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!

My Intentions for 2018

This is a difficult post to write because it is all very well me saying I'm going to do this, that and the other thing but if I don't actually do it then that will not make me feel very happy because I like to always do what I say I will. These are the things I hope to try with my 2018 class. That sounds better!
After reading Leslee's book, I have decided that I shall try some aspects of play based learning with my class. It all makes sense and her book is awesome... but I'm struggling with how it would look in a senior class, still! I have visions of placing provocations around the room, and the kids going straight for the board games or out into the playground, and completely ignoring what I've put out for them to "discover" and wonder about.
I'm pretty sure I wrote all about what I wanted to do this year in my last or second to last post, but that was before reading Leslee's book!
I think it best if I just list the things I'd like to do or try (or continue from 2017) and then hopefully I can come back to this post, check what I've tried, and reflect on what worked and what did not, and why.

It is now quite some time later... as in over a week later. I've had my class 3 days now, and I think I can definitely try out some play based ideas with this class (so different to last years!).
So I'm just going to bullet point my hopes for 2018 in Room 7

• Play based learning - try some ideas
• A more in depth and focused Mantle (and I so have some ideas up my sleeve for this!)
• Continue with tuakana-teina
• Continue with Te Reo
• Continue with growth mindset 
• Plan a mural for the end of Room 7 (how cool would that be? I could whip out and do a little bit whenever I had a minute or two)
• I only have one child on my target list this year, so hopefully I can use some of the successful ideas I tried last year with Mack to help her reach her full potential. Her progress and what we do will be recorded on our Google Drive so I'm not going to write it all down here.
• Support a charity this year - I always used to do this, fundraising for somewhere, usually SPCA or bird rescue, but haven't for the last couple of years. I personally do but haven't done anything with my class, and it is nice to support the people who take care of animals. It's being kind! 

I'm going to add to this once I get to know my children a little better, hopefully very soon!

Finished!

Finally completed this just before we returned to school. I keep seeing things I could change or add, but this will do for now!

A Quote I Like

“If you are curious, you’ll find the puzzles around you. If you are determined, you will solve them. ”

Erno Rubik

I found this quote, when Mackay was teaching me how to solve the Rubik's Cube, and I really liked it so I saved it, and I just remembered I wanted to post it!
And I can do it now, without refering to his instructions. My best time is 2 minutes 39 seconds, and I know there are people out there who do it way quicker, but this was something I never thought I'd ever achieve! I didn't even think I'd ever be able to solve it. My brain must have grown! Growth Mindset :)
 

End of 2017 Reflection

I'm not posting this immediately because I will need to add to it. But I wanted to make a start and I wanted to begin with my target children, my conundrums, the ones I worried about more than the others.
Mack was my biggest concern, working at well below in all areas, now he is reading at chronological age, 90% comp and 99% accuracy (that's a 2 year improvement!) I would have pushed him further when I did running records but I fear he may slip back a little over the holidays so I'll leave him there for now. Writing is still not quite there but significant progress was made, from 1P to 2A. Maths was the biggest concern, but we persevered... he is now working at the beginning of Stage 5, a vast improvement on earlier in the year. He started out not even at Stage 3! I couldn't even Gloss test at the start, Ronda did a Jam test with him instead.
So I'm thinking about what worked for Mack and I think it's a combination of the following

• Support at home
• Buddy system in the classroom
• Growth mindset!!!!
• Tuakana-teina (working with younger student teaching maths games and practising together)
• Setting high expectations... he knows anything less than his best will not be accepted
• Problem solving groups - mixed ability (not only for maths but during other tasks as well)
• Youcubed videos - especially the ones about how mathematicians work and how the brain works, how happy were my class to know it didn't matter if it took a long time to reach an answer, or that they could draw their problems, use their fingers... so many things. I love youcubed and I think Jo Boaler is just amazing!

My other target children all benefited from the same types of things in class, they didn't receive the same support from home, but all reached expected levels, except Kenzie who is almost there in maths (on track but not quite at) and then there are the ones who exceeded expectations!
When I filled in the maths strategy level sheet it was so awesome to see no one in the "at risk" box!
Even more exciting was that I had so many names up at Stage 7! I've never had that happen before so I'm thinking that the way we now teach maths does work!
I confess to having a few doubts during the year, wondering whether or not children were "getting it"
or were making much progress, especially the quieter ones who needed prompting to share ideas and strategies, contribute to group discussion, or listen to the ideas other children have. Obviously they were listening, and thinking!

