Today was the Tamaki cluster softball tournament, and my first sports tournament ever. I never played sports as a child, and this hasn't changed as I went into adulthood.
However, I wanted to make a conscious effort to go out of my comfort zone (read my goals for 2017 here). So I volunteered to coach the year 5 and 6 softball teams.
This has meant that for three weeks, I have had a softball training almost every lunchtime. This has been hard on me personally as I haven't been eating lunch properly and taking that break, making me more tired for the afternoon block of learning and also messes with my eating schedule.
I am glad I did sign up for it, as I have learnt a lot about the game of softball and of course have gotten to know my kids better as well.
My focus for the year 5 team was for them to learn how to play. I purposely made them rotate often through the various 'roles' in the team, even during the competition. I wanted them to build confidence in themselves and their physical ability, and the focus was about getting better, not being the best. This rotation was a focus for the year 6's as well, rather than them having 'set' roles in the team. This definitely did happen - every single child got better, wether at batting or catching
or pitching.
The next sport is cricket (starting next week!) and I am looking forward to learning more about the sport (ala, I know nothing..) and continuing to build strong relationships with my students through this extra activity.
After the talk with my class last week about how they were bored doing the same kinds of tasks all the time, I wanted to change it up for them a bit..
I planned to teach them about orientation and direction (as per our maths overview for term 4), but through a project-based learning model.
The project..? Making treasure maps!
I intended to do a small bit of this project everyday, finishing on Thursday (as I am not at school on Fridays). However because of testing and practising for the testing, it didn't happen. Instead, we started and finished within a day. We had to move quite quickly through the content, but as it was a range of different 'stuff' for the kids to do, they were far from bored. At times they struggled to keep up with me..
Firstly, I introduced the challenge.
(To be honest - the kids seemed quite confused at having been given a challenge, it was kinda funny. They are clearly not used to this kind of learning).
We talked through the first few slides from here. We watched the clip on slide 6, then went outside to practice our understanding.
As our practice, I included this game as a physical kinaesthetic activity, and the kids did request more games and they wanted to go outside more. Perfect solution!
If you have ever played Captain's coming, it is the same game, just with changed labels.
After morning tea, we worked through slides 8-12. Slide 12 asks students to record a video of themselves explaining what the directions were to a buddy. This was crazy! All the kids of course needed a quiet space so their voice could be heard, so they spread out through the class, corridor, staff room and stairwell foyer. I gave them only 5 minutes to do this, as we had to work quickly in order to finish within a day. Most managed to complete this, however didn't have time to actually put it onto the slides (it takes a lot of work to do this..).
Next, we worked through slides 13-25. These kids have learnt about measurement/length before, so we did a quick recap so they could remember.
Next - the students formed their own groups and we went outside. I gave them 20 minutes to plan their treasure hunt for the other group.
Although again, this was crazy, with kids everywhere outside, it was preeeeeettty awesome. I did not facilitate any of the groups - they did it themselves. I wondered around, taking snippets of footage and checking in with them.
I gave the Ipad to one of the groups, who after a bit of help went off without me and continued working.
I LOVE their footage - just them talking within their own group, counting the number of steps together, recording, discussing etc.
Once they had completed their maps, they gave them to me for safe keeping and went off for lunch.
After lunch, I had set up the 'treasure' (bags of chocolate) and sent off one kid from each group to hide it according to their map. We went outside again, and I swapped the maps between the groups. And off they went!
All the groups except one found their missing treasure by following the steps on the map. The group that didn't, couldn't, because the person who had hid the treasure, didn't hide it where the map said it would be (ugh!).
Although it was crazy, and rushed, it was a great day of learning - and something I hope the kids remember. Without realising it, as they were so caught up in the 'map' business, they had learnt about orientation, direction and position, they had revised measuring in cm's and what to measure in what unit. What surprised me, and made me most happy, was the teamwork the kids showed. I didn't help any groups beyond correcting their unit of measurement or offering a suggested starting point to one group (e.g. the cone), they did it completely themselves. I love in the videos how you can see and hear them working together. They were patient, they took turns, they discussed, they disagreed and agreed, negotiated, proved, etc.
