Not My End of Year Reflection

No, it's my pre end of year reflection. But really, it's just a quick update with photos and I'm only writing this because I just finished reports and this was next on my to do list.
It's been rather hectic, and I still feel like I have so much to do! I'm going to add captions to all of the photos, rather than write a big long story... I'll save the big long story for next time, which will be soon, I promise!

Tuakana-teina. We began visiting Room 3 (juniors) once a week, teaching them new skills and learning with them. Our first session was spent outdoors, and the children loved it!

Te Reo - Mrs T & I came up with a brilliant plan, to continue teaching our combined classes Te Reo. I am becoming more confident through having to prepare a lesson every second week, and I practise (with a little help from the cool online Maori dictionary) very hard before each lesson! I'm actually enjoying coming up with neat ways to allow them to use Te Reo, and I'm also learning a great deal from Mrs T!

Cootie Catchers, designed to allow children to practise asking questions and responding appropriately. It was also a great way to reinforce things they already knew, such as numbers, colours and basic commands. And it took me ages to create the template... just letting you know that!

Tuakana-teina: card games, and the children are having such a lovely time!

The thing that took up most of my classroom for almost 2 terms! Bernina Fashion Awards, well worth it, a great experience for the children and they gained some fabulous skills along the way. The prizes were pretty impressive too, but there is no way I could have judged, especially after seeing all the work put into them!

Show time!

Tuakana-teina: this session was spent making adorable bookmarks. The children buddied up, explaining instructions and helping with cutting and folding after we had a trial run in Room 7.

Room 9 creating papier mache bird sculptures with me while Mrs J teaches my class drumming. I'm not sure that my class are doing very well... yet! But hers are very enthusiastic young artists, and I've loved being able to extend their skills in visual art. I doubt very much I'd be any good at teaching drumming. Oh, shouldn't have said that, so not growth mindset!

The mural, finally underway...

A little further along... will add final photos when it's done. Might be a few weekends work to complete, but I am enjoying myself very much. I have to remember not to be too hard on the children who are helping paint, but sometimes they just aren't striving for accuracy enough for my liking! It all will need a second coat anyway.

Te Reo: playing shops!

I just put these ones in just because! Seriously, this was super cool, we made exploding books and I didn't even really prepare for it, you know those lessons you just make up as you go along? So often those are the most successful ones. Maybe because we are learning with the children. Or haven't the same expectations we do when we plan it all so carefully? I don't know, but it was really fun and they were all so proud of themselves!

See?!!!

 

One other thing, and it's going to sound silly, but when I was around the age the children in my class are now, like hundreds of years ago, I got a Rubik's cube for my birthday. I tried so hard to solve it. I remember the most I could do was 2 sides. When we began growth mindset all that time ago, I thought really hard about something I'd always wanted to achieve, and the Rubik's Cube popped into my head. I figured one day I might buy one and look into how I could possibly figure it out.
A couple of weeks ago, Ethan brought his cube to school. Mackay picked it up and solved it! In less than 2 minutes! I was absolutely amazed. He told me he would teach me how to solve it if I would teach him how to make a rather complicated origami rose. He spent quite some time (over a weekend) writing instructions for me, and arrived at school on the Monday, where I was ready and waiting with my brand new cube ( I actually bought 4, one for my nephew, a 2 x 2 cube for grandson who is almost 5 now, and a bear shaped one for other grandson who is nearly 3 -and I'll probably struggle trying to solve theirs!) anyway here we were, and Mackay goes, "copy me, copy what I do" like about a million times, and eventually I had solved it! But not really because he was telling me what to do every step of the way. I took his instructions home after photocopying them for Ethan, and practised, and got stuck, and practised, and I really did have growth mindset because I made mistakes and I learnt from them. Cutting a long story short now... I CAN do it! I still need to look at the instructions occasionally, and sometimes I go anticlockwise instead of clockwise or left instead of right, but I can do it. So can Ethan... without even looking. My next goal is to solve it without looking at instructions at all, and then be able to do it really fast.
And yes, I did teach Mackay how to make a rose :)

Fun Maths

I am just writing this one up quickly, I found this activity on NZMaths and thought it would be interesting to see how the class solved it. I gave them no direction and allowed them to work with whoever they wanted, rather than their usual mixed problem solving groups. The activity was called "Teacups" and had the whole class focused and persisting for the entire session!

This group chose counters and beans to represent the cups and saucers

At one stage this group were ready to give up! They thought they had it, but there were cups and saucers in the wrong places! (They did keep trying, and after many attempts they got there)

These boys used a variety of materials during the task, recording their ideas with coloured pens.

Felt tips - always handy for problem solving!

Beans were great, except when you get mixed up between which were cups and which were saucers.

Buttons didn't work so well, especially with the limited colours, but these girls got there in the end

Still rearranging the grid!

So happy to see these two working so well, Mack trying out different strategies, and both contributing and persevering...

... then trying out their ideas with materials!

Success!

The most wonderful thing about these types of activities is that everyone is so involved. The class found it an achievable challenge, regardless of "maths ability" so it kind of like levels everyone and everything out.
I need to work on ensuring time for reflection at the end of each session. After being given those really lovely Growth Mindset visuals (thanks, Leslee) I realised this is something I don't do enough of. Time just goes so fast when you're having fun... the bell rings and we haven't finished. I will start setting my alarm I think!

