had a rerun with another student with Fijian money. Woot woot!

Here's a quick question for you... Which country has ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS printed on the rim of its coins (as being examined in the photo on right about)?








Being so close to Christmas opportunities to practise purchasing and making change were plentiful. My local department store generously provided me with a class set of catalogues from which each student wrote an unrestrained (and almost invariably obscenely huge) wishlist. For many of the children the challenge lay in tallying their items' costs because it was their first experience adding decimals. (Calculators were well used!) The funniest part (for me at least) came when I later gave them each a budget of roughly half their individual original price tally and they had to modify their wish list and tell me how much change they'd get from their budgeted amount. Ha! Yes, I am that mean!

Following this we planned a class market. As a class we designed a currency - recalling the shared characteristics of the foreign currencies and that it needed to be a decimal system - and formed sales units. Each sales unit designed and produced a small paper based Christmas product (i.e. cards, wrapping paper, note pads, gift tags, post cards) and set a price point. (Four of the five groups discovered the efficiencies of a production line which resulted in some pretty challenging conversations.)  Each child received a small payment and trade opened. Some stalls sold out while others struggled but... Everyone bought and sold something, several somethings actually! Our neighbour teacher came to do some Christmas shopping also which pleased the children immensely.

At the end of the day, the lessons learnt were many and varied. Perhaps the most interesting - particularly at this time of endless retail torture therapy - was that it's hard to work behind a sales desk making change and keeping up with customers' demands. I wonder if that experience will stay with them?

Possible (if not overly successful) cycles of life

Our science topic to finish off the year was life cycles.  The curriculum standard says 'living things have life cycles' which is pretty explicit wonderfully broad and allowed for plenty of creativity in our classroom learning programme. We looked at both a conceptual understanding of life cycles and an experiential understanding with several live examples in the classroom.

Our investigation took us from the ubiquitous butterfly through silkworms, frogs, chickens and humans to peas, beans and sunflowers. We drew life cycles, we labelled life cycles, we wrote about life cycles, we created life cycle art and we observed life cycles.

We tried to hatch silkworms from eggs. Tried. And for about three hours were mildly successful: three eggs hatched and for a very brief period we were able to watch the tiniest caterpillars any of us had ever seen munch away (on the mulberry leaves my husband delivered upon taking my frantic "one's hatched!" phone call) before they curled up and dropped off the mortal coil.  Whilst not the most effective of demonstrations in terms of life cycles, it was a great opportunity to discuss science as a human endeavour and the scientific inquiry process. Not all experiments succeed - and that outcome is, in itself, a result to be analysed and evaluated.

For some reason everyone loved handling them.
Kinda creeped me out though!

We also kept mealworms, with limited success. My research lead me to believe that mealworms are SUPER EASY to keep and will change into meal beetles within three weeks. They are, but they didn't. Term finished a week ago but I'm still waiting. If you live in Adelaide and want to go fishing anytime soon, look me up: I've got bait for you!






It wasn't all doom and gloom though. One of the other classes in our school was incubating chicken eggs. We kept track of those and were there to see the chicks the day they hatched.

Planting the peas.

We planted peas and whilst didn't have time to watch them through to flowering, we did watch them right through germination.

We planted the peas in empty CD cases. As they germinated we were able to see both the roots as they moved downwards and the shoots as they grew upwards.We set them in the window to grow, the case acted as a mini glasshouse and we saw AMAZINGLY quick growth.

The children took great pride in the growth of 'their' pea and went to great efforts to keep them watered. (Removing the CD insert leaves a narrow empty band on one side of the case which enables watering with a pipette/syringe.)

Looking out of our window.

Looking in our window.

Day 1.

Watering

Day 21.

Check out this pin to see where I found the idea.  (Loooove Pinterest!)

The culminating activities for this unit of work were a double page spread magazine article (for a local science magazine for children) and a whole class game show. I have to say... I think I learnt almost as much about life cycles as the children did.

Shoot for the stars...

Did you know that Uranus and Neptune are blue - in part - because of cow fart (methane) gas? No, neither did I until I discovered it with my class of 5 and 6 year olds a couple of weeks ago. It's amazing what you can learn with kids leading the adventure!

The other thing I didn't know about space until just a few weeks before that particular life changing discovery is that space (in the blue fart gas giants sense) doesn't feature in the ACARA  content descriptors until Year 3 and then again in Year 5. And so what does an intrepid space explorer do?

