Class list or no class list? That is the question

Yesterday, on a stunningly beautiful Christchurch day while sitting on the side of the school pool, my friend Ginnie Thorner and I boldly announced to another dear friend that we had decided to partake in the 28 Days of Writing challenge. She was enormously excited for us.......possibly more excited than we were! You see, our friend Natalie is a writer.....a very successful one at that.

"How awesome!" she squealed in her characteristically enthusiastic manner.
"Argh but its 28 days, Nats!" I wailed. "I don't have 28 ideas in my head!"

And so began a very fruitful brainstorming session where Natalie, a parent of four, threw topics at us at an alarming rate; all the things she had always wanted to ask her children's teachers' but never had the guts! The topics came thick and fast and by the end of it, we had a list of educational "hot potatoes" some of which I'm not sure I'll touch....."Public versus private?" anyone? "Single Sex versus Co-ed?" Not today......

But here's a quick and light post for the first day of the year......

Should schools announce the classes for the following year in December or wait until the first day of the new school year?

See? I told you this was heavy stuff......

But seriously, what does your school do? The school where I currently work sends out a class list with the child's class for the following year with the school report. This goes out on the Friday of the second to last week of school. The following Monday we have a school Christmas party and the students visit the teacher for the following year. My co-teacher and I have our current students leave advice for our new students- Haiku Deck or imovies or something offering pearls of wisdom which I share with them during that visit. I hope and believe that the girls leave knowing a little about their teachers and excited about the year ahead. In January, we send them a letter via snail mail (When did the cost of sending a letter go up to 80 cents by the way??!!) I think this system works well for us.

My son's school also arranges for the students to go and visit their new teacher late in the school year. No class list comes home and my son could only remember about five of the children who were in his class so I spent most of the summer asking, "Oooh is XXX in your class next year?" but that was really just me being nosey and certainly not vital knowledge! I LOVED that on that day in December, his teacher for this year sent home a fantastic imovie showing his current students working and explaining his philosophy. It was such a great idea and the parents really appreciated it. I might have to steal that idea!

One of Natalie's children is at a primary school where the learners find out who their new teacher is and who is in their class on the first day of school for the year. He was completely at ease with this way of doing things; not the least bit perturbed and actually had a great summer discussing with his family the merits of both teachers on offer! He was fully prepared for either scenario and completely nonplussed about finding out on Day 1.

The "first day" system is the system I remember when I was at primary school. I remember my dear friend and neighbour keeping our fingers crossed for a every waking hour of the week before school started in Standard 4, desperately hoping that we would be in the same class for the first time in our school careers. We weren't. Looking back on it, I can see clearly why the school kept us separated (ahem!) but I wonder if we would have been saved a lot of angst if we had have known way back in December that "it ain't goin' to happen!"   Maybe. Maybe not.

My strong feeling is that learners, especially anxious students, can benefit enormously from knowing who they will be working with the following year. The future-referencers amongst our students will be much happier knowing a little about what the year might look like. To be honest, I can't think of any cons for letting the students know in December who their teacher might be. I just hope it is not those dangerous 8 words that keep schools using this practice, "because that's the way we've always done it!"

What do you do at your school? If you have your own children, which system do you and your children prefer? I'd love to hear your thoughts on this very pressing educational matter! :)

MORE or LESS in 2015

Sometime in December, I came across a tweet that has been at the forefront of my mind ever since. (Sadly, after a significant amount of time searching for this gem, I am unable to find it despite the fact that I am sure I must have favourited it....hmmmmmpf.)

Anyway, the tweet was two simple yet provocative questions.

What will you do more of in your classroom in 2015? 
What will you do less of or throw out entirely?

Or words to that effect........

Here is where I am currently at with these questions. This list will undoubtedly change, and so it should, as I get to know my learners. 

GIMME MORE! 

1. Student feedback- 

Year after year, my aim is always to be effective in the classroom and make a difference for my students. So this year, I want more student feedback with regards to how I'm doing. I want to know how they learn and what we can do in our room to help them learn. I want to know what they love about our class and what they want more of. I want to know what they don't love and what they want less of or what needs to be tweaked.

First Steps:

I'll be starting the year with a survey about how we can work together to ensure that my girls' final year at primary school is their best year yet. But that will be just the beginning. Throughout the year, I'll survey them regularly about how I'm going. Yep, I feel a little nervous about this- twelve year old girls can be devastatingly honest so I'm going to have to be wearing my thick skin! But I give them frequent feedback about how they are doing in our class so isn't it only fair that they get the chance to give me feedback?

