More than Just Cyber Safety: Tackling the Social and Ethical Protocols of the ICT General Capability

The material is licensed by ACARA under CC BY 4.0.

I need to start this post with a quick introduction to the Australian curriculum general capabilities for my readers who aren't based in Australia or are otherwise unfamiliar with - what many Australian teachers call them - the gen caps.  Please think of them as one of the ways our curriculum describes the knowledge, skills, behaviours and dispositions that will enable our young people to "live and work successfully in the twenty-first century" (ACARA, 2015). There are seven general capabilities:

• Literacy
• Numeracy
• Information and communication technology (ICT) capability
• Creative and critical thinking
• Personal and social capability
• Ethical understanding.
• Intercultural understanding

The general capabilities are, perhaps, some of the more ignored parts of the AC.  Whilst the curriculum documents do, in fact, provide learning continuum and explicit cross-curricular links some of the gen caps tend to be left in the too hard basket, or ignored all together.   Clearly these options aren't acceptable and regardless of what we think of the AC, it is our mandated curriculum so we have a responsibility to teach it ALL. 

Wow, that started to get a little preachie-preachie didn't it? Sorry about that! I get a little fired up because it frustrates me when I see teachers choosing to ignore one or more of the gen caps because they, personally, aren't confident or competent with the concepts.  Step up people, or step out.

And again! #sorrynotsorry

The material is licensed by ACARA under CC BY 4.0.

Back to the actual point of this post...

The first professional development session I attended in the last school holidays was run by Teacher Technologies and focussed on parts of the ICT general capability of the Australian Curriculum, specifically the social and ethical protocols and practices.

There were a couple of recurring themes throughout the day. One was the idea that we, as teachers, have a responsibility to model social and ethical behavioural choices for our students. (And not just when using ICT I might add!) This isn't a new idea but it's certainly an important one to consider. Think about the example we set when we - and I'm not saying that I, or you, do or don't do this - download an YouTube clip to use in class. Sure, we can justify it under the 'educational use' umbrella but do our students know that?  Do we explicitly explain to them what we're doing? Do our students know that they can't do the same thing? How would they know? And if, after we've downloaded a clip, we store it on our hard drive for next year is it still OK?

Another example are the images that we put in our presentations, or assignment sheets. I don't know about you, but I take great pleasure in finding the perfect image and will openly admit that I don't always do the right thing. And so the example I set is to use whatever image I like regardless of ownership. I am slowly getting better though. Actually, you know how ex-smokers are the worst kind of non-smokers in terms of telling people to not do it? (And with good reason! High five if you're an ex-smoker!) Well, I'm that person in my  house now, with creative commons images: I'm pretty sure my husband is going to take away my internet access if I ever again look at something he's done with an arched eyebrow and comment "that doesn't look like a creative commons image to me".

Yesterday one of my own children approached me with a question about referencing a podcast using the Harvard system. After I quit shaking (because I'm an APA girl through and through) I pointed him in the direction of some websites that I've found helpful in attributing my sources recently.  And it dawned on me what had just happened. My 14 year old, who listens to The Naked Scientists podcast like I listened to the Top 40 at his age, was using an idea he'd heard in a podcast to help build his argument in an essay on parallel universes, black holes, space. He knew he needed to attribute those ideas appropriately. Yay! Somewhere along the line, whether at home or at school, this kiddo got it! He understands intellectual property.  I did, of course, wonder whether he'd picked it up from good modelling (ahem!) or if it had beeen explicitly taught, which brings me to the other recurring theme.

Whilst we must model social and ethical protocols and behaviours when using ICT it is just as important that we explicitly teach them. It would be lovely for young people to pick up on why it's not a good idea to click on every *enter now* button through osmosis, but it's not overly likely. As a teacher, I use a range of strategies to keep any personal information I keep (digitally)about my students secure. (And securely destroy the files when appropriate.) This isn't something I can model to my students though, it's the kind of thing that needs to be explicitly taught in developmentally appropriate ways right across the primary and secondary years of schooling. The ICT gen cap learning continuum is very detailed about when and what students need to learn.

