Some Choices Make Me Sad

Choices by Markeeta Roe is licensed under a
  Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This afternoon I helped one of my young people choose some learning tasks to keep him busy tomorrow while he's suspended.  I loathe suspension as a concept. Loathe it. I feel like a complete failure as a teacher. I question all of my choices: everything I did or didn't do that might have contributed to the situation. In some cases, it's really clear that none of my choices would have influenced the outcome at all. Other times, it's a little harder. Today it's harder.  Don't get me wrong: rationally, I understand that the choices this young person made were not my choices. As a relational teacher though, I can't help but wonder where I could have made different choices that would have helped him make different choices. I'm not arrogant or naive enough to think I could have prevented this, but I do need to reflect on the choices I've made.

And I will reflect, but for now: I'm sad. I'm sad for the choices that this young person made that lead to this point; for the choice that we, as a school, had to make; that this is the only choice left to our school to protect the rights of the many (at, what some might say, the expense of the rights of one); but most of all for the fractured relationships left in the wake of this choice.

Choices huh?

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...

Standard 4 Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments

Percy's Complication

To round out last year, my colleague and I cranked out a unit of learning based on Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson The Lightning Thief. We covered a ridiculous amount of ground in the last couple of weeks, and the kids loved it.  Who am I kidding? I loved it.

So, when I found out that the history topic my current class needed to learn about was Ancient Greece, I could feel Percy tapping me on the shoulder. I quickly bought the ebook for my iPad and set to work planning.

The learning outcomes for this unit are quite different (and the kiddos are brand new to me) so our learning is, of course, very different. One thing I was super keen to keep though was a narrative project. The basic premise: choose an Ancient Greek god and write a narrative with the demigod child of that god as the protagonist. The god must be involved in either the complication or the resolution somehow.

And therein lay the problem or the complication.  I discovered pretty quickly that the class needed a review of narrative structure. (Ha! See what I did there? Oh dear, I'm laughing at my own jokes. That's sad.)

I gave out sticky notes and we used everyone's contribution to co-construct a shared understanding.

Plot Mountain Anchor Chart by Markeeta Roeis licensed under a 
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Plot Mountain Anchor Chart Introduction Detail  

by Markeeta Roe is licensed under a 

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Plot Mountain Anchor Chart Series of Events Detail

by Markeeta Roe is licensed under a 

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Plot Mountain Anchor Chart Characters Detail 

by Markeeta Roe is licensed under a 

Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Again, the anchor chart has been a great scaffolding tool for many of the kiddos. They've also been working with a graphic organiser I created to mirror the chart. I've built the organiser into the project's assessment rubric and conferred during this pre-writing stage to offer 'feedforward' (rather than 'feedback').  As fate would have it, I happened to read a blog post (that you can read here) about this very idea over the weekend.

“Avoiding Masterchef style feedback” a new post about feedback and critique https://t.co/XiwiUE9pjc

— Tom Barrett (@tombarrett) June 13, 2016

@tombarrett Great piece. Highlights -for me- the importance of giving feedback at sts' pre-writing point. Need to do more of this. Thanks!

— Markeeta RoePhillips (@MarkeetaRP) June 13, 2016

It was rather affirming to read, and a timely reminder to keep it up.

I'll update as the narratives take shape. I can't wait to see how the kiddos incorporate their inquiries into Ancient Greece into their narratives.

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 7 Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community

My First GoAnimate Video

For one of my M.Ed topics I had to create a video that tells the story of the role of ICT in contemporary education.  Considering the time that went into this, I thought I'd share it here as well.

I've already had it pointed out that even in this, an assignment about ICT, I've managed to bring in my strong views around social justice. My answer to that is that the story of ICT in education isn't complete without it being mentioned.  I could create a video on just that.

I can't say that it was my favourite assignment ever, but I did get to fool around on GoAnimate for the first time (and learnt LOTS) so I can't really complain. If you've never had a look at it, I highly recommend it. The biggest downside is that it's a paid service so it's not super accessible for use with students. On the upside, it's quite intuitive and easy to achieve a reasonable looking result.  And again, whilst I didn't enjoy the assignment, I will admit that the thinking involved in synthesising a story was an effective way of pulling together the semester's learning.  I'm not sure that primary school aged children have the metacognitive capacities to pull something like this off, but perhaps I'm wrong. Anyone have any experience?