Hmmmmm......I'll let you know how it goes. 

2.  Collaborating, not just connecting-

Over the past couple of years, 8C has become pretty good at connecting with other classes. We've taken part in global quadblogging, Quadblogging Aotearoa, the Global Read Aloud plus lots and lots of connecting through blogs. We even created a New Zealand-wide twitter chat to share book recommendations. We've formed lots of friendships in the past few years but in 2015, I hope to step it up and actually work with others on an authentic, collaborative project. 

First Steps:
There are a couple of amazing tools I'm hoping to explore with my girls including Flipgrid and Wevideo. I'm fortunate to work in an International Baccalaureate School and our Program of Inquiry this year offers a multitude of opportunities for collaborating with learners well beyond our classroom walls. I'm excited!

3. More Picture Books- 

In the last month of 2014, I embarked on a Picture Book a Day challenge.  Actually, calling it a challenge at all is a bit of a stretch as that implies some degree of hardship or even suffering. There was absolutely no degree of suffering except maybe to my credit card balance as I couldn't resist purchasing for my own children many of the titles I had borrowed from the library. Picture Book Month was a huge success and something I will definitely be repeating in 2015. I have seen many teachers on Twitter who commit to the Picture Book a Day Challenge for a full year. While I love this idea, I have decided to broaden this slightly to a Read Aloud Challenge for the year.

First Steps:
Read something varied and high quality to the girls every single day of the 2015 academic year. It might be an article, a poem, a letter to the editor in our local newspaper or the first chapters of an amazing novel. No more stressing that I am not going to get the 357 page novel finished before the holidays! Of course, there will still be complete shared novels but they will be less frequent, enabling us to share significantly more genres. 

4. More opportunities to CREATE-

I want to ensure my learners have lots of opportunities to create content, sharing their learning and teaching others.  To do this, I hope to give the girls the choice of a huge variety of medium and tools.

First Steps:
Wrack the brain of my team leader and Performing Arts guru, Greg Pearce and learn how to use the Arts more to share our learning. I'm also excited to do more coding with the girls. Computer Science is very strong at Selwyn House and I love that our girls choose HTML/CSS over drag and drop website creation tools. 

Having gotten totally addicted to the podcast "Serial" these holidays (like five million others) I am also interested in exploring the use of podcasting as a tool for sharing what we learn. 

LESS OF THIS, PLEASE!

1. Boring spelling programs

I fully admit that this is something that I have not yet mastered in our Year 8 classroom. We are a 1:1 classroom and the vast majority of writing that we do is digital; this means that the personalised spelling lists I used to have learners create based on their own writing are challenging to set up since the girls can easily see when they have spelt a word incorrectly on their google doc and fix it themselves. When we write on paper it tends to be a collaborative activity; identifying who owns spelling errors days later is tricky and pointless. So what is the answer? I've tried a few things and none of them have really grabbed me or my students. Have spelling lists had their day? Is a stand alone vocabulary and word origin program the answer and if so, how on earth do I make this fun and engaging? 

Any thoughts, good people? I need your input on this one!  

2.  Clutter

Last year, I boldly got rid of my desk. Anyone who knows me is well aware that I attract clutter in large doses and that this choice to eliminate a teacher desk was destined to be a challenge for me! If she is reading this, my teaching partner Liz Fairhall, will be nodding vigorously! So removing my desk had mixed results. Yes, it gave us more room for the girls themselves but it also increased exponentially the piles of paper and miscellaneous clutter around the area where the desk USED to be! 

I'm deeply committed to eliminating the clutter but I need some help. As my Mum used to say when I was an incredibly untidy teenager, "You'd be much happier dear, if you just had a system."  So desk-less members of my PLN- how do you do it? Any tips for me?

3. Filling of Gaps-

(More celebrating strengths and passions!) 

By this I am referring to our "fragile learners" for want of a better term. In the past, common practice has been to try and fill these gaps in the skills and knowledge of our most vulnerable learners. This deficit model has often meant lots of individual learning programs, removal from class to go to support programs and plenty of repetitive work to try to get these children to have a profile that is more "in line" with other class members. While this learning support work is important and hugely valuable, my question is, how can I work to find these students' strengths? How can I find their true passions and help their classmates see them in a different light and perhaps more importantly help them see themselves in a different light? 

