Family BBQ

One of my professional development goals this year is to establish and maintain better communication and relationships between school and home.  Don't get me wrong, we developed great home/school relationships last year. It happened organically though. I'm confident that it would probably happen again this year but I want to be more proactive.

I've planned to hold one social event and one learning event for our extended VRP family each term. Last night my family and I hosted the first ever VRP Family BBQ. For anyone new to the blog: VRP is the name my class goes by.

The story goes a little like this: our school has a  single gender program alongside the mixed gender classes. In our year 6/7 unit last year there was a boys class, a girls class and then two mixed classes. I taught one of the mixed classes.  Very quickly the children noticed that two of the classes had strong identities simply based on their single gender nature but the two mixed classes?  Well not so much.  Someone noticed that RP (I'm Mrs RP) sounds a lot like IP which through a bit of mental gymnastics lead to us becoming the VRPs.

Yesterday was - in the words of most of the VRPs - stinking hot.  Even with the air conditioner on, our learning space was 27C after lunch.  I was a bit nervous about the number of people who might pull out because of the heat but, having bought several kilos of sausages and pre-cooked several kilos of onions (by which I mean my husband did them), I wasn't about to cancel.

I'm so pleased I didn't. Families of about a quarter of the class came. Nearly 40 people in the extended VRP family came together in our learning space to share a meal. My husband cooked the bbq, and everyone else brought salads to share. The adults enjoyed getting to know each other, and the young people relaxed and had a few laughs.

Before everyone arrived I pinned up the 'working papers' of a maths activity that the VRPs have been working on this week.

Using at least one of (+, -, x, /) and "5" exactly 4 times make 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10.

Each of 0, 1, 2 etc. have their own sheet of butchers' paper on which we've been recording number sentences as we discover them. I thought it would prompt some interesting discussions between the students and their parents.  It sure did.  Discussions, a wee bit of confusion, and competition! It also prompted some rich conversations about how the VRPs learn: the different entry points for learners at different points on their journey; the places of mental discomfort for all; the open ended nature of the problem; the ambiguous nature of the problem; the obvious collaboration and discussion.  Parents asked questions and our young people proudly demonstrated 'wisdom' as they explained their thinking and the benefits of our learning program.

It was a fantastic experience. The feedback on our Facebook group has been wonderful:

"Thank you so much for your efforts, time and food prep tonight. I really enjoyed being able to chat with some other parents, being a working Mum I haven't had much of an opportunity to do that."

"Thankyou for a lovely evening. Really nice to meet other parents, children and you (not as a teacher) and your family. Thankyou for your time and organizing this event." 

"Thanks for a great BBQ Markeeta and your assistant Geoff. Good night now to go geocaching."  (We had a long discussion about geocaching, and how we might get involved as a class, and possibly hold a geocaching event as our next social gathering.)

"Thank you Markeeta for a wonderful evening. We thoroughly enjoyed talking, & laughing, with other parents & students as well as you, your husband and your children. I was sooooo glad all the cakes were eaten (as our household is on a "health-kick" & dont need the temptation in the house hehe). The kids had a ball! Jackson & Amber had so much fun playing chasey with a heap of kids whilst Max liked 'chillin' with the older tweens/teens in the "Oasis". Thank you again. " (I wrote about our oasis here.)

There was actually very little planning involved, and the benefits far outweigh the costs. I can't wait for next term's event. (Did I mention that I love my class? And that their parents are a pretty awesome  bunch?  Well, if I didn't... I do. And they are.)

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

A Tool Box

As I grew up I loved to spend time with my dad. His work took him overseas more often than it left him in Australia so our time together was particularly precious. I rose before dawn to go running with him; I helped out in the garden way more than any teenager would want to do; I spent my holidays filing and photocopying in his office just to be near him. My favourite thing though was to help when he crafted something out of wood. It didn't happen often, but when it did... The results amazed me.

More than the results, his toolbox fascinated me. It was just an ordinary ol' tool box, but in the deep recesses of that box were tools that enabled him to take a lump of wood and create something beautiful or useful or... Just different.  It wasn't the tools that caused the change, that was Dad, but the tools enabled him to do it. 

Dad's toolbox was crammed full of tools and each time he pulled one out he explained its name and its use.  I was thinking about that today as I wandered the aisle at the shops seeking inspiration for my reading block. I was in the tools section (yes, I was getting desperate creative!) and could hear his voice patiently explaining the difference between a coping saw and a tenon saw.  

