Neuro-what?

For a whole slew of reasons, the word neuroplasticity has been part of everyday conversations in my family for a long time. I don't hear it many other places though. And I'll be honest, I don't use it at school very often.  Which raises an uncomfortable question for me: why not?

Simple answer: I don't know. 

I read an article a couple of days ago titled The Neuroscience Of Learning: 41 Terms Every Teacher Should Know  which lead me to another article The Simple Things I Do To Promote Brain-Based Learning In My Classroom.  This second one really made me stop and think. I already use many of the strategies Judy Willis mentions in her article but I rarely explain (to my students) the reason I use them. It's time for me to harness MY neuroplasticity to change my thinking and incorporate more explicit neuroscience teaching and learning into our programme. 

So here's what I'm going to do: starting next week I'm making time to teach my students about their brains.  We know, from research done by people like Judy Willis,  Peter Marshall, Christina Comalli and Carol Dweck, that teaching children about their brains improves - in my words - their ability to use them.  Three short sessions each week for a few weeks seems to be the optimum for a jumpstart into these understandings, which is easy to manage.  I'll keep you updated on how we go.

I'm still not entirely sure how I'm going to start this off, but I've been having a look at a few youtube clips (my kiddos respond well to a tuning in activity like videos).  I found a channel that has some short sharp videos that might work.  Here's their take on neuroplasticity.

What do you think?

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 1 Know the students and how they learn
Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning

Standard 6 Engage in professional 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

Labels

My husband is a social worker.  Or rather, he was. Now he does counselling and massage. All three come in handy!  More times than I can count he has listened to me as I've enthused, vented, chaffed at restrictions, showed off, planned and debriefed. He's been incredibly patient and I'm more grateful that he realises.

Tonight, over shredded duck and snow pea stir fry,  he helped me unpack some ideas I have around the way we label children. I'll be honest: I have issues with it. I think we 'other' children with labels, whether that is the intention or not.  There is more than one way to view this. Of course there is. This is just MY thinking, right now.

As a parent, I have seen first hand how this works. Our two oldest children are gifted. They are both enrolled in a gifted programme that runs parallel to the mainstream programme at their high school.  They are segregated classes, have different subjects, and go on alternate camps.  The staff of this programme are largely, but not wholly, specialists in gifted education. The school recognises the need for specialist services for these kids. They are quite clearly 'other'. (Don't get me wrong: we advocated for the boys to be included in this programme; we used the label to get the support they need.)

As a teacher, I see a different side of it.  Children come to me with labels. Sometimes I seek a label for them. Sometimes, I'm chastened to admit, I give them one. And these labels change the way the children engage with school. Sometimes the label means that the children have different expected outcomes. Sometimes they are taken out of the classroom for extra support. Sometimes they have extra support in the classroom. Sometimes they have specialised equipment. Sometimes they have behaviour plans that keep them in particular parts of the playground. Always they end up making it clear to the rest of the class that this child is 'other'. 

My issue is that there is an assumption that there's a problem that needs to be fixed. The deficit model which has us approaching students based on our perception of their weaknesses is pervasive.  And insidious. 

By the end of our stir fry, I was quite worked up. My husband reminded me that whatever else I may or may not do, I do see the child in front of me, rather than the label. I can quote their labels, and learn everything I can about the labels but by the time the child is standing in front of me I'm done with that. I see the child in front of me. He or she is welcomed into our class family and celebrated. Nobody is singled out as special. There are no 'others' in our class. There are just people.

And so is my husband, but right now I might just ask him if I can take advantage of his masseuse label. :)

Feedback On My Feedback

I recently received some feedback about my feedback. Actually, I received two almost polar opposite pieces of feedback about my feedback.  I'm ok with that for reasons that will become apparent.

Before I go into the feedback let me share a little about the feedback to which they're both referring:

Whenever I collect my kiddos' 'learning' (whether it be their reading journal or a glogster draft) I will make a couple of comments about what I've noticed and then suggest a 'next step in learning' (NSL) they could focus on in their next activity. It's NOT a mandate. It's NOT a direction. It's a suggestion. As time passes and my learners become more self-directed I expect them to also identify their own NSLs.

It typically looks something like this.

Most students sign and date it to say they've seen it and more often than not they demonstrate some level of improvement in that area pretty well immediately. I can't tell you how often I've been asked for a mini-lesson based on suggested NSLs. 

The first bit of feedback I received ran something like this: "What are you doing!?!? You don't give that much feedback on everything do you? You're mad! They won't read it anyway. What a waste of time!"

The second bit was: "Thank you so much for the feedback. *** loves it!  The NSLs have been just the push to go harder and further that she's needed." 

It in onerous sometimes, yes, but isn't it what we're meant to do? Give feedback that celebrates what our kiddos are already doing and helps them move forward? Invite them to think about ways they can develop?  