I'm also curious to speak with someone who's used both GoAnimate and Powtoon, for a comparison. I've never found Powtoon particularly easy to use so haven't ever persisted with it. Perhaps now that I've achieved a degree of success with GoAnimate I might find Powtoon more intuitive?

Can I also share that two out of my four topics for this semester are now FINISHED? (As in, no more classes, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks... Ooops, they come from me when I realise we've still got an hour to go and I'm already so tired I could spit!) Actually, what I mean is that we've finished our classes and I've handed in all of the assignments. What a relief!

This is a tough post to relate to the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers because it demonstrates a high level of 'meta-reflection' on standards 1 through 4 & 7, but it's really about MY learning which is standard 6. *sigh* I'm curious to know how all y'all would link it? For now I'm going to relate it to everything other than standard 5, because it's the weekend and time to live it up a lil'!

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

Sharing My Reading Life

I don't know about you, but I can't remember a time when reading wasn't an integral part of my life.  It isn't something I do on the side or an 'added extra'; it's actually part of who I am.  So it was almost impossibly difficult, for me, to fathom a life that didn't have 'to read' piles in most rooms, a passionate opinion about folded corners v bookmarks and friends who exist only in my imagination and on the pages in which we met.  Until I met my husband. 

He is, most definitely, not a reader. Don't get me wrong, he read. He enjoyed it actually, but it didn't bring him the same core deep satisfaction. I struggled with this for a long time: how could he just get into bed and go to sleep? What did he do whilst waiting for an appointment? Where did he escape? Here was a way of life that made no sense to me. I questioned him. I nagged him (oh yeah, there's that wife of the year nomination again). I interviewed him about possible reading traumas in his childhood.  I even engaged in some serious guerilla reading propaganda attacks to bring about change. 

It didn't work. I realised that my approach was completely wrong. My goal was to convince him that he should read, and that he should love it. Ha! How foolish!

And how reminiscent of so many of the ways we teach reading in schools. We tell our students that they must read and we expect them to engage with the process willingly, if not happily. We offer intervention for those who struggle to read, and fret over those who won't. It's a lot like my guerilla attacks.

You know what? None of that works either. Kids, just like my husband, don't end up loving reading because we make them read or because we tell them they should.

I eventually wore out and concluded that my husband was - and don't get me wrong, I love him dearly - deeply flawed and beyond my capacity to help. (Oops, did I just say that out loud?) I let go. I stopped nagging. I stopped questioning. I stopped reading (excuse the pun) into everything he ever said about his childhood. I stopped planting books. And went back to my own reading life. I started talking about my books. I shared funny little anecdotes that I knew would make him chuckle. I made connections between what I was reading and what was going on in the world. I allowed my reading to become part of our shared life. 

What happened next is hardly a surprise to anyone. He started reading more. Slowly at first, and still not with the same feverish obsession as I do but with his own quiet commitment. 

Here's my theory. It's, like, totally scientific and stuff. It's also GROUNDBREAKINGLY NEW!!! So much of what we do at school rams reading down the throats of our students as something they have to do and be good at. It's not about learning to love the possibilities of reading. And it should be. As Victor Hugo said: 'to learn to read is to light a fire'. Or as Frederick Douglass said: 'once you learn to read you will be forever free'. This is the very essence of what we need to teach students. Once we teach the value of reading, the rest becomes easy. (Please don't think I'm discounting dyslexia or other such issues. They're real. So. Real. And they need more research and student who live with them need more support. This treatise includes these kiddos, but I'm not suggesting that this answers those particular needs.) 

How do we do it? I think we should share our own love of reading. Talk about books. Share funny, sad or powerful parts of our own reading.  Make connections between our own reading, and events that are relevant to the students. Discuss books our students might not yet be able to read but may create a spark. Model our own reading life and the value it has for us.  It's not rocket surgery but I'd go as far as saying that it's more important though.