If this were a daytime movie there would be soft lighting and rousing music playing at this point, to alert everyone that my moment of brilliance is fast approaching.

At the end of the aisle was a pile, nay a mountain, of  red metal toolboxes - you know the old style ones?  A more obvious message there will never be. Dad, in his inimitable way, was reminding me that all I need to do is teach my students what the tools are and how to use them so they can fill their own toolboxes with the ones that work for them.

So what did I do? I bought a bright red metal toolbox and will take it to school tomorrow. Each time I introduce a new  tool (or strategy)  I will put it in the toolbox to remind us all that we can use it.  It will stay there ready for us whenever we want to improve our use of it, or compare it to another tool.  My bright red toolbox will sit at the front of our learning space holding the tools that will enable us to create beautiful, useful or even just different understandings. 

Dad would have turned 64 today. I hope he knows that he still helps me fill my toolbox.

For the Mamas and the Papas!

The students in my class are on the precipice of - or have already plunged right into - adolescence. It's a challenging time. For everyone. I say this without judgement of anyone because three of our children are the same age or slightly older, so I'm feeling the pain challenge as a parent too. If you ignore all the physiological changes for a moment it becomes pretty clear that most of the other challenges stem from RELATIONSHIPS. Relationships with themselves, with peers, with teachers, and perhaps most importantly with parents!  

As the teacher I have the privilege of being able to speak into most of those relationships. Not so much with parents though. Don't get me wrong I speak with parents ALL the time, but I'm not always there to support my young people in making choices that build stronger relationships with their parents. So, what can I do about that? Well,  I take every opportunity I can to help them articulate the positive value they place in these relationships.  Mothers' Day and Fathers' Day are two very obvious examples of when this can happen. So here's my take on the process this year:

For the Mamas:

My class  has an almost unanimous
 aversion to the colour  pink.
Don't ask! (I don't know.)

We made very simple origami inspired cards.  On the front of pre-bought cards (yep, I went the cheat's route and bought cards) we attached hand made mini envelopes into which tiny slips of paper with notes of appreciation were placed.  The envelopes were made of tiny squares of scrapbooking paper, and would probably have been a whole heap easier to fold if it hadn't been embossed paper but hey… You live and learn right? I used a guillotine to pre-cut a whole pile of squares so that our focus could be on the writing aspect. To fold them we turned them so that they sat like a diamond and then folded the bottom corner up and the two sides in. We used a tiny dab of glue to hold those closed and then folded over the top.  As you can see in the photo the top sat up a little which we though looked like an invitation to open them up and see the note inside.   On the inside of most cards was written  'Congratulations Mum, I'm awesome'.  I SWEAR I had nothing to do with that. Much. Anyway, the cards looked lovely and, based on the feedback I received from parents, were very much appreciated.

For the Papas:
This one was really fun, and again quite simple to make.  Out came some store bought cards again and we made iDads. Our school is a 1:1 iPad school so this seemed funnier to us than it might to others.  We drew a simple iPad shape, and using foam tape attached mini apps that represented relevant activities for each of our fathers.  We trimmed the corners from the cards and used a white sticker as the button.  Easy! On the inside the fun really began.  Each card has a Google logo and search buttons.  As you may have read in my last post about paint chips and descriptive writing we've been developing our descriptive writing skills so we put these to good use. The search term of the day was, of course, each child's father's name, and the search results were the descriptive sentences they'd written. Neat huh?

Love you Papa!

As I designed these iDad cards I kept thinking that my own dad would get such a chuckle out of them - after years of rolling my eyes at his dad jokes here I was creating my very own. The day my students made their cards marked seven weeks since Dad's passing.  I didn't finish my model card, and none of my students asked why. I anticipated that it was going to be a God awful difficult activity, but… But… It wasn't. Throughout the day, even before we'd started the cards, most of my kids had been checking in with me: asking about my dad; giving me hugs and expressing their sadness for me; and saying,  in the words of one usually very prickly young man, 'life sucks Mrs RP, and I know we're not your darling daddy, but we love you'.  These kids leave me speechless sometimes. 



This post doesn't relate to the Australian Professional Standards for Teachers but it does relate directly to my dad so…

Papa… Happy belated Fathers' Day. xxx 

"What can I do to make you feel better?"

Wasn't she beautiful?
'Penny'

So. About five minutes after I posted my last entry my children discovered that one of our precious furry family members was very injured. Without going into gruesome details we raced her to the vet but weren't able to bring her home. She had been hit by a car. Our family was, and continues to be, heartbroken.