I'm always looking to improve the feedback I give. I know I need to get better at the 'compliment' part of feedback. You might notice in the feedback above that I've tried (not hugely successfully) to notice and name the fact that this student regularly writes persuasively. Yesterday I read a post written by the fabulous Two Writing Teachers about compliment conferences and I'm determined to pull some of their strategies into my practice. Check out their awesome info graphic about it: 

Check out Two Writing Teachers amazing blog at
https://twowritingteachers.wordpress.com

So, you can see why the polarity of the feedback didn't bother me.

How do you give feedback?

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 learning

It's Tough Sometimes!

Teaching the final years of primary school comes with a particular set of challenges. And not all of them olfactory. (Love my kiddos for sure, but sometimes their (pre-) pubescent hormones make my eyes water.)

Today's challenge looked like this. Awful isn't it?

The view of Port Noarlunga Beach from Hortas Restaurant
where I sat with a cup of tea, made headway with our spelling
analysis and watched the kiddos.

This week our upper primary classes are doing their yearly aquatics programme at Port Noarlunga beach. Four mornings this week they'll be surfing, wave skiing, snorkelling, kayaking and body boarding under the direct supervision and tutelage of expert water sport educators.

Yep. You read that right. Under someone else's supervision. (I'm many things but water sport educator ain't one of them. Let me assure you.) They are my kiddos though so I retain a kind of duty of care (and a pretty big enormous interest in their wellbeing) so I have to be at the beach too.

It's a challenge, but someone's gotta do it.

#28daysofwriting

I've spent the afternoon with reading journals and WBW reflections (I wrote a post about our Way Back Wednesday programme that you can read here). It's been both inspiring and frustrating:  the usual highs and lows of getting to know the capabilities of a new class.  Now though, 'tis time to turn my mind to something else: the #28daysofwriting challenge.

It's a simple concept: writing for 28 minutes for 28 days.  The brainchild of Tom Barrett @tombarrett and explained succinctly on his blog The Curious Creative it forces encourages participants to just do it. To just sit down and write for 28 minutes. Too easy... I've had longer showers! (OK, not really. Well. Just the once. Shhhh.)

28 minutes is actually a long time if you're not in the habit of writing. Or if, like me, you're not in the habit of single tasking. And so, for me the benefit has been twofold: I'm writing again and I'm retraining myself to focus on one thing at a time.  Both are incredibly welcome gifts.

Let's start with the writing. I mentioned my students' WBW reflections earlier. It's a fascinating process that grew so much bigger than when I wrote that initial blog post. The students loved it as ferociously as I do - often finding it confronting and occasionally a little overwhelming. I've asked many times why this is, and the answer is always the same: the chance to talk openly, think and then reflect on their learning. And for me, that's what this blog is about (minus the talking, although there's plenty of that going on in my head): thinking and reflecting. I feel better about my teaching... My learning... My life really, when I write.

And the focus thing? Ha! My husband likes to joke that he can dangle something shiny in my peripheral vision and I'll turn to it. I do! We all do - especially teachers:  we are masters of splitting our attention in 25 different directions.  I do see the value in focus though and can harness it well when working with children. I'm just not very good at doing it for myself yet. This challenge is helping me get there.

The teacher in my is giving me a 2 minute warning. The writer in my is fretting that I've left myself with no time to revise or proofread. The multitasker in me is ready to move on. So it's a good thing time is nearly up. I'm challenged by this challenge and that's a good thing. Thanks +Tom Barrett

#Socktober Reflection

I just realised that I never gave an update on how the class went with the #Socktober campaign.  In a word: brilliantly.

We collected bags and bags of socks, jocks and toiletries from our community. More than we imagined. More than we hoped! It was humbling and gratifying all at once.

The kids were able to see the power of the social media in a very tangible way: through social media we had one donation of 40 pair of kids' size jocks; and a representative from a local homelessness service offered to come and speak to us.

The incidental learning about social activism and social justice was personal and profound. I could not have designed such an overwhelmingly positive experience.

The afternoon we spent with Kelly Treloar from the homelessness service astounded me. We invited a couple of other classes to join us so we had a pretty packed house but Kelly engaged them all.  She opened all of our eyes about   the experiences of homelessness and then challenged our assumptions about homeless people. The questions she asked were matched by insightful reflections from our young people as they changed their attitudes in front of our very eyes.

We chose to donate our collection to Kelly's service because we learnt that many of her service's clients are families with young children.  Her genuine gratitude was something my students talked about for days after. It's something that still brings a smile to my face.



#Socktober was an amazing experience for my class for a multitude of reasons. I can't wait to do it again this year.  Will you join me?

This relates to the following Australian Professional Standards for Teachers...
Standard 3 Plan for and implement effective teaching and learning.
Standard 4 Create and maintain supportive and safe learning environments.
Standard 7 Engage professionally with colleagues, parents/carers and the community.