What's the Difference?

I don't even know what to write for a title here... I know, two posts in one day, but I'm on release and I had two separate things to talk about, and I did pick figs from my tree and take them to dad (he was super happy, even though the resident in the next room at the rest home calls out "help me, help me, help me!" continuously for about 10 hours a day) and I got grocery shopping (very boring shopping now we are free of salicylates, dairy, wheat, soy, nightshades, lactose, citrus, the list goes on, as well as being vegan by choice) - but I refuse to give up peanut butter and sriracha sauce because it's not my food allergies, I'm just being a super supportive wife, and if celery is about the most exciting thing on the list (I hated celery like forever) I'm going to dip it in peanut butter and sriracha because it's actually pretty nice like that! This whole food allergy/intolerance is like so time consuming, I'm trying to come up with creative ways to prepare dinner with a seriously small amount of safe foods. Being vegan is not limiting, I've been vegetarian all my life, and switching to vegan was simple as I didn't like milk or eggs anyway, but this... this is a challenge, and I miss tofu! And nuts!
Enough about that, now I am home and I have to write something about appraisal goals and I've been thinking about the whole motivation/engagement thing and this is what I think.
It depends on the children. If I compare my class from last year to this year, I can already see the difference. I'm as enthusiastic as I've always been, but my class are just so unbelievably into all learning and challenges that I am absolutely amazed.
For example, last year I was shown a new (old) game during a Maths PD day. I was excited, I went back to school and re created the game, cut out all the little pieces and introduced it to my class, who were not at all interested. I think there were about 4 children who asked to play it again after they had been practically forced to play it the first time! This year, I had to make 3 extra copies, and whenever they have the chance, they ask to play it!
Writing is another example, when you have a class that cheers, "yay!" when it's time for writing, children who love maths problem solving so much that they will work on a problem for a whole session, then refuse to be given even a tiny hint because they are going to work on it at home when time runs out in class, children who use their initiative and take next steps in learning during Mantle without me having to give them any direction, this is a motivated group of children!
Even Jump Jam is done with enthusiasm, more so than last year, and they know I put my everything into this (being slightly challenged with coordination and having no sense of rhythm - they know I concentrate very hard and count all the moves, but I am enthusiastic) they do too!
So what is it about this lot that is different to last year?
I have the same types of activities, the same passion for growth mindset, maths, literacy and Mantle, (the same lack of passion for P.E but they've not yet noticed this as we are still swimming every day), we do visual art, sometimes linked with other areas like maths and sometimes exploring different techniques or media, most weeks, as I have always done in the past. I have the same expectations and I get excited about learning. The children see this, so how come one group can be so different from the next?
I thought maybe it was because of what they have done in the past, but that doesn't work in theory because they've all come from the same teachers prior to me. I thought maybe it was to do with growth mindset kind of filtering its way up through the years? It isn't their beginning levels when they get to me, I usually have the majority of the class at or above in most areas, and the few that need support really are a tiny minority group!
My conclusion is that it is the children, I'm just not sure how! Or why. Perhaps by the end of the year I will have figured this one out.

See! This is what they chose to do! A game that last year nobody was even remotely interested in! Look at them... doesn't it just make you feel all happy inside?  :)

Writing Expectations

We've all been asked to come up with some ideas of what we expect our children to have (as far as writing is concerned) when they enter our year levels. I've been thinking about this for days!
I guess a bullet point list would be best, and I can elaborate on some points as I go. By the time they reach Year 5...

• Use capital letters correctly! This is something that really frustrates me. Even when I focus on it during writing, some children still produce work with either random capital letters throughout their work, or no capital letters where they should be. One of the very worst ones is "I" written as lower case. These are usually the children who write names starting with lower case letters. They should know this! Sentences, proper nouns, place names, titles, days of the week etc and the start of each sentence. I still teach handwriting because it's never too late to change some funny habits like forming letters incorrectly and not knowing the difference between capital and lower case letters. The children love practising linking and I show them how, so they are aware of what the letters look like. Just yesterday I had a child produce a poem, great content, but every letter b throughout their writing was a capital B! 
• Apostrophes! They are used to replace missing letters in contractions e.g. do not - don't, you are - you're, and to show possession or ownership e.g. Mildred's cat. They are not used to show plurals! I had a whole group of children who used apostrophes every single time they used plurals, so I actually went through and circled them all, which looked ridiculous because I try to keep my pen out of their books as much as possible, but this was just too much. 
• Quotation marks, they go around the words that were actually said. This is pretty easy to explain and the children usually get it pretty quickly if they don't already have this knowledge. I like them to know this because they often use dialogue in their recount writing.
• Paragraphs. I'm not even going to go in to this one, I know it is taught, and I focus on it too, and I just do not know why after using paragraphs consistently in their books they will go away and independently write a whole page with absolutely no paragraphs at all!
• Spelling, at least Essential Word list words!
• Other types of punctuation, including commas and full stops of course!
• Proof reading and editing skills. I have a proof reading pencil (a cute pencil with a face and a checklist of basic proof reading criteria) which is displayed on the wall and a copy goes in their draft writing books. We still draft and publish and my reasons are these. Our writing sessions are always relatively quick. We use a lot of poetry to focus on deeper writing features, which is short and achievable within a set timeframe. The children remember features such as alliteration, similes, metaphor, personification, adverbs etc from the poems they have produced. Published writing goes on the wall! And the children read it. Their own and each others. If it's just in their books, no one else gets to read and enjoy some of the beautiful writing they have produced. They are excited and enthusiastic about writing! The other day my class went, "yay!" when I told them it was time for writing!
• Understand different genre of writing and purpose.