I hope I have explained this clearly.......

4. Less Teacher Talk

'nuff said

So what do you plan to do more of in your classroom this year? And what about the things you'll do less of? I'd love to hear your ideas for your own classroom and also your tips to help me achieve this! 

A Picture Book a Day.....

A couple of months ago, I stumbled across this post from an educator I admire and I was immediately spurred unto action.  Jillian Heise 's knowledge of amazing children's literature and her passion for creating readers inspires me enormously. She teaches 7th and 8th grade English (which is equivalent to Year 8 and 9 in New Zealand) and she has, perhaps without knowing, helped me immensely as I built up my classroom library for Year 8s after a move from Year 5 and before that, juniors.

Jillian's post gives numerous compelling reasons advocating the use of picture books in a middle

school classroom. Her goal to read a picture book a day for a full school year is pure genius and with only five weeks of the school year to go, I decided I just HAD to do something similar with my girls.

I have always suffered happily from a picture book addiction; I must have spent thousands of dollars on picture books over my teaching career! Becoming a Mum gave me even more license to purchase as many books as my heart desired with no regard for the Mastercard balance! My own children have been the primary beneficiaries of this policy but the students in my classes have also benefitted enormously. My students and I have always lapped up picture books in large quantities, finding a perfect story for nearly every occasion. 

Then came a move to Year 8. Five months into the year, a parent complained to our principal that I was insulting the students' intelligence by reading my Y8s picture books. This practice was deemed by this parent to be beneath their daughter and inappropriate for a teacher of 11 and 12 year olds. My principal stood up for me but I was incensed! In an ironic twist of fate, one of the many sophisticated picture books we'd spent a huge amount of time discussing turned out to be the essay prompt in the child's high school entrance exam and she came back to school "high as a kite" and thanking me for equipping her so well for the exam! Hilarious. The parent however, remained adamant that picture books should firmly remain in the early years classrooms.

It turns out that this parent was not alone in their view. I have ploughed on in my use of picture books and I remain firmly committed to using them with my learners for many reasons. When I came across Jillian's post, I wanted to give her a virtual fist bump. I felt vindicated and like I'd been given official permission to continue using picture books with wild abandon!

My girls were about to start their very last month of primary school ready to embark on the next phase in their education adventure, secondary school. So I decided that we would, inspired by Jillian, read a picture book every day for their final month at school. Jillian suggested some titles and I spent a lot of time carefully planning which books we'd read together, using a mixture of my own personal books as well as placing many holds at the amazing Christchurch City Libraries. Books that made the cut included some stories about the experience of refugees (related to our Unit of Inquiry) a couple of Christmas picture books and a large dose of encouragement and pearls of wisdom as they head off to high school.

So many amazing titles! 

The girls loved the routine of beginning each school day at 8.30am with a story. They'd curl up on beanbags or under desks or cuddle up close to one another ready and waiting for the day's instalment of picture book joy.  From 8am on, they'd be trying to weasle out of me what today's title was and at the conclusion of the story, there was often spontaneous applause if the book had hit the right spot.

There are so many reasons why I think this very simple addition to our day was so successful but the most compelling reason is the ability of a story to enhance community through shared experience. This community bonding was exactly what my girls needed as the day came ever closer that they would splinter off to attend their various high schools.

I loved every single one of these books but one really stands out because every single student loved it, all three teachers adored it and my own two children loved it so much that my daughter wants to scan the pages and frame them for her walls. I had to return it to the library so you guessed it, I bought my very own beautiful copy.

An incredible book about friendship; such an important message before the girls move on to new schools. 

And one more deserves an honourable mention. Jillian recommended this for my girls' very last day at school. I read it to them before we shared memories of their years together and it gave many of us "sweaty eyes"......... but we're good with that! :)

Buy this book if you have a child starting school or leaving for their O.E. or....well, I'm sure you can find an excuse! 

I now believe that this is something I will do every year to finish my learners' primary school experience with a bang. So here's a question for you; which are your favourite picture books? Which do you think I should add to my collection?

Thanks again to Jillian Heise for the inspiration. I hope you are enjoying "The House that Jack Built" by Gavin Bishop; a fantastic author/illustrator from my home town of Christchurch, New Zealand.

The Power of Learning from Peers at #educampchch

Hello blog! Remember me? Its been far too long! Time for us to get reacquainted......

I have come to the startling revelation that I have more drafts and unpublished posts in this blog than I