It is now 2018 and I am just going to finish this and post it because it's been on my mind and I finally have some free time. Not that I wasn't enjoying my busy time, we had our grandsons stay for a little holiday over the New Year, and although they don't demand constant attention, I was making the most of our time with them! Among other things, we made slime, played with playdoh, set up tents, made salt dough ornaments, read lots of books, went to the park, made masks and planes, tried some new vegan recipes out, visited with their great grandfather (yes, my dad is ok, he is still in the rest home, still not mobile - I can't see him regaining use of his left side but I try to stay positive around him) and coloured in. As we don't have telly, which they didn't miss, I wasn't up to date with their latest favourite show, PJ Masks. Paw Patrol still rates pretty high but this visit involved lots of acting as Owlette, Catboy and Gecko, and drawing pictures of these characters to colour in. Luckily the internet provides plenty of how to draw videos for me to get the characters right! Enough about that, I'll get back to school stuff.

Reflecting on my year...

I don't really feel as though Mantle went as well as it could have. It was good, but it could have been better. The biggest issue for me was allowing the children a bit too much say in the direction it took. It wasn't until I felt that we were dithering and completely off track (science focus turned into a technology based inquiry) that I used Viv's advice, remembered timeshifting, and brought our Mantle back to the Science focus. Unfortunately, I feel I left it too late, and did not accomplish all I had set out to do with them. Looking back, if I'd done this earlier, I would have had plenty of time to include all of the learning experiences in Science that I intended, and made the technology component way smaller but still used it. I have learnt from this. In future, when things go off on a tangent, I'll pull them back in with some of the ideas I picked up during Mantle PD. And I'll do so relatively quickly!

Tuakana- Teina is something I'd like to continue with Nicky's class. The children got so much out of it, and looked forward to our time spent with Room 3. I noticed they way my class behaved when working with the younger students. They knew they were there to teach and to learn, and did their best to set good examples and be positive role models. Organising a time is the hardest part, there was always something else popping up and towards the end of the year we really struggled to find a time that suited both classes. This year I think we should set a time on a day that isn't likely to need to be continuously changed to fit in other events and activities.

Te Reo with Room 8 is something else that I would like to continue and I'm pretty sure Pam would too. Aside from the support and encouragement from Pam (which I so very much appreciate) it really does take the pressure off stressing about planning Te Reo lessons that are relevant and suitable for our classes. As we alternate weeks, we can build on past lessons, and now that we have our scrapbooks with this year's lessons in them, we can add to them and use some of the successful lessons we have already tried. My confidence has grown a little, I don't feel so silly trying to use Te Reo with the children, and I just know that even though I've got a long way to go, I am learning! I also know I wouldn't be doing nearly as much Maori language and culture without Pam. 

My class were an interesting group last year. They were keen to participate and do Jump Jam, but seemed more uncoordinated than me! (I know, that's pretty bad) Drumming lessons with Yvette proved that it was not just me imagining things! Lack of rhythm, coordination, and the ability to remember sequences really stood out. In saying that, they were enthusiastic about Jump Jam, and I guess so long as they were actually moving, fitness levels were maintained!

Room 7 were terrible for winding each other up too. While most of them showed empathy and kindness (usually) there were times when I felt like, good grief... you know (insert name) will react that way if you say or do that, so why do it? I suppose that's a silly question though, often children really don't think about the consequences of their actions, and asking "why" is not going to result in a satisfactory answer, because they really don't know why! I'll keep working on this though, reminding them to show kindness and empathy, and making this a strong focus in Room 7 this year. As I said, this was an unusual mix of children, perhaps this year's class will be more thoughtful.
Gosh, re reading this it makes it sound as though they were really mean to each other. Believe me, they weren't. They were just not as nice as they could have been - at times!

Finally, and this is something I keep wondering about, digital tech wasn't something last years class seemed interested in. I previous years we've always done a whole bunch of really neat activities, used amazing apps and computer programmes, devices and video, incorporating it into our learning & presentation, especially during Mantle, but this year my class weren't into it. They were not inspired or motivated by any of the digital technology, using it only as a research tool when necessary, or when I set tasks that required using a particular app. The most creative children, the ones who were innovative and imaginative and thought creatively, refused to use digital tech when given a choice, consistently producing work done by hand, whether it be presenting an idea, showing their understanding of something, or even publishing a piece of writing. Even researching was often done using books from the library rather than online. I found this interesting and am a little puzzled as to why.  Not that there is anything wrong with how they chose to do things, but I love digital tech and I wanted to use it! I also love doing things by hand, I think there can be both in the classroom, there is definitely a time and place for both! Maybe this year.  Maybe I can balance the types of activities, and my expectations of what is used. Who knows, this year the children might be into it big time.

I'm posting this now, if I think of anything else while Exit Moulding the  bathroom ceiling, I'll add to it later!