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
Today I heard something that made my heart sing. I had asked the kiddos to get out their writing books because we were going to do a quick write. One of my very reluctant writers responded with
"Oh yeah, I love quick writes!"
Without a drop of sarcasm. Oh yeah indeed! He went on to write nearly half a page in ten minutes. That might not seem like a lot, but for him it's a massive improvement. And the pride on his face was spine tingling.
Our quick writes play an important part in our writing block. I provide a prompt (such as 'the door slammed...'), and occasionally some sort of parameter (such narrative), set the timer and say GO. Ten minutes later I say STOP and depending on whatever else we've got going on during our writing block we may swap with a critical friend or just move on.
There are multiple purposes and benefits of quick writes. For the kiddos: improving stamina and creative fluency; regular chances to practise being a critical friend; playing with different styles without committing to a lengthy piece; and as it turns out a great sense of success because ten minutes is long enough for confident writers to get stuck into it and short enough for less confident writers to get something on the page without being overwhelmed.
For me: during the ten minutes I roam the room and observe physical writing practices (I'm amazed at the range of pen grips of my kiddos!); reading the responses allows me to see 'raw' writing giving me a wealth of information on which to based specific feedback and give NSLs; and lots of giggles.
The topics are sometimes serious and sometimes silly. The results are always interesting. Check out these gems:
"I sit in a lonely room with only a vase on a table."
"Some creepy sicko had created a vase of death."
"The vase's pattern was quite intricate, made up of runes and symbols and drawings depicting a beautiful planet."
"What took so long?" [the character had claimed he needed to go to the toilet but was gone for 30 minutes] "Because I drank lots of water I needed a really long wee."
"My heart was beating out of my chest."
"Roses - red as blood."
"He was very picky - he wanted the taste of human flesh in his teeth."
I'm always happy to take suggestions for future topics. (It's a bit like #28daysofwriting really... In MANY ways.)
This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers... Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning Standard 5 Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning
I spent less than 5 minutes in my classroom today. For most of the day I was within ten metres of our main door but I didn't go in. No fancy new 'hands off' teaching technique: just an assessment day. Today I ran Fountas & Pinnell Benchmark Assessments on my kiddos. Most of them anyway.
Prior to today I had run precisely two F&M assessments on my own, and observed two others. Today I did seventeen - many of which included two or three levelled texts. To say that my head is spinning right now is an understatement. I think I'll be ticking words and writing SC in my sleep... As I dream of, tomorrow, assessing the four kiddos who weren't at school today.
These are the last assessments I have to do to complete the battery our staff agreed to perform as our baseline data for the year. As with most schools, we benchmark our reading levels a couple of times a year. Our school will, over the course of this year, be moving from using PM Benchmarking to F&P. Our literacy committee and leadership team decided that F&P was a more appropriate assessment tool for our school as it assesses right through to a reading age beyond primary school age. (Check out the correlation between colour banded levels and F&P here.)
I was pleasantly surprised by the comprehension section of F&P. There are no question, just a range of prompts and some some suggested key understandings. Beyond the broader age range, this is, in my opinion, the key advantage of F&P. Through these 'comprehension' discussions I was able to hear the reading strategies my kiddos are using - or not. One student told me that he'd made a text-to-self connection with one part of the story which helped him clarify an unfamiliar word. I nearly wept at hearing this: we've been focussing on clarifying in our reading block for the last week and a half. Another student told me that she'd used her prior knowledge to infer the feelings of a character. Still another predicted that cacophony had something to do with sounds because she knows the morpheme phone.
Then there were the kiddos who came across an unfamiliar word and just skipped it. And the ones who couldn't explain how the author had achieved a particular effect. And those who couldn't retell the story. As each kiddo left me, I placed their name into the boxes on the small strategy group sheet my deputy principal had suggested I used. It's an A4 page with 20 squares. Each has a strategy or small group focus at the top. It sounds like such a simple idea but it works brilliantly! (I'd previously used something much less formalised so I felt like a bit of dill for not thinking of it myself. (I'd scribbled areas of growth as I discovered them and added names as I went.) I've come away today with a plan. Hooray!
I don't love spending time away from my classroom, but today the benefits far outweighed any other problems that arose. (And arose they did... The kiddos were mostly self-regulated but not in the same way they usually are. They were pretty engaged but not like normal.) I did love being able to spend some one-on-one time with each kiddo talking about their reading; and I loved learning about them. I can't quite say I love having a range of data on which to base my planning but I do appreciate it.
I feel the need to link this to my recent post about assessment. My take home message from that post was that my kiddos don't mind assessment if they understand its purpose. Today I made sure to explain to each of my kiddos that this assessment was for ME to learn about their reading strategies so that I could better meet THEIR needs. A couple really took this to heart and pointed out things that they don't feel confident doing: "I need help with inferring, make sure you write that down". Now that's what I call students taking advantage of an opportunity!
This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers... Standard 1 Know the 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 5 Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning Standard 6 Engage in professional learning
We hired a pile of DVDs this weekend - with the intention of kicking back and relaxing in quasi-Valentines Day style. One of the picks was Detachment starring Adrien Brody. Have you seen this movie? Here's the preview:
I'll freely admit I'm the kind of tragic who usually enjoys 'teacher' movies. Not this one. Detachment is overwhelmingly confronting. It focuses attention on, funnily enough, detachment in our schools and society in general. It is in your face, brutal, honest and powerful. We sat in stunned silence for several minutes after the credits finished.
The problem with detachment, as a concept, for me is not that I'm detached. It's that I teach in and through relationships. I don't detach. (And I worry about that too, but I'll come to that later.) I watched this movie feeling like parts of it were in a foreign language. Then teachers would talk about community and I would understand again. The notion of detachment in schools puzzles me. And yet, there are huge segments of our industry that advocate, even require, detachment.
