Pumpkin Pie Adventure

We don't celebrate Thanksgiving here in Australia. It's not our celebration. We do however tend to jump on any ol' bandwagon that's passing and appears to have tasty food.As it turns out... Pumpkin pie is one tasty dish. One of my  spec. ed. students asked me about pumpkin pie sometime last week and being a bit busy at the time (and not really knowing the answer to his question anyway) I suggested he do some research. Long story short: the research turned into a proposal that resulted in me agreeing to cooking pumpkin pie with the class today.

Which I promptly forgot. (I teach this class Wednesday - Friday and so I didn't have the benefit of constant reminders earlier in the week.) Thank goodness that we're nearing Christmas and our Christian Pastoral Support Worker was baking spice cookies with another class yesterday which jolted me into remembering. Phew! 

The research my student did included a (very simple to follow) recipe which I modified a little to suit the fact that there just wasn't going to be enough time to make pastry as well as the filling and bake big pies. I originally thought to buy a couple of big unfilled pie shells but decided, in the end, to go with mini ones. What. A. Good. Move. For a whole bunch of reasons;  not the least of which was a MUCH reduced cooking time and no need to cut anything.

So I cooked up the pumpkin last night and gathered my spices. In this house we're big 'from scratch' food/cooking fans and so we have a nice collection of spices, both whole and ground. I packed everything I could possibly need to make a pumpkin pie. Except a mixing bowl. Or mixing spoon. Ooops. Lucky our canteen manager is an angel and was willing to lend them to me.

I started our session by talking about all the various things we needed. We handed around the whole and ground spices to compare the smell, look and feel. It was delightful to hear the associations many of the smells held for the children. We also talked a little about the various uses for the spices. The idea of 'shoving' a whole clove into an infected tooth made them all a little more friendlier toward their dentists I think!

Everyone had a turn of measuring, mixing, pouring etc. We're a small class (12 on the roll but usually only 8 or 9 students) which meant everyone was involved all the way through. Right up until the bell for recess went when I was left holding the baby filling the shells. Ha! 

The pies came back to our classroom to cool. Oh. My. Goodness. Not a clever idea. They smelt amazing. The temptation to 'check on them' was too great for a few of us so it was with sweet relief that lunchtime arrived and I invited the children to taste their handiwork.

Resounding success. Not only did they all love eating the pies, but they were so proud that they wanted to share the leftovers with the principal and their buddy class teachers. It was such a delight to see them scurry off to spread the love. 

As you would expect from me, I did manage to squeeze some literacy into the activity also. We co-constructed a procedural text on 'how to make pumpkin pie'. It made me realise how I long to teach a class  fulltime (and not at the end of the year) so that I can build whole units of work that incorporate activities like this. Ooooh... Integrating cooking, life skills and art with a procedural text unit in a spec. ed. class! Oooh! Ooops. Sorry. I digress. Only a couple of the children managed to get much down on paper but it was a valuable exercise in recall, recounting our process, and talking about the features of a procedural text. Tomorrow they'll write recounts of the activity, right through to the eating! I love helping each child at their point in ability and development to achieve writing success. Whether it's a scaffolded format with sentence starters, or a proforma that requires minimal writing (there's at least one child for whom the physical act of writing is a challenge at the moment) or even allowing them to speak their text... I LOVE seeing the sense of accomplishment on their faces.  Again, I digress. 

So there you have my pumpkin pie adventure. I realised last night, while at the store buying pumpkin, that Thanksgiving is this week in the US so it's all rather fortuitously timed. I have a load of the filling left and think I might make a big one for the family tomorrow. Happy Thanksgiving to all my US friends. (And a belated greeting to my Canadian friends for a few weeks ago.)

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 1.6 Strategies to support full participation of students with disability

Standard 2.5 Literacy and numeracy strategies
Standard 3.2 Plan, structure and sequence learning programmes
Standard 3.3 Use teaching strategies 

Standard 4.1 Support student participation
Standard 4.4 Maintain student safety 

"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

Making it her own...

Allow me a proud teacher moment...