Let's give it a go. I made a commitment to share more of my reading life/love with my students at the beginning of this week and it's already had an impact. I'll give it a couple of weeks and report back. Who will join me?

 'I love books. I love that moment when  you open one and sink into it. You can escape from the world into a story that's way more interesting than yours will ever be.' 

~ Elizabeth Scott

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 4 Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments

Everything in Moderation

Post PD Reflection by Markeeta Roe is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Based on a work found here.

Our professional development day just ended. 17 minute ago. In fact, I'm actually still at the venue. It has been such a big day that I'm torn between the exhaustion of this morning and the natural high of meaningful learning.

Today we were moderating maths tasks with teachers of the same grade level from other schools. Theoretically we were meant to provide three portfolios of 6-8 work samples; one portfolio at standard, one below and one above. (I say theoretically because... Life. You know? I pulled together 6 samples, but they were all from the same unit of learning because I've only been with this class for 9 teaching days!) We swapped portfolios around our table and used the Australian Curriculum achievement standards as our moderation guide.

These kind of events secretly excite me because I love the opportunity to see the learning experiences other teachers plan/use so that I can borrow their ideas.

Upon sharing our thinking, it was re-affirming to learn that as a group (of year 7 teachers and some guest teachers from our feeder high school) we were invariably consistent in our assessments. I have been 'accused', in the past, by another year 7 teacher, of being an overly hard marker so to have my positioned echoed by a large group of others was quite a relief. 

The process we used was, at the same time, incredibly simple and mind bogglingly challenging.  Simple in the sense that the initial question is: does this student meet this standard? Challenging in the sense that assessing the individual work samples as a holistic body of evidence against the achievement standard requires a fair degree of mental gymnastics. 

After/while looking at a portfolio we were encouraged to answer particular questions:

1. Initial thoughts on the evidence provided in the work sample/s.
2. What evidence in the work sample/s aligns with the standard? How? (Be specific.)
3. What are the gaps in the evidence? What further evidence might be required to demonstrate achievement at the standard? (Be specific.)
4. How might the assessment be modified to better reflect the standard? (This might apply to some, non or all of the tasks.)

These responses then formed part of the feedback each teacher received about their portfolios. My portfolio was deemed as not being a broad representation of the whole curriculum - which wasn't surprising. I received positive feedback about the tasks and some suggestions about ways to improve. It was fantastic! I also learnt about a bunch of resources and a new app from Justine Nelson, one of the awesome teachers on my table. Justine and I are also planning to share some other resources and ideas. That, in and of itself, makes today worthwhile. Thanks Justine!

The other part of today that our year level group found particularly useful was spending time with the team from our feeder high school. We worked with them to moderate some year 8 tasks, and then collaborated on extending the example tasks. The discussions around the differences between teaching and learning in primary and secondary schools were powerful if not a little frustrating. Each question lead to another three questions. We all wanted to keep going; talking to the other side (so to speak) isn't an opportunity we get very often.

The final (cute) little tip I'm taking from today are two little sticky note exit slip acronyms: WWW (what worked well) and EBI (even better if). Simple but I think they'd work well with my current kiddos.

I also need to give a shout out to Cheryl Josephs, who was also at the session today. She has known me since my second or third day as a teacher and has become a wonderful friend and trusted colleague. We don't often cross paths professionally anymore so it was a real pleasure to see her. She is one of my most committed blog readers so... Thanks Cheryl! It was wonderful to see you.

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers:

Standard 5 Assess, provide feedback and report on student learning

Standard 6 Engage in professional learing 

Standard 7 Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community

I'm still hanging in...

If anybody ever suggests working full time whilst trying to study full time, the only correct response should be to laugh. Don't do it! I've been doing it for nearly two weeks and I'm insanely tired. Still reasonably productive, but overwhelmingly tired. *sigh* Thank goodness for today's inter-school professional development day that allow the part of my brain necessary for monitoring and engaging with 27 children to switch off for a few hours! (Don't slam me: I fully intend to engage with the adults at the PD day... They just aren't as 'needy' as most kiddos!) Double bonus when I don't need to be there until 1.5hrs after I usually arrive at school! Anyway, I've been wanting to blog about some of the challenges and successes I've experienced since starting this contract but you know... Tired.