I could write about the importance and value of this component of this gen cap all day because it's something that is of increasing importance to everyone. As you can imagine, I was tweeting all day. I'm sharing Selena Woodward's Storify today. Enjoy. (As you scroll through, you'll notice that we were a bit spoilt for morning tea! I think there were about 10 of us there...)

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

Standard 2 Know the content and how to teach it

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


ACARA. (2015). General capabilities: introduction. Retrieved from http://www.australiancurriculum.edu.au/generalcapabilities/overview/introduction

Drawing the Line(s and dots)

I can't be sure but I'm fairly confident in making the assumption that ALL classes love art. My memory of art at primary school was that it involved coloured paint and cartridge paper. It was all very practical and, if I'm completely honest, left this super nerdy kid wanting more. I enjoyed it, but wanted to know more about the artists, the techniques, how to show variation in shading, about different styles and periods... Which all leads me to the Australian Curriculum's version of the Visual Arts.

The Australian Curriculum website says:

Learning in Visual Arts involves students making and responding to artworks, drawing on the world as a source of ideas. Students engage with the knowledge of visual arts, develop skills, techniques and processes, and use materials as they explore a range of forms, styles and contexts.

Through Visual Arts, students learn to reflect critically on their own experiences and responses to the work of artists, craftspeople and designers and to develop their own arts knowledge and preferences. They learn with growing sophistication to express and communicate experiences through and about visual arts. (Visual Arts Overview, Australian Curriculum, accessed September 6th, 2015.)

This actually describes exactly what I wanted as a child. Now, as a teacher, I'm excited to be working within this framework.

Our school is lucky enough to have an onsite Art specialist teacher with whom each class has one lesson per week; clearly not long enough to teach the entirety of the five subjects within the Arts Learning Area.  I probably shouldn't be so excited by this but I am. I HAVE to teach Art. Oh darn. What a shame!  *Happy dance*

Earlier this term, I  guided my kiddos through a short unit of learning in Visual Arts about line and shading.   I started the unit without telling the class what we were going to be learning about. Sounds a bit odd but just go with me for a moment.  I shared four artworks with the kiddos and asked them to pick the odd one out, and to justify their choice.  Which do you choose? Why?

All images are taken from the public domain.

There are, of course, as many different answers as there are people in the conversation. I was looking for some group consensus though about the use of line to create shading. There are a couple of very cluey (and arty) kiddos in the class who started asking questions and requesting to look at the images up close. Without much help from me the class concluded that the burger was the odd one out because it as no shading and is made from all block colours.  It took them about 5 minutes of free discussion to come to this conclusion. How fantastic!

We moved on to look closely at hatching, crosshatching and stippling as the three main ways of using line to shade (as exemplified in the pieces above). Lots more discussion, viewing images and having a go. We rounded out our first session by coming up with a definition of the technique and creating a sampler of 3D shapes using these three techniques.  Just as my personal tip to you all: the sound of 25 pencils all tapping repeatedly on tables is not for the faint of heart or sore of head. Don't say I didn't warn you.

The Art working wall at the end of our first session.

The following week we started with a 'Silent Word Shuffle' (first time I'd ever done one with my class). I didn't put any restrictions on using iPads or the working wall to work out the categories and so there was a very high sense of engagement. The kiddos knew they could figure it out - even if they had to struggle to get it. Perfect example of encouraging a growth mindset!

We moved through a range of learning activities, and then I showed the class some examples of student work to inspire them in developing the success criteria for their art piece. (I have to admit here that I have completely lost the url of the website on which I found this student work.  If it is yours or belongs to someone you know PLEASE tell me so that I can credit you, and find the website again because it was brilliant!)

We constructed this project design using a democratic
process that ensured all voices were included.
You can see how closely our project mirrors the example.

Here are some of the final projects.

Student line and shading art work from Markeeta Roe-Phillips

The kiddos presented their finished pieces on the big screen at a whole school assembly. I'm not sure whether the big screen or the actual art itself  but my kiddos were very chuffed with the repeated 'oohs' and 'aaaahs' from the the junior primary children.