Because of all the inter-personal learning that was happening, it made this activity much richer than I had even intended it to be.
This morning I had my final observation from Paula Were (our literacy PD lady) on writing. To be honest, I was not feeling overly great about it - I was just feeling very tired, have pressure from uni assignments etc etc. Just not excited about it, ya know?
But I decided that whatever will be will be, and tried to just move on with my day.
I wanted to show Paula how I have been using videos in writing as I have found it so effective with our target students. Archana was with Paula (as she is the head of literacy) and the syndicate leader Aireen came to watch as well. Here is my planning for this lesson. My goals from previous lessons were
Teacher goals:
co-construct SC
teacher model how to write
scaffold through prompt
take a video of lesson as evidence
Firstly, we talked about the WALT and co-constructed the SC. This included me giving them an example sentence 'the girl went down the stairs' and the students recorded their suggestions about how to add detail to make the sentence better to get their head around what 'detail' meant.
Next, I introduced our video prompt. (0:00-0:20 only)
I played it once through, and asked the students to record whatever thought they had about the clip.
We went through the clip again, and I paused at particular parts I wanted to emphasise.
At these points I would scaffold the students to realise something the hadn't, use particular words (e.g. reflection), make them think deeper about a particular point (e.g the characters feelings).
After we had brainstormed lots of detail about the character, we then formed sentences which would make a paragraph. I wrote the first sentence for this to show students how we can combine ideas from different people and write it TOGETHER (i.e. teacher modelling).
Here is what we wrote together.
After this, I asked the students to go back to our WALT and SC and tick the things they thought we had done - they did this. One student pointed out that although we wrote we should include a simile, we didn't actually include one. I agreed, and said that can be our next steps for next time - making sure we do include one.
After this, the kids watched the rest of the clip (they were interested and hooked into this character and wanted to find out more..) and I went with Paula, Archana and Aireen. We interviewed a couple of the kids to check their understanding of the lesson (did they understand what the aim was? did they know how to achieve it? did they know who/what helped them?).
After that, Paula, Archana, Aireen and I discussed my lesson and checked it off against a teacher criteria for effective writing practice (I will link this doc here once I receive it).
Things to celebrate about this lesson
Using a resource that students all could connect and relate to
there was a lot of conversation about their own gaming consoles and the games they play
the character was the same approximate age as the students so they could connect to his daily experiences
Co-constructing the SC and ensuring students were able to refer back to it and check for themselves if they had achieved it
Referring back to the WALT throughout the lesson and making sure we only focused on that one aim
the students made spelling/punctuation/etc mistakes, but I purposely ignored these as it was not the focus of the lesson
one student also kept trying to jump ahead to the problem section of the narrative, but I kept him focused that we were only writing about the character
Getting positive feedback from my peers (sometimes teachers don't celebrate each others success explicitly, which did happen today and was awesome to hear!)
Next Steps
Have a specific vocabulary in mind that students will learn through the lesson - not just using words they already know
Ensuring ALL the students are equally actively involved (in the lesson one student did say a lot less than others)
I would love to hear your feedback on this lesson!
This week I have introduced Literacy Circles to my class. They are split up into 5 different groups.
I have not done anything special or different with the planning itself of this programme, I have just used Sheena Cameron's exemplars. What I thought was worth sharing, was how much it has engaged my kids, particularly the boys (who stereotypically, do not enjoy reading).
In my class, it has especially seemed to engage the boys who achieve on the lower end of the spectrum, which is so exciting to see! They have never read chapter books before, and I literally have to take the books off them to get them to stop reading.
All the kids WANT to read their books. They are so happy to have a change up in their reading programme, (even though they are still doing a comprehension focus on top of the literacy circles so have other work to complete).
I filmed this shortly after explaining the tasks and handing out the books -
Every kid in the class, either reading, or whom had already finished their allocated chapters.
Today as well, while having 'Managing Self' type time (where students have to finish off certain things, and manage themselves in order to do so), I found more kids reading independently..
