This teaching thing is HARD

Sadly, my best intentions to write regular posts (full to the brim with reflections on our amazing, inspired, wonderful classroom experiences) have not really come to fruition. The real world of being a teacher can very quickly smack those best intentions down. Fact: only crazy people think that teachers have an 'easy' job. To be honest, at this stage, I can't remember which week of school we're in. 4? 5? It has been nuts.

I spent a lot of time over the summer researching and dreaming about wonderful things to do with my class - coming back to work has entailed a not-so-nice reintroduction to the reality that there is not as much available space for fitting in these well-researched-and-dreamed-of dreams as one would hope. I want to reflect on some of what has passed so far.

Most difficult so far is the return to Earth - remembering that this job involves so much more than working with the children in class. So many pies, so few fingers to stick in them... Day-to-day teaching, learning and assessment, keeping track of emails, website creation and maintenance, liaising with other class teachers, ESL teachers, learning support teachers, other specialist teachers, the school counsellor, staff meetings, professional development courses, preparing for parent-teacher conferences, short-term, mid-range and long-term planning, home learning, steering committees, parent meetings, team meetings, staff meetings, developing goals, author visits, excursions, filling out various forms blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

Another downer is that I've decided to postpone using Twitter with my class. Those 140 characters a day turned out to be more than I could cram in from the beginning. I thought that parents would be all over it, but it looks like they're not so into tweeting. This is a bit sad for me as I hoped that using Twitter to communicate with parents would be a good starting-point for Twitter use in our class. I'll have to rethink it. This is fine for now - blogging has provided plenty of fodder for teaching and learning thus far.

After that little whine, I need to write here that my students are amazing. I have a great bunch of lively, interested and hilarious kids to work with every single day. You can see from our class blog that they are a highly talented bunch. I like them all a lot.

I am also very excited by the blogging work the children have done in the last weeks. We started off with a few weeks of working intensively to learn about blogs through reading and writing. This group began the school year with very little to no idea about what a blog is. By week 4, they are writing their own posts and commenting on each others', as well as on other blogs, responding to comments and beginning to insert their own photographs and hyperlinks. The secret of our success thus far, I think, has been that the children made their own choices about the structure and content of their posts. Post titles include 'If you are a noob at Minecraft read this', 'The day in the Aquarium', 'What is an atom?' and 'How to make kids interested in math (for teachers).' It makes for interesting reading and has been a winner for keeping the children motivated to blog. Sadly, it's time to move on now, and while we will continue to blog throughout the year, it is no longer our focus genre.

Remembering to give credit where it's due, I should add that something else that has worked really well has been our involvement in Quadblogging - if you blog (or are thinking about blogging) with your class, check it out.

The children are also learning to use google Drive - at this stage for simple word processing, but very soon they'll be into sharing docs, commenting and embedding work from Drive on their own blogs for portfolios (or blogfolios, if you will, which I won't, because it is an AWFUL word).

Meanwhile, in Maths, we've been hammering away at Number with as many games and hands-on activities as we can fit in, while still making sure we spend plenty of time working on our sums. Last year, I learned to love maths very much but I can't wait to move beyond this beginning-of-the-year intensive focus on place value and number consolidation. At this stage, pattern and the really cool problem-solving stuff is a wistful dream.. That said, this week we've had a brief respite in a couple of wonderful sessions working with symmetry. After weeks of slogging away at digits, sums and symbols, we broke out the paints, pastels, scissors and glue and remembered that Maths is beautiful. I'm looking forward to inquiring into the places we can find symmetry in real life..


Image from flickr: http://flic.kr/p/fQzwPZ Sourced: 27/09/13

Enjoy the wildlife! Happy Friday to everyone!

Counting my Blessings

It is Tuesday night, and so many cool things have already happened this week.

• 'My kids' are great. I love teaching Grade 4 and in week 3, my class is really starting to come together as a team. I'm getting to know the children and develop relationships with individuals. I really believe that my first forays into Morning Meetings are helping with this.
• Our class blog is really taking off. I was brave this year and opened it up so that anyone in the world could comment, with great results. My students are so excited.
• Relatedly, I decided to ditch what I'm supposed to be teaching this week (in terms of writing genre and content) and asked the students to make their own choices about what they blog about. We have articles from 'How to choose a new bike' to 'How to care for a Praying Mantis' and 'How to keep your child from hitting the piano'. I have a couple of young boys researching jet-fighters with impressive energy and enthusiasm, using search skills I might never have otherwise known about. These kinds of results are well worth breaking the rules for.