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

What's Old is New Again!

I wonder if wandering through antique or collectibles shops is a fascination you're able to develop with age? It seems to me that people either love doing it - and always have - or hate it with a passion.  I'm lucky that my husband loves it as I do. (Or I made a good choice, either way.)  We have a few local stores to whom we willingly (and regularly) hand over our time and money.  It's a rare visit that I leave without finding something: whether an antique spoon or tea-cup (I collect both), a quirky book from the early 1900's (my husband collects those) or some ephemera to use in my Way Back Wednesday lessons.

Today was a little different. Today I found books for for ME. Well, for school but that's kinda the same thing right? 

The first pair are from 1955.  One is called The Ideal Book for Boys while the other is The Bumper Book for Girls. I haven't quite decided how I will use these yet.  Having skim read the stories I will probably ask the kiddos to work in groups and give each group a copy of one story from each book.  The language used, and the gender stereotyping is vastly different to the texts the kiddos currently read so after some initial analysis I'll also provide contemporary stories to compare and contrast.  The Australian Curriculum is quite explicit in asking for this kind of analysis, and the gender concepts that will be discussed will support many of the ideas behind our single gender programmes (e.g. boys don't have to be physically strong to have strength). 

The other three are from a 1960 Science Service series and are called Earth, Maps & Mapping and Crime Detection. These little gems will be used as part of our Science as a Human Endeavour learning about how scientific knowledge changes over time, and how science influences human interaction with each other and with Earth.  Oh boy are they perfect examples of how scientific knowledge has changed over time. In Crime Detection the 'hair & fiber' section makes no mention of DNA; in Maps & Mapping electronic computers are lauded as having brought much nearer the realisation of the dream of a truly accurate triangulation network of the entire world; in Earth we can learn of the world's smallest TV camera which is the size of a flashlight. 

 Some things never change though. 

"It seems  - but has by no means been proven - that the earth is getting warmer." (Earth)

What artefacts or ephemera do you bring into your learning spaces?

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 2 Know the content and how to teach it.
Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning.

On point, what is it?

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."

This isn't too different from ACARA's definition:

"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

I'd like the menu please...

Some lessons just work well don't they?  A few weeks back I had one such lesson that I came home and raved about to my husband.  His response? "Don't tell me! Blog about it." Yes well, I didn't do it that night and I really wish I had.

Since then there've been a mountain of other great lessons but that particular one still stands strong in my memory because I truly felt like I was meeting the individual needs of every student in the room. Actually, I wasn't. They were all meeting their own needs.

At that point we had been working on our topic for a couple of weeks, and the usual broad range of abilities had emerged.  That's no end of fun  when you have a couple of students for whom the very concept of a fraction eludes them and others who can manipulate fractions inside out and upside down. So what's a girl to do?  I set up a learning menu of eight different learning activities that required no or very little teacher lead instruction - either because I'd already introduced it or the instructions were provided. [Side note: Until recently I'd never known that this particular method of teaching had a specific name…I thought it was just something that teachers 'did', you know?]

I started our lesson by referring back to the capacity matrix (if you're new to Langford'a capacity matrices, here's a quick explanation with examples) that we had developed against the ACARA Achievement Standards earlier in the unit. I outlined the available learning activities and matched them to the various capacities and capacity breakdowns and then handed it over to them. They each had a copy of the capacity matrix and hurried off to work on the areas they individually needed to work on.

No surface is off limits in our room!

As I moved around the room it was such a kick to hear students discussing and struggling with fractions. Yes, struggling! We celebrate the struggle: it means taking a risk and really learning something. We encourage each other to get uncomfortable and even have our own name for the feeling (the itchy tag feeling). The other exciting part for me was that the discussion was all about concepts rather than process. I'm a big believer that there's no point in teaching math processes if the conceptual understanding is missing. With fractions the processes are actually fairly mundane once the concept is grasped.

The lesson sped by so quickly that by unanimous vote we extended our time. I was able to spend time with each of the student either individually or in small groups: observing, prompting and coaching. What I noticed was that every single student was learning something different. They had each picked the area they needed to develop and that's where they were putting their efforts.  Even those working together had slightly different learning goals. LOVE IT!