We've known for a long time that learning is a social activity (think about Bandura for example); and we know that learning only happens when children feel safe (think about the neuroscience of trauma) and supported. So why is there a growth in detached teachers and communities, and in advocacy for it?
Is it too dangerous? Detachment certainly reduces the likelihood of vicarious trauma, and of being accused of being attached. Is it too hard to manage? Detached relationships are more likely to follow straight paths and flow charts. Is it too personal? Detached relationships don't blur the line between school and community. Is it too scary? Detachment removes the risk of being hurt. You know what? I don't buy it.
Detachment is hurting our children. It's hurting our community, and it's hurting us as individuals. I can't do what I do and be detached from my kiddos. They're a huge part of my life: I spent HOURS with them most days of the week. I don't want to spend that sort of time with people from whom I'm detached.
This movie disturbed me because I see detachment happening around me. Not in my school. Not at all. But around me. In other schools and in our communities. I see children slipping through the cracks because the adults with agency are so detached from the realities of these kids' lives that they don't see what's happening. I see families disintegrating because every member is detached from the others that no one notices. I see schools taking such a hands off approach that kids are going hungry. I don't want to see it anymore. If everyone, and I mean everyone from the youngest of children to the oldest of grannies, could just reach out and 're-attach' think of the change we'd see.
We all know that I'm an early career teacher, and an overly-principled one at that. I realise that what I've written today is highly idealistic and naive. That doesn't leave it without merit though. Think about what you can do to reach out this week.
On a totally side note: I do sometimes worry that I haven't learnt the art of professional detachment. You know the one they tell us about while we're training? I don't worry a lot, because I have strategies in place to deal with vicarious trauma, exhaustion etc., but I do worry. I guess the point of my post is that I don't see huge value in detaching more than I do now, but... Self-care is important. Ideas?
This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers... Standard 1 Know the students and how they learn Standard 4 Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments
Standard 7 Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community
Our library borrowing time is Friday right after lunch. I'm pretty transparent in my reasons: we're all tired by the end of the week and most of the kiddos are hot and bothered after running around like mad-men during their lunch break. We all benefit from sitting down and relaxing over a shared picture book. My love of picture books is well known (here and at school) and so it makes sense to harness that obsession passion to help us through an otherwise challenging afternoon.
Sometimes we pick something topical and chat over the connections we can make between it and our other learning. Other times a student will slip a book into my hand and give me a quick nod or a shy smile that makes it all but impossible to say no to them. If there's something on the 'new books' shelf that catches my eye I throw caution in the wind and read a book to the class before previewing it. (I figure that if our teacher librarian has chosen it for the school it can't be horrendous!) My favourite is when we read old favourites and share text-to-text connections we've made over our time together.
It's a bit early in the year for any 'old' favourites with this class but my loopers (a term my husband coined this morning because he's tired of hearing me distinguish between my old kids - the ones who've come with me this year, and my new kids) have been pretty vocal in reminding me of some of last year's favourites. I read one on Friday because it happened to also be one of my all time favourites, and we studied it during our 'author study' so I wanted to see what my loopers came up with during the discussion.
And boy was I amazed. They lead the discussion. They discussed Margaret Wild's craft in this book and linked it to others; they talked about the relationship between the text and the illustrations; they helped the younger students draw inferences and find evidence in the text or their own schema to support them. I sat in shock delight.
In case that wasn't brilliant enough? Toward the end of the discussion, one of my loopers who struggled a little last year piped up with,
"And right at the end, I think Little Humpty talks about himself in the third person doesn't he? Just like Dobbie does in Harry Potter?" Words failed me. Well, that's a lie. Words never fail me. I grinned. Like a cheshire cat. And asked her to explain why the author may have done that.
"Well, my little brother talks like that sometimes, so maybe Margaret [yes, they referred to the author by first name!] to remind us that Little Humpty is a kid?"
Yes. Yes indeed.
I sometimes worry that in a year 6/7 class I rely on picture books too much, but then consider all the novels, poems, graphic novels and non-fiction books we also use. And I think of examples like the one I've just described. We read this book, in part, probably half a dozen times last year. Individual students poured over it many more times. It is familiar to my loopers in a way that a novel couldn't be, and that allowed for my student to make her connections.
Picture books. Gotta love 'em right?
This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers... Standard 1 Know the 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
For a whole slew of reasons, the word neuroplasticity has been part of everyday conversations in my family for a long time. I don't hear it many other places though. And I'll be honest, I don't use it at school very often. Which raises an uncomfortable question for me: why not?
Simple answer: I don't know.
I read an article a couple of days ago titled The Neuroscience Of Learning: 41 Terms Every Teacher Should Know which lead me to another article The Simple Things I Do To Promote Brain-Based Learning In My Classroom. This second one really made me stop and think. I already use many of the strategies Judy Willis mentions in her article but I rarely explain (to my students) the reason I use them. It's time for me to harness MY neuroplasticity to change my thinking and incorporate more explicit neuroscience teaching and learning into our programme.
So here's what I'm going to do: starting next week I'm making time to teach my students about their brains. We know, from research done by people like Judy Willis, Peter Marshall, Christina Comalli and Carol Dweck, that teaching children about their brains improves - in my words - their ability to use them. Three short sessions each week for a few weeks seems to be the optimum for a jumpstart into these understandings, which is easy to manage. I'll keep you updated on how we go.
I'm still not entirely sure how I'm going to start this off, but I've been having a look at a few youtube clips (my kiddos respond well to a tuning in activity like videos). I found a channel that has some short sharp videos that might work. Here's their take on neuroplasticity.
What do you think?
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
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."
"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