I think that's about it. It's all surface features, the content is usually pretty good, they have great ideas and their oral language skills are awesome, so they can construct perfectly wonderful writing, providing they can use those surface features correctly.
Before I go, we do plenty of other writing as well! Procedural text, letters, factual reports, explanations, persuasive text etc. are all included within our Mantle throughout the year. Poetry is just a really nice way to focus on one thing at a time and it seems that the children retain the knowledge of what we have focused on! Rhyming words- the Ice Cream poems! Alliteration - In the Land of ... poems! Adverbs - I Wish poems. Metaphor - Dandelion poems! We have already produced a whole bunch of poetry and they refer to the poem titles when discussing these features.
I still use Must Do, Should Do, Could Do. This works so well, and I very rarely have anyone produce the bare minimum of Must Do.

Plastic Bags

Our Mantle is well underway, already! It just happened! I've not even completely finished my plan for it, but so far so good!
I decided to use the storm in Greymouth that uncovered an old dump site as my initial hook, we read the newspaper articles about the plastic bags littering the beach and were amazed at how they showed no sign of breaking down after all these years. We used freeze frame and thought tapping to imagine what the poor residents of that area were going through. I took photos which we used to write newspaper headlines and captions to explain what was going on in each image.
The children were eager to come up with solutions to the problem so we used "gifting" to assist in the clean up. This involved coming up with a "gift", an invention or a method that would either clean up the beach or make use of the plastic bags collected. The class drew their ideas and presented them to various groups posing as the residents of Greymouth that we had used during the initial freeze frame activity. Some of their ideas were pretty creative!
These drama activities all sparked some wonderings and questions about plastic bags in general, and everyone had a lot to share about what they already knew about plastic bags. They started asking questions about how long it takes for a plastic bag to break down, how many are produced and used in New Zealand, why some supermarkets use them and some charge for them, how they can be recycled or used to make something else... and the research they undertook to find answers to their own questions just happened! Like spontaneously! I didn't even need to prompt them or say anything about finding out... they just went and found out all by themselves!
Small groups decided to present what they'd found out and asked for paper to make posters. The photos below show how into it they were, it was really a wonderful thing to see everyone involved and keen to be a part of every step, right down to every child contributing to the posters in some way. Our company was soon established, we did the whole name, logo, voting, mission statement bit and ended up with the company name NET (National Environmental Team). I must admit I didn't really love the name but that's what they voted for so that is what it is. We discussed the premises and created our building in our imaginations, I didn't want to spend ages making maps etc this time around. So it was a surprise (a good one) when I came in after a wet lunchtime to find the majority of the class sitting on the floor creating a 3 dimensional model of the company building out of scrap paper and sellotape. So cute! They had even made air conditioning units (labeled), and furniture, used felt tips to draw on furnishings, created stairs and made a very cute helicopter!
Next time I think I shall provide card for them to use. They had the rulers out and were measuring, using compasses (I showed them how they worked to draw circles and now they are constantly "needing" them for various things!) they were striving for accuracy, working collaboratively, problem solving, and I was like WOW!
So they've started collecting plastic bags to experiment with now. They are keen to try fusing plastic with an iron, make plarn to knit and crochet with, and make parachutes!
I love my motivated class :)

OK, so now my stupid internet won't let me put my photos on. I'm posting this now and I'll add the photos later.

It is later...

Poster presentation showing what this group found out

Researching!

See! They're all working on it at once!

Freeze frame - devastated locals!  

Look at the thousands of plastic bags on the beach!

Harper "gifts" an invention

These gifts should be enough to fix the problem, look, all of the plastic bags are covered!

Some of our experiments with plastic bags, check out our cool crocheted plarn basket...

macrame and fused plastic bag bracelet

The winning logo, by Noah

Our premises!

If I'd known they were going to do this I would have provided sturdier materials to construct with... scrap paper is a bit flimsy!

Company van & of course, helicopter!