Our end of lesson reflection was another learning opportunity. Different students had discovered different things whilst doing the same thing but upon reflection learnt from each other. How powerful is that?

This was designed by Krissy Venosdale.
CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
You can cheek out her other posters on flicker
Or buy it (like I have) here.

Of course, if you'd walked into our room during this time it would have looked like absolute bedlam! But you know what? I don't care… Everyone was learning and at the end of the day that's what is MEANT to happen in classrooms right?

I have so much more to say about fractions but won't overload this post with it all. In the meantime: I hope everyone's enjoying the change in season!

Oh, and if you'd like a copy of my capacity matrix drop me a line. We think it's pretty impressive.











This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1 Know 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

Way Back Wednesday

Every Wednesday afternoon my class gathers for a chat.  We spend a whole lesson talking.  If I'm being totally honest: we often spend lessons talking but that's quite a different blog post. Today I want to share one of the best parts of our week: Way Back Wednesday.

The basic idea is that I present the class with a small group of artefacts - often a photo, sometimes a song or video, even a concrete object - that somehow all relate to an overriding historical event, concept or time period.  What happens after that is the part I love.  The children start talking.  Really talking. After some coaching in the early weeks of the school year they have started to ask questions and make statements like:

Museum of Australian Democracy

"Who took that photo?  And why?" 

"What does that mean for the Aboriginal people who are alive today? How do they feel about it?" 

Daily Telegraph

"Ned Kelly wasn't a hero. He was a criminal! Just because he was doing it for his family doesn't make it right."

Powerhouse Museum

"The way we treat asylum seekers before they are given the ok to be refugees is just the same way that the government treated people with the White Australia Policy."

Pretty amazing huh?

I've kept the topics loosely related to our integrated topic for the term (or to a particularly timely issue like ANZAC Day).   Our WBW topics so far have been:

• The Eureka Flag
• The 1967 Referendum
• Women's Suffrage
• The White Australia Policy
• Vietnamese Boatpeople
• Ned Kelly
• Paper Money
• Holden
• Sydney Olympics
• ANZAC spirit
• Uluru
• The rock art of Koonalda Cave

You may have picked a theme there! Our year 6/7 unit's overriding theme was  Australian identity! As a unit we've moved now into a unit of learning that encompasses various ancient Mediterranean civilisations AND historical inquiry.  We've been unpacking the thinking and work of various professionals (archaeologist, historian, anthropologist etc.) which enhances my class' WBW discussions beautifully.

WBW has been a powerful tool for me to engage the children with the ACARA History strand of Historical Skills in a meaningful way.  We've looked at different perspectives; compared primary vs secondary sources of information; drawn conclusions about the usefulness of various sources; sequenced important events leading up to and following our particular topic of discussion; unpacked historical concepts; posed questions that have been discussed later (either at school or at home). I've noticed that these discussions have built my students' capacity for debate and reasoning in ways I never imagined; and that they are making links between these discussions and other parts of our learning program.

During our discussion I play the role of facilitator. I occasionally ask a clarifying question or encourage a response to be expanded. I will, if I notice a particular area of quiet, ask specific children for their contribution. If there's a point of debate or need for further information I will sometimes step in to resolve the issue but more regularly support the class in their own resolution. I have, on occasion, followed their request for more information by 'googling' it for them while they continue talking. (Hip hip hooray for the Apple TV!) More recently I've been encouraging the children to jot down notes on tiny postit notes to jog their memory later.  This has certainly improved since we've been focussing on summarising in our writing block.

The children's home learning task (I don't like the word homework) each Wednesday is to write a response to a reflective question that I've posed about our topic.  I usually set two questions and let them choose.  (I sometimes provide these questions before the discussion, and sometimes after. It really depends on how I'm introducing the topic and whether the questions, in themselves, include a lot of prior knowledge.) It is the only home learning task they ALL complete every week.  Their responses have improved from "I think we should have the same flag we have now because I like it" to well considered responses with references to the discussion or other sources to support their statements. Some of the responses are bordering on taking the form of a formal exposition! Can't complain about that!!