I feel so happy that I have provided my students with something exciting, new and different when they are feeling so tired of doing the same sorts of tasks all the time (in preparation for testing). I do believe that we can balance both a time for focusing and preparation for testing, and keeping things interesting for students.
Today was our day for filming our Manaiakalani movie, so we didn't really have time to finish our bodies off. I wanted to post about it anyway to complete the weeks worth of reflections about this unit.
Throughout this week I have been constantly AMAZED by my kids. These are a bunch of 7 and 8 year old rug-rats, who love to dance and play tag, and play silly games on their netbooks and half-jokingly try to eat my lunch sometimes.
They're just kids.
But this week in particular, they have worked harder than some adults I know.
The amount of information they have consumed is enough to blow my mind, but the level of deep understanding that (most) of them have now about their bodies is unfathomable. Most of the stuff they learnt this week about their bodies, I didn't even know (as an adult) about my own body.
Every person who came into our class, wether it be another teacher, a visitor or the office lady, these lovelies would almost ambush them trying to teach that person about their body (and they did it using the proper words for the body parts as well - no 'tummy' here!). Even waiting to cross the road after school yesterday, some of my kids were explaining the function of the gall bladder to the teacher on duty. They are so excited about their learning, and obviously are so proud of themselves!
Yesterday while I was 'in the zone' with my body-part assembly line, the kids who weren't helping Archana or I were independently reading and writing about the organs we hadn't had time to cover yet. All on their own, and doing a good job of it too.
Even after I got mad at some of the kids who just didn't even try to do any learning yesterday, and I gave the class a lecture about how hard teachers work and how much it hurts my feelings that they didn't even try, some of the kids stayed after school to help me finish off the bodies and didn't leave till I kicked them out.
Even at my worst, when I'm feeling stressed and tired and exhausted, they were amazing...
Then they left comments on Monday and Tuesday's blog posts...
Just.
These are some incredible kids.
There is no other way to describe it.
And I am so lucky to have them.
P.s. expect to see a movie next week as we finish off the 'share' part of Manaiakalani's learn-create-share learning pedagogy.
Today we really focused on trying to create our models of the body.
I am kind of embarrassed to say this, but there was a lot of colouring happening...
(I promise I don't normally do colouring!)
The end goal was to have something that kinda looks like this -
Each organ has a 'flap' underneath it for students to write the function of each organ.
For example -
In the planning, this meant that each kid needed each organ, twice (essentially). This was a bit of a nightmare as it meant A LOT of paper, A LOT of cutting, A LOT of laminating, A LOT of rubbish covering the classroom floor. It also meant all night on Wednesday Archana and I were working cutting and prepping the bodies ready for today, which was a mission!
But, we did it!
Here are two of my lovelies showing off one finished body, as well as the app Anatomy 4D we used to look at the heart in detail. We posed for this photo for Paula (the lady who recommended the app, so she could go and share what we had done with her peers - go us!)
These two photos are screenshots from a video, hence the questionable quality, but they show the kind of 'flap' notion. The organs are layered in the order they are anatomically - ribcage protecting lungs, heart inside of that, pancreas and liver sort of in front of stomach/kidneys, bladder underneath intestines, etc. So for Falakika (above) to show the lungs to talk about them, she had to move the ribcage out the way! Hiria (below) had to lift the skull to show off the brain.
One of my new lovelies who doesn't speak a lot of English became my little helper for the day, helping me organise everybody's body parts, matching the flap and the writing piece, taping the lungs to the trachea, taping the ribcage together, etc etc. She got so talkative (Yes, in English!) and was having a great time helping me and being the expert for once (instead of being the one not knowing what was going on).
It was so weird for it to be normal to call across the class things like "have you written on your organs yet?", "who has a spare kidney?", "if you have finished cutting up your body parts come here please", "you need three lungs!", "have you got your brain with you?" etc etc. So weird, but at the same time, so awesome that the kids were on board and knew exactly what I was talking about all the time.
It was a VEEEEEEEERRRY stressful day, but, we got there in the end!