Straight after lunch today one of my year 4 students came and showed me a bag of dust. Yes, that's right: a bag of dust. She proceeded to tell me that she, and a group of her friends, had found some stones and ground them up. I must have raised my eyebrows pretty quickly because she immediately launched into an explanation that they'd been thinking about how the Kaurna people used ground stones as paint and were trying to do the same thing. They had ground up some stones and had plans to mix it with water to make a paint. Oh. My. Goodness. She took something we learnt about last term and made it her own. In her own time! I'm so proud of her! I expect she'll read this too so... Yay for you!

This is the static version of the interactive version available
here on the ABC website. Check it out... It's great!
The Kaurna lands are coloured yellow and can be found just
to the east of the funny foot shaped peninsula on the
southern central coast.
Or around Adelaide if you happen to know where that is!

For the non-Adelaide readers: the Kaurna people are the traditional inhabitants and custodians of the land on which our school rests. The Kaurna people's history is long and fascinating. The arrival of European settlers signalled the near genocide of the Kaurna people; within decades the Kaurna language was extinct and the culture smothered. It is through amazing cultural strength and effort that the 'sleeping' language is being awoken and Kaurna culture is again being celebrated.  Including Kaurna history in our (local) curriculum, and teaching from an Indigenous perspective is, in my opinion, incredibly important. 

(The Kaurna lands are coloured yellow and can be found just to the east of the funny foot shaped peninsula on the southern central coast. Or around Adelaide if you happen to know where that is! )

OK, I'll hop off my soapbox now.  And back on my proud teacher box. I can't tell you how proud I am of these girls. This is why I teach. Thank you. 

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!)

New challenge

Walking into a class part way through the year seems fraught with challenges, although I've never started with a class at the beginning of the year yet, so I don't really know any different. (Maybe next year... Keep your fingers crossed for me!) And even though we're only 7 weeks away from the end of the school year I'm about to do it again. I'm not leaving my beautiful 3/4 class, but will be spending the remainder of each week with an upper primary special needs class. Their regular teacher is taking long service leave and my school has offered this exciting opportunity to me.

I'm excited, but also quite nervous. New classes always have this effect on me, but perhaps never more so than this one: I've never split my time between two classes before; I've never pulled an extended stint in a special needs classroom before; I'll be co-teaching with someone new; there are reports to write (for my 3/4 class not the new one); and the summer/Christmas holidays are right around the corner so everyone's going to be more than a little excited. It's going to be a challenge.

But I'm looking forward to it.

Picture Clues or Clue Pictures?

I take LOTS of photos while I'm teaching. I take photos of kiddos to share with them (and eventually their parents), I take photos of evidence of learning (often for the kiddos to print and glue in their workbooks), I take photos of processes we're working on, I take photos of assessment products (to grade later at home, or just to have on hand later), I take photos of things I find funny, I take photos of books I want to remember, I take... Well, you get the picture. (Ha! No pun intended, honestly!)

The upshot is that I have a BUCKETLOAD of photos that aren't necessarily all 'keepers'. I need to develop a system for sorting them quickly, but until then I'll continue using Evernote (when I remember) or just making folders (also when I remember and have time). All of this is my way of saying that today whilst going through some photos I found some photos from a lesson that was great fun and full of fantastic discussions. (My husband would tell you that me taking a long time to get to the point and visiting various other points along the way is NOT unusual. Meh. I'm cool with it, I know when I need to rein it in.)

So here they are anyway.

I used this lesson with the same Reception group you may remember from my second space adventure. We'd been talking about using clues in pictures to help us understand a story so I decided to give them part of a picture and let them tell the story by making the rest of of the picture. I had a range of animal images with more or less detail and directed children accordingly. I was fortunate enough to have SSO classroom support during this lesson and so we were able to offer quite individualised support to our students with special needs. The results were all fantastic... Here are three.

I love that this fish was leading the rest
 of his school to school. 

This giraffe was eating and swimming. Very clever!

It was cloudy,  so this lion was looking
at the sky to see if was going to rain.

Here is the original pinterest post that inspired this lesson. (Yep, another pinterest inspired lesson. Sense a theme developing?)

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 1.6 Strategies to support full participation of students with disability.
Standard 3.3 Use teaching strategies