• I had a meeting with a parent today who told me her son has completed a home learning project of his own already. This is before formal homework has even begun! My colleagues and I have been working really hard to come up with a framework to support the students in their home learning inquiries and trying to 'take it slow', and this kid just took things into his own hands and went for it! I am stoked! Hooray for self-motivated, lifelong learners! This has to be a sign that we're moving in the right direction.
• Kids from my last year's class visit me every day for chats and hugs. I really like my new class but it is so great to keep up with the wonderful group I worked with last year. I am so proud to watch them continue to grow.
• My leaders want to work with me. I have had a couple of meetings with leaders lately and it is so reassuring to feel like I am being heard. They don't always agree with me and they don't always pat me on the back but they engage, they listen and they give me guidance when I ask for it. I really feel like they are doing the best they can to help me do my best, and not just 'managing' me.
• Saving the best for last: I have some of the greatest colleagues who are also dear friends. They love, enjoy and are passionate about what they do, they inspire me, care for me, make me laugh and most importantly, they are there when I need them.

Damn you, polish!

Over the summer break I planned, read books and articles for research, learned how to use Twitter and other tools, planned some more, researched some more, discussed it lots and then went back to work and got slam-diddly-ammed, culminating in last night's parent information evening. Nothing like the beginning of the school year to smack you right back into reality.
After all my excitement and the thought and planning I put into my presentation for parents last night, I really don't feel great about how it went. There is a combination of factors that contributed to it, not all of them within my control. 

But, focusing on what I CAN control, it really is all about the polish:
Next time I will get enough sleep in the week before, do a proper dress-rehearsal (running through what you will say in your head doesn't work, even if you do it several times over), spend more time trying to second-guess the kinds of questions parents might ask (brainstorming session, anyone?). This last one is a little bit like fortune-telling, of course, but the longer I'm the business the better I will get at it, I hope.

To be completely honest, I am just really glad it's over so I can focus on teaching and learning now. The preparation was exhausting and stressful and the hour of presentation and discussion was possibly the hardest work I've ever done. I am glad that I took the risk in trying a new format and I know that I achieved my aim to help parents get a better understanding of how learning happens in my classroom. I hope that they left feeling positive about the work I do with their kids.

Hopefully they're more interested in that than the polish.

Redefining Awesome

We are almost halfway through week 2 of the school year and I can tell you already what my greatest challenge this year is going to be: helping my kids to redefine Awesome.

Inspired by Kid President, I decided that this year should be an 'Awesome Year' for my class. We watched and laughed along with the video.

Then we brainstormed.
'What could we do in class this year to make sure that Grade 4 is an awesome year? What kinds of things would you like to try?' I asked.
In planning, I knew this was a great hook activity. Inspired by Kid President's energy, enthusiasm, humour and ideas, and because we all know that all nine-year-olds are bursting with exciting and creative ideas, my kids were going to lay the foundations for a learning-packed, student-driven year of amazingness.

I didn't have the heart to take a photo of it at the time, but here are a few ideas from our first brainstorm, entitled 'Our Ideas for an Awesome Year':

• reading
• writing stories
• maths games
• free time

There is definitely potential for fun and enjoyment here, but... Honestly, does your inner 9-year-old scream 'Awesome!' at this list? Why are these the limits of their expectations?

Don't get me wrong - I value that they love to read and write and do maths. 

But what about inquiry learning? And 21st century skills and tools? As well as the myriad other tools and resources for inquiring and creating and presenting we are so lucky to have at our school?

On our second try, this is what we came up with:

Created with Padlet

Reading and writing and maths games are still there, but so are baking, listening to music, programming, building and creating new games.

Obviously, I learned from this exercise. Kids DO have exciting and creative ideas. Sometimes (often?) it takes a bit of work and ingenuity for grown-ups to access them, is all. Next time, I will plan for this :).