Today we kept reading and learning about the human body.
As the kids were begging to learn about kidneys yesterday (I know right?!), we started with kidneys and the bladder.
Archana and I took a group each to read through with and discuss. As it randomly happened, Archana's group was all boys and mine all girls.
With my group, we discussed how the kidneys produce urine which then goes into the bladder, which then comes out the vagina (yes, we used that word!). Not one of the kids laughed or even smirked at the word vagina or the idea of peeing, they were so mature about all, it was so surprising. Archana told me later in the day she had a similar in-depth conversation with the boys about their privates and how they pee and were equally mature about it. It's stuff like this that makes me forget they are only 7 or 8 years old! I have the best kids!
Again, they went away and documented the new words and the function of each organ.
Over the next couple hours, both Archana and I took small groups and taught them about the lungs and the liver as well. The kids worked throughout the day to record their learning.
We learnt soooo many new words again today - check out our running total!
The other thing we did today was begin colouring in our organs. Our last two goals for the week were to build a model of the body, and use it to explain the organs' functions. To do this, we needed to colour in organs, laminate them, cut them, write the organs function on them and then arrange them on a body. Lots of work to do!
One thing I have noticed about myself when teaching is that I often forget to record what the students and I are doing, hence have no evidence of it for either of us to refer back to.
Today during reading I set myself two goals
-1, to read with every student in my class, and
-2, use the modelling book to record what my students did during this guided reading lesson
For context, we read another story about chess. Last week (some) of these students read a fictional story about two sisters learning to play chess and participating in a tournament in their school. Today, (some) of us read this story which talks about one school who have chess experts and the people who helped get them there. A different type of writing, a different context and setting about the same theme.
Using our modelling books..
Before we read, I drew a balloon and students wrote in their predictions based on pictures and the title. This is something we did a lot last term, so we don't want them to forget!
With a couple of my groups, we focused on their reading goal which is "ask questions about the text I have read". This goal is based on their need to really comprehend what they are reading, and being able to ask questions is a good way to show you have understood what you have read and that you have thought about it, not just read it and forgotten it straight away.
So we had a box where the students wrote questions they had about the text, which they freely wrote independently as we read each page as a group. At the end of each page, we would stop and answer all the questions they had written and ticked them off as we answered them. The students answered each others questions, with me stepping in when they got really stuck.
We also had a 'new words' balloon, where myself or students recorded new words we came across in the text. At the end of each page, we discussed these as well and looked up the definitions.
Overall, each group had a page that roughly looked like this...
It was awesome to have the students so engrossed in their stories, thinking of heaps of questions which led to rich discussion around the text, learning new words and making connections to these. I think I definitely needed to start using modelling books again, as it gives more opportunity for students to share their thinking without the social pressure of interrupting the groups reading to ask a question or define a new word. It provided such rich discussion and we were able to make deep connections (e.g. the characters chess club was called Eastern Knights because a knight is a chess piece, and they lived on the East Coast. Whats the East Coast? *looks up then draws NZ map*...).
After the group meeting, I gave students the chance to go and practice playing a game of chess, which MOST of them were stoked to do! And again (see previous post), they loved having an abstract follow up.
We didn't have enough chess sets for the whole class to use at the same time, so some students started playing online (note - they discovered this themselves, I didn't instruct them to do this!).
I really enjoyed using modelling books again today during reading and getting such rich results out of my time with the students. When they went off, they were still engrossed in the topic and used the new vocabulary they had just learnt to discuss their strategies as well.
Kia kaha kids!
This has meant that for three weeks, I have had a softball training almost every lunchtime. This has been hard on me personally as I haven't been eating lunch properly and taking that break, making me more tired for the afternoon block of learning and also messes with my eating schedule.
My focus for the year 5 team was for them to learn how to play. I purposely made them rotate often through the various 'roles' in the team, even during the competition. I wanted them to build confidence in themselves and their physical ability, and the focus was about getting better, not being the best. This rotation was a focus for the year 6's as well, rather than them having 'set' roles in the team. This definitely did happen - every single child got better, wether at batting or catching