Well...After a bit of hyperventilation and a good swig of a lovely Clare Valley shiraz I decided that I would use space as a carrier for the 'Science as a Human Endeavour' and 'Science Inquiry Skills' strands. And in case you were wondering, this meant working towards these descriptors:

Science as a Human Endeavour

Nature and development of science: Science involves exploring and observing the world using the senses 

Science Inquiry Skills

Questioning and predicting: Respond to questions about familiar objects and events

Planning and conducting: Explore and make observations by using the senses

Processing and analysing data and information: Engage in discussions about observations and use methods such as drawing to represent ideas

Communicating: Share observations and ideas

My unit plan grew around these goals. The topic could have been gyprock or giraffe mating habits but... Well... I don't know much about the first and, to be honest, even less about the second, so space  seemed like a pretty safe option. 

I collected a whole pile of books (yes, the old school style ones with pages that can - and do - rip), some charts, some posters, a load of youtube clips, some models, some blow up globes, a lot of space stickers, a lovely quilted wall hanging featuring photos of space, my very special hand painted space shoes (they're amazing - go check out the artist's blog entry about them ) and set them out in front of the class and asked what they  already knew about space.

"Space holds up the moon!"

"There are asteroids in space, but mainly in earth."

"The sun has grey spots on it where it goes out until someone lights it again."

"There are planets on earth and the sun is in space."

"The sun goes down into the ocean at night." 

You get the idea. Following this we worked with some Grade 5 and 6 students to explore the books and charts before deciding, as a class, that we wanted to explore the space around earth - which I expanded to mean the solar system. We decided on some questions we wanted to answer about each planet and 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1! Blast off! We became space explorers.

As you can imagine it's a little hard to use your senses to explore space in a particular meaningful way and so I had to get a little creative. We held 'moon' rocks, and tried to land on a gas giant by jumping into the air in the playground. We compared the number of moons of each planet. We all span around the sun to understand day and night and drew great big orbit rings on the carpet to follow to understand why the further away from the sun the longer the orbit takes.  We learnt that some planets' days are longer than than their years - and how that related to our spinning and orbiting.

We created a journal of our explorations. Each day we visited a new planet - we knew the way because we learnt a 'cool' rap early in our exploration - and created a page for our journals. Each child chose what to include in their own journal and I helped with vocabulary and spelling.  (The literacy component of the whole thing was quite astounding - I was stunned at the writing achievements.) We ordered planets and we made a space display of our favourite facts. We sang, we danced and generally lived it up as space explorers.


Did we meet the goals though? Did we explore and observe with our senses? Definitely (even our sense of smell was involved once we learnt about Uranus and Neptune)! Did we respond to questions about familiar objects and events? Not only did we respond but we posed questions. Did we plan and conduct inquiry? Yes, with all of our senses. Did we discuss our observations and represent ideas? All day! (I think I owe some parents an apology for their children's latest obsession!)  Did we share ideas? Um... yes. Yes we did.

At the end of the day the children proudly took home a completed Space Exploration Journal and a whole range of science experiences. I probably learnt almost as much about space as they did but more importantly I learnt valuable lessons about teaching Science as a Human Endeavour and Science Inquiry Skills and about myself as a teacher. Onwards and upwards... Shoot for the stars and all that jazz.

Did I mention how much fun we had?

Wanting.

This whole teaching caper is rather exhausting. In fact I'd probably go further and say there are times when it's overwhelmingly so.

Part of my problem is that I want too much. I want to plan amazing, engaging and rich learning activities. I want to deliver a learning plan with shape, purpose and fun. I want to create meaningful and aesthetically pleasing  resources. I want to read everything that comes across my desk. I also want to keep my desk clear so that when, no if, I get the chance to sit at it I can actually work there. I want to talk to the other teachers and learn from their experiences. I want to reflect on my practice more. I want to learn to document better. I want to use more of the amazing things I'm learning from the people I'm starting to follow on twitter (look me up: @MarkeetaRP) and other places. I want to sit and chat with my kids (the ones at home too). I want to spend time with my new husband. I want to maintain and build my relationships with friends - old and new. I want to use some of the hundreds of cook books on my shelf. I want to finally unpack (since I moved in July). I want to go to bed before midnight. I want... I want... Oh.

I want to do it all. And I'm trying. Maybe it's not the teaching caper that's so exhausting after all?