Mindsets

I was all ready to write a post at last staff meeting, but I cannot concentrate when people are talking, so I just read and commented on other people's blogs. There are some neat things happening in our school, and it's great to read about what everyone else has been doing in their classrooms. And then I read Leslee's and there were so many awesome things happening I did not know what to comment on! I didn't end up writing anything. Please know that your posts are interesting, informative and inspirational, Leslee, and this post today is inspired by the book that you let me read first, before anyone else (I did feel a bit special about being first to read it!)
But it is also because today I visited my dad in hospital, he had a stroke yesterday, he is completely paralysed down his left hand side, and I could barely understand what he was trying to say. My mind kept going back to the book I'd just finished, about mindsets, and I found myself thinking 'he will be ok, his brain will find new ways to control his body and speech, I know this because I have just read about brains and mindsets and I know all of this'... but it was very hard to remain positive while he was crying, trying to tell me about what happened. The frustration of thinking clearly while your body won't respond, and your words won't come out... I don't know what I can do. I don't know.
I can't write this.
The book (Mindset - Carol Dweck, Ph.D) was brilliant, and I know that everyone (our staff) will enjoy it. Or at least gain something from reading it.
Usually I read everything (literally everything, I never skim, scan or miss bits - just in case I miss something important) but I did a little bit with this one. The sports stuff, chapter 4, I just could not relate to. I had no clue what she was on about with golf and softball (was it even softball, I don't know, teams were named, maybe it was baseball, is that what they play in America?) and tennis etc. I've heard of some of the people before like Tiger Woods, Steel Panther do a really funny song about him, and Michael Jordan of course, but I didn't understand a lot of what it all meant.
However, the rest of the book was fantastic. It has questions and scenarios to think about while reading and I found out that I do have fixed mindset in some situations, but it also gave ideas about how to change to growth mindset, how to change the way that you think, strategies for dealing with fixed mindsets and how to work with kids using growth mindset. I am already practising some of those strategies, and keep thinking about what I've learnt. I think, most importantly for me, is that in order to expect growth mindset within my class, I need to show growth mindset in how I speak, act and what I do in my class. It's really not just about putting growth mindset posters on the wall.
Things that I found most fascinating were mindsets and depression, suicide, anger and entitlement. I feel like I could just read it all over again. Interesting stuff, maybe I could study brains too! But I love my job. And extra study for me would be what I love most, something in visual art. Actually, I'd really love to do Maori art. That could be a goal.
I had set myself a few personal goals relating to what I've learnt, that should have a positive impact on my students.
Right now I'm thinking that I hope I can somehow have a positive impact on my Dad.

Progress

It is indeed a very happy thing when you can see progress being made! Mack is now reading at 8.5 - 9.5 with 99% accuracy and great comprehension. I will retest him at the next level before the end of term. I have to put this down to the extra effort at home as well as at school.
Progress is being made in maths as well, although not enough to move ahead to the next stage. The biggest change I've noticed is his confidence, which has grown immensely. He loves the games I make up, and looks so proud when he goes off to teach them to Cooper in Room 3. I've drawn an analogue clock on the board with 10:50 on it so he knows when to go for his 10 minute "game" and he gets so excited when it gets close to the right time.
He is contributing more during group problem solving tasks, is using materials and drawings to help with understanding and consolidation of maths strategies, and is better able to explain some of his ideas using mathematical language.
Writing can still be a challenge. When Taige is sitting with him, Mack is focused and works hard on completing writing to set criteria (usually we only focus on one thing at a time) but if Taige is away, Mack does a whole lot less. Taige's support for Mack is just wonderful. Mack does not copy, their written work is similar but not the same, and he is always so pleased with himself when he completes tasks. I am really hoping that Mack begins to take more responsibility for his learning in writing when Taige can't be there, it's great that he has support, but he needs to be able to write independently too!
We used "A week of inspirational maths" tasks from youcubed recently. There are really neat little video clips about growth mindset and brains and learning which I showed the class prior to each maths session. We did not complete every activity, but they are all pretty awesome.
The one with surprising results (for me) was an activity where children had to figure out the least amount of squares to fit inside a 13 x 11 rectangle. I honestly thought it would be a quick 10 minute activity. I was wrong. 45 minutes in and they were still going. I had some interesting ideas about squares presented to me (even though we have done lots of work with geometry!) and children who struggled with the whole 13 x 11 rectangle... just not counting accurately! Jack managed to get it down to 8 squares. The class, knowing Jack usually figures things out first, all carried on, trying to get theirs down to 8 as well. Jack figured he had solved it and went off to play Prodigy Maths on the computer. Then Mabel found she could do it in 6! This caused much excitement, and though I could not figure out any way to make it less myself, Mabel decided to go and see if it was possible to make it in even less! Talk about perseverance! I took a photo of Mabel and Brooke, they were just so "into it" and I was like WOW, brains growing here!

One other thing, I've decided that regardless of whether or not fidget spinners are good for adhd, autism, anxiety or any other problem, I really like them! So much so that I have a wee collection of them now, and I am happy for the children in my class to have them too.
We did a whole bunch of activities with them, timing them, making charts and graphs, making predictions about spin time based on size, bearings, shape... it was heaps of fun.

Tigger guards her spinner!

It's a serious business!

Summer in charge of the stop watch

Checking to see if weight makes a difference to the length of the spin

My precious grandsons love their spinners too!

A Whole Bunch of Photos

It's about time I put some more photos on here!

Room 7's Blot Fundraiser art

Room 6's Blot Fundraiser art

My awesome door! Finally had enough money to buy the stuff I wanted to stick on it... and I love it!

Youngest grandson experiments with art activity I planned to do with art group!

Finally pained a table top with chalkboard paint... is currently displaying map of imaginary island we are imaginary visiting in MOTE.

Art group - chalk pastel and glue pansies

Art group - shaving foam & food colouring

Art group - Indian Ink blown with straws

Art group - deciding what the splatters could be

Painting trees on the marbled paper

Indian Ink and watercolour

Room 7's collaborative design for professional screenprinting

Grandchildren's finished art - aged 4 and 2... potato stamped marbled paper and felt butterflies glued on. Marbled with shaving foam & food colour.