The following Monday, at school, I chose to spend my recess inside with a student who needed a bit of a break from 'community'. He'd had a pretty rough time over the weekend and until that point had been almost non-verbal. As soon as everyone else had left he turned and eye balled me pretty fiercely.  "You look really sad Mrs R-P. Why?" Pretty insightful. (And a little disappointing because I'd been trying hard to not show my sadness because I didn't want to have to share the story.) I considered the options for my response: should I lie and say everything was fine, brushing off his concern and not reinforcing the positives in his noticing? Should I come up with a pat answer that would explain away my sadness but without the truth? Or should I tell the truth even though doing so would inevitably end in my tears?

In the end, I teared up whilst trying to decide and so didn't really have much of a choice. I told him what had happened,  leaving out the gruesome bits he asked for later.  And here's the part that broke my heart just as fast as it offered solace... This little guy who had, not five minutes earlier, been non-responsive and unable to engage with anyone put his hand on top of mine and gently whispered "What can I do to make you feel better?" Despite everything that's happened in this little guy's life, his little heart sat there on his face and he showed concern for someone else because their cat died. Oh. Yes. He broke my heart with that comment. And made me so very hopeful for his, and the world's, future.

How was this related to teaching? Well, you won't find me linking it to the AITSL standards because it's more than the standards. It's the heart part of teaching rather than the head; in fact it's what makes the head part possible. It's why I teach.

Classroom visitors

This was taken just a few minutes
after we realised that they'd hatched.

The clutch of eggs on which our duck was sitting recently hatched and our family of 8 people, 2 cats, 1 dog, 1 frog, 2 guinea pigs, 4 chickens, 2 ducks and more fish than, frankly, I care to count just became all of that and seven six ducklings. (One of the live hatchlings perished after a couple of days. Let's not talk about it. It was a bit distressing.) Imagine the excitement of our six children... (although to be completely honest, I think my husband was the most exuberant) and then imagine the excitement of the 31 children in my class. Yep, we took seven 2 day old ducklings into my classroom.

Shortly before they arrived I polled the students on their predictions for the duckling (and mother duck) weights. Well, that was just about the most eye opening formative assessment I've ever done. (All tied in rather fortitiously with the measurement unit I was starting that day!) I didn't expect them to be overly accurate but I did kinda think they'd be close-ish. These predictions weren't even on the same planet let alone the general vicinity. These predictions (let's be honest and call them what they really were) guesses ranged between 600 grams and 5 kilograms. Reality? The ducklings ranged between 39g and 42g, while the mother weighed 1.2kg. Ha!

After very careful instructions about how to hold the ducklings, every child had the opportunity to do so. It was just delightful to see the tough boys flinch at the wiggling feet before melting. The girls are, on the whole, a rather pragmatic bunch and took it all in their stride. A few children needed my support to hold the ducklings without crushing them because of motor control issues, so I'm super grateful that my husband stayed to help out.

One of our bunch, new to the cohort, tends towards to the more excitable end of the spectrum and his reaction to the ducklings will stay with me for a long time. He's a tough little man who confronts the world face (and often fists) first, with a strength that he neither recognises nor believes. Seeing the ducklings, his eyes light up like fireworks, and his whole body softened. He proceeded to bounce around the room in excitement but responded exceptionally well to the reminder that all babies are very delicate and the ducklings needed him to keep 'safe hands and safe feet'. (I don't think I've ever seen him sit down so quickly.) Immediately on being handed a duckling he kissed the beak and cradled it to his chest like it was the most precious little creature in the world. I'll admit that even now, just writing about it, I get a wee bit misty. (I'm prone to getting dust in my eyes at the oddest of times... Seems to happen a lot during sad movies, and long distance telecom TV commercials. Odd hey?)

Anyhow... Back  to the ducks. They tied in wonderfully with the life cycles unit my co-teacher has going; were a great start to my measurement unit and provided a fantastic opportunity for the kids to all have a shared experience about which to write a procedural text of their own as a formative pre-assessment. (They wrote instructions on 'how to hold a duckling'.) Pretty happy with that hat trick of tie-ins. I love finding opportunities like this to bring disparate parts of our curriculum together, even if with only a tenuous link like my ducklings hatching!

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 2.5 Literacy and numeracy strategies
Standard 3.2 Plan, structure and sequence learning programmes
Standard 3.4 Select and use resources  
Standard 4.1 Support student participation
Standard 4.3 Manage challenging behaviour

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?  

Wanting.

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

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

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