The worst part? Finding time to read their responses. These children are putting such thought and energy into their responses that reading them all is not something I can - or want to - do quickly. I try to engage with each response individually and provide specific feedback either on the development of their argument or the actual argument itself.

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1 Know 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 5 Assess,  provide feedback and report on student learning.

Taking Shape

A few days ago I blogged about composite classes (here). I really enjoy the challenges associated with composite classes but I don't always get it right. *Sigh* My year 3/4 class has recently finished off a short unit of work on shape.   To be more accurate: we did a short unit of work about 3D shapes (including making 3D models) and composite shapes. To be even more accurate: we did a short unit on 3D shapes. What should it have been about? Well, if we're going by the ACARA maths document you'll need to go back a couple of sentences and then add in something about comparing the area of regular and irregular shapes by informal means. (To be completely honest though, I never had any plan to include area in this unit of work so it's not like I missed it out... I just didn't plan to teach it, when I really should have.)

Having said all of that, we had fun and nearly everyone met nearly all (if not all) of the intended learning outcomes. Phew!

I let them pull the shape
from the bag when they
were ready to draw it.

The feely bags were student
'run' after the initial modelling,
which allowed me to float
and observe everyone.

I introduced the unit with feely bags. I modelled reaching in, finding a solid polyhedron and then describing it using the mathematical language I  was  looking to see the children use by the end of the unit. I also asked the children to record their shape(s) in their maths workbooks using a drawing and labels. It was a great pre-assessment task as it gave me the chance to see (and hear), very quickly, where everyone sat on the learning spectrum.

We continued to explore the properties and features of 3D shape both as mathematical concepts but also as building blocks in our environment. It helped everyone to see that EVERYTHING is 'made up of shapes', both 2D and 3D. When we looked more carefully we were able to identify that 3D shapes can be described, in part, by the 2D shapes that make them. This lead to more conversation about composite shapes.

The activity you can see in this photo was offered with a range of entry points.  Ultimately, at every level, the students were asked to engage with the identification and nomenclature of 3D features and their possible nets. Solid polyhedron were available to help visualise how the nets might fold up to create the shapes. When I took this photo the student was manipulating the cube whilst talking about which part of the cube the net would next cover. The learning process was actually VISIBLE!

I never even knew about the Lego programme!
It's AWESOME

In the lead up to our assessment task I offered the students the opportunity to show me they could build/draw a 3D model on the computer. I left the task as open as that - they could use whatever programme, app or web2.0 tool they liked and create whatever model they wanted so long as they were able to explain their understanding to me either on the screen or verbally. (The Australian Curriculum for Maths is pretty specific about giving children the opportunity to learn and demonstrate their learning with and without technology, and as I've already shared with you here and here I am seeking to integrate technology into my maths programme more.)

I provided a puzzle page with 36 boxes; in each box was either a 3D shape, a net, or a number (most of which were the corresponding number of faces, edges or vertices with a few red herrings thrown in to sort the wheat from the chaff so to speak). The children needed to match the shape with its corresponding net and work out what the numbers represented and present this information visually. They found it a lot more challenging than I expected but then again, they also enjoyed it a lot more than I expected. I asked early finishers to create a 'Who am I?' riddle for a 3D shape of their choice. Some of these were a hoot to read and showed great awareness of 3D shapes in the environment.

I love the creativity
in their presentations!

Some of the riddles.
Simple lift-the flap presentation.

The end assessment task was to use any material they could find in the classroom to create and label a model of an identifiable 3D shape. I'm not in love with this task, and there's plenty of room for improvement but it served its purpose this time. Here are a few of the results at various stages of completion.

Simple and to the point...

I love this!

This one is NEVER going to fall apart.

So,  you can see that the unit was pretty skewed towards 3D shapes and didn't really do composite shapes very well at all. I'm pretty disappointed that I didn't manage that too well, but know that I'll do better next time. More focus on composite shapes was required... I wonder whether this needed to be addressed in parallel?

Tell me about your well intentioned but not completely successful plans... (Please tell me I'm not alone!)

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1.5 Differentiate teaching to meet the specific learning needs of students across the full range of abilities
Standard 2.1 Content and teaching strategies of the teaching area 
Standard 2.2 Content selection and organisation
Standard 2.3 Curriculum, assessment and reporting
Standard 2.5 Literacy and numeracy strategies
Standard 2.6 Information and communication technologies (ICT)
Standard 3.2 Plan, structure and sequence learning programmes
Standard 3.3 Use teaching strategies  
Standard 3.6 Evaluate and improve teaching programmes
Standard 5.1 Assess student learning
(You'll note that I've said that this relates to these standards, which isn't to say that in this instance I was outstandingly successful in each of these standards... Clearly!)

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

International Day of Chocolate Bite II

I already told you about how my real life obsession with love of chocolate rolled over into my classroom on International Day of Chocolate right? Well, I didn't tell you about the part that most excited me. I piggy backed on the back of that new knowledge to model the construction of an information text. (OK, so I'm way too easily excited and probably should seek help with that but just go with me for a moment here.)

Not a lot else to share about it really. The class provided me with the information and I modeled the construction of the text being explicit about the features I was choosing and the linguistic choices I was making. We then went through the text and labelled the features we've been discussing. At the end we pulled out another information text they had already labelled and reflected on other choices I could have made.

This was such a powerful lesson. Everyone was engaged, everyone contributed, everyone was laughing. (We know that we learn better when we're happy so laughter's a good sign for these kinds of lessons I think!) The reflection was the most powerful part: the students gave carefully considered answers and really examined the text. They LOVED pointing out the ways my text could be improved. (You can see in the photo where we've suggested where those features might be included if we were to rewrite this text.)

This particular activity (modeled construction) is an important part of the plan that my co-teacher and I created for this unit of work.  Our unit is based on the ideas in the Literacy for Learning framework which was created along the lines of the Australian Curriculum's view that language is social and culturally constructed. Modeled construction considers the importance of the social view of language and scaffolds the students' future independent construction by demonstrating the thinking processes and metalanguage needed.  

So there we have it... What might have originally been viewed (certainly by my husband) as an indulgent exercise turned into some pretty amazing teaching and learning.   Tell me about your experiences like this.

(Oh... And please excuse my AWFUL handwriting!)

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1.2 Understand how students learn 

Standard 2.1 Content and teaching strategies of the teaching area

Standard 2.2 Content selection and organisation 
Standard 2.5 Literacy & numeracy strategies
Standard 3.2 Plan, structure and sequence learning programs 

What's for dinner? Hang around and my class will tell you.

The last couple of weeks have been an absolute roller coaster for me. I've started my new contract and LOVE my class. I think I've mentioned how excited I am to be working with my 'co-teacher', but I'm going to do it again: she's amazing! So much drive and energy! And just a never ending pit of knowledge. I'm like a pig at a trough sucking it all up. (Yep, there's an image you won't get rid of for a while. Sorry!)

We also have a pre-service teacher (student teacher) in the room for the first four weeks of term.  We're all comfortable in acknowledging that it hasn't all been smooth sailing so far but it has been a time of huge growth for us all and  we've definitely hit calmer waters now. It's been fascinating for me to reflect on how much my teaching practice has grown in the past year. 

One things I'm particularly enjoying is the fact that this classroom - in fact this whole school, - follows Ann Baker's maths pedagogy. (In fact today instead of a staff meeting we had a 90 minute professional development session linking her pedagogy to the new national curriculum. Gotta love a school that prioritises ongoing professional development!)

Our numeracy blocks typically follow her pattern of:

• a mental routine
• the main part of the lesson (such as strategy teaching or a problematised situation)
• reflection.

Possibly the most powerful part of this, for me, is tackling problematised situations. In a nutshell we offer problems that have their basis in real life, in ways that the students can relate to, and are engaged by.  The students then use their own (or shared) strategies to find possible solutions. It's a fascinating process that allows the students to apply their understandings and offer reasoned options. 

We're currently working on a rather large situation that involves my class  working toward making recommendations about what I should feed my (six) children. I presented the problem:

I just recently got married, and there are now six children in my family. Yep. Six. They all like different foods. Dinnertime is an absolute nightmare. I don't know how to manage this situation. I wonder if you could help me figure it out?

And  threw it open to them. We're working on data at the moment so they very quickly established that I needed to ask 'a bunch of questions'.  They then provided me with 176 questions to take home to ask the boys. (Oh yes, all six kids are boys.)  There were many repeats and so I ended up with ten questions and related answers.






On presenting this data to the class I commented:

That's lovely but it's not overly helpful. It's a whole bunch of words and numbers on a page. I still need your help.

So now they're all analysing the data to make recommendations.  Each at their own level of understanding.


I've seen tallies, tables, graphs and a few things I can't quite name.

Some students are using information from one question to help shape their recommendations based on other questions. It's AMAZING.

 Now my challenge will be to keep coming up with awesome problematised situations. I realise they don't all have to be this grand,  in fact I'd prefer they weren't, but the challenge is on.  I'd be happy to hear your suggestions.

If you haven't read about, or heard of Ann Baker head over to her website and check her out. I've bought a few of her books and am finding them to be a wonderful resource.


And here's the new bit to my blog. I'm going to try to link my posts to the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers. Feel free to ignore this part if you wish.

Standard 3.1 Establish challenging learning goals; 
Standard 3.2 Plan, structure and sequence learning programs; 
Standard 3.3 Use teaching strategies; 
Standard 4.1 Support student participation; 
Standard 6.2 Engage in professional learning and improve practice; 
Standard 6.4 Apply professional learning and improve student learning.

Developments.

The start of this school year was one of quite some developments in this household. Our eldest child started high school and our youngest child started kindergarten and I... Well. I started nothing. Actually, that's a lie. I just didn't start the school year with a class like I'd hoped to do.

I have, however, started working on a project with my dear friend AJ.  AJ and I met rather fortuitously at the orientation day for our kids' high school and then a couple of days later in a classroom on my second day of teaching. She's been around to see me stumble travel through my first few months of teaching, including six weeks during which she was my friend AND the parent of one of my students. (And she's still my friend!) We discovered that we work well together and our learning styles mesh well. So, we've decided that we should put our combined super-powers (mwa ha ha!) to good use.  

Having both experienced firsthand the challenge of parenting gifted children and noting the likelihood of that particular special need being addressed by most schools our initial goal was to look into developing a gifted programme that could be easily implemented. We're not ambitious at all!

We've kept that overriding goal in mind, but our practical efforts have become quite directed at the planning process for developing units of work. 

• How do we plan? 
• What should a unit plan look like? 
• What should a unit plan include? 
• How can we make the most of the hard work we - as individual teachers - put into these plans?

If you've not read this book... READ IT NOW! 

In looking to bring some clarity to our thinking we've both been somewhat captured by the ideas of McTighe & Wiggins in Understanding by Design.  

(In a super simplified nutshell: start with the desired understandings and plan your assessment tools first. Plan whatever learning activities you will need in order to help your students reach the understandings you identified at the beginning.)

We're reading quite widely on the planning process and most recently AJ has been looking at the International Baccalaureate process. 

Alongside the reading, we're trying to act on our findings. I've put together a unit of work that addresses the Earth & Space Sciences substrand of the Year 5 Australian National Science curriculum, while AJ has worked on one for the Biological Sciences substrand for Year 4. It's fascinating to see the different approaches we've taken considering we're working within essentially the same planning framework. 

Working independently but collaboratively; this is how I imagined the profession of teaching to be. I'm so pleased I've found a collaborative teammate and that we live in the time of such wonderful tools as Dropbox, Symbaloo and Blackboard Collaborate (not to mention the considerable communication we engage in over Facebook). I'm also really pleased that we're both working in classrooms again. (AJ has a contract and I'm doing more relieving than I thought likely at this time of year.) Our project may not be the fastest moving creation in the word but it's certainly valuable in helping us develop and maintain our professional practice standards.

I'm curious to hear... How do other teachers plan?  

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.