I thought, however, that I'd take a few minutes out of that extra 1.5hrs this morning to share a photo. It represents a big 'win' for me with this class. It's a super challenging class behaviourally and I spent a large part of the first week trying to establish a class culture that was safe enough to enable us to move forward into meaningful learning. It was hard. Very hard. Probably the hardest I've ever found a class, but you know me: it's my kinda class!  We've come a VERY long way in a VERY short time and I'm so proud of the progress we've all made. I'll share more about it later, when I'm not so tired, or feeling stressed about final essays, case studies and whatnot for uni.

NF Text Features Anchor Chart by Markeeta Roe is licensed under a
  Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Based on a work here.

This week we've been reviewing non-fiction text features so that next week we can dive right into learning about top level text structures.  We're also learning about Ancient Greece so I've used a simple NF text about that as our 'mentor' text. After much discussion, a super simple anchor chart was created. There are no other student (or teacher) created anchor charts in the classroom, so I wasn't sure how this would be received. I shouldn't have worried: they LOVED it. Our next bite of the cherry saw every single student referring to it at least once, and many of them thanking me.  I love the way anchor charts reinforce learning and encoding. Yay!

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 4 Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments

Primary & Secondary Sources

Something you often hear, these days, is that we want our students to think like a writer, or a scientist, a mathematician, or even a historian.  The goal is to have students learn the specific cognitive skills of each discipline and the metacognition to apply them successfully. 

It's a big goal, but I don't think it's necessarily a new one. Perhaps what's new is the explicit inclusion of the specific skills and actions in some subject areas of the Australian curriculum - like history for example. One of the tricky parts of thinking like a historian is coming to grips with how we learn about the past. 

Recently I've been talking to one of my own children about his sources of information for a research project in which he's comparing Australia's education system of the 1900's and now. He's been instructed that his final essay must make use of at least one primary and one secondary source, which presupposes that he knows the difference. At his age (14) I didn't. He does.  (I'm not sure he knows why the distinction is important though.) 

I introduced the idea of primary and secondary sources to a class of year 3/4s a few years back by presenting a collection of sources and asking them what they noticed.  There were some hilarious observations but more importantly a couple of students pointed out the fact that some of the sources were "records made by people who were there" and some were "second hand information".  Such a simple distinction between primary and secondary sources!

More recently, with a group of year 5/6s, (knowing that two days earlier they had started learning about this) I asked the question: "what makes a source primary or secondary?"  The general consensus was that a primary source needed to be original, but a secondary source was a copy.  I read the South Australian Certificate of Education's definition, and we chatted about the differences between it and their definition. Then I told them a story. 

Pages 92-93 of Anne Frank's original diary.
Licensed under CC BY 2.0 by Heather Cowper.

I talked about a girl who, during WWII lived, for a time, with her family hidden away in an attic to avoid being rounded up by Hitler's army.  And then I explained that after the war, her diary had been published.  I mentioned that there was a copy in their school library, and that many of their parents had probably read it while they were at high school. "Is this a primary or secondary source", I asked. 

Voting with their feet, the students positioned themselves along a continuum: primary through to secondary. After conferring with people close to them, the students explained their position. Some asked questions about whether the diary had been edited prior to publishing, and moved upon hearing that it was a true record of Anne's thoughts. Others held fast to the fact that there could only ever be one original so any copies we might read must be secondary sources. Still others made the connection that whilst Anne was able to be witness to her own experience, it was a limited perspective so should be understood with that in mind. Every time someone spoke, there was movement.  Eventually, with most of the class in the primary camp, I talked through my thinking and invited the secondary hold outs to come and talk to me further.

The distinction between primary and secondary sources is an important one and brings up questions of privilege, perspective, contestability and significance (to name just a few). Plus, teaching about it, means I have a great excuse reason to spend time reading about history, which pleases me immensely! #imsuchanerd #proudofit

Incidentally, my son is using an interview with me as one of his primary sources for his project. I'm not sure how I feel about that: whilst my experience with the current educational system would definitely make my interview a primary source, but I'm not quite old enough to be one for the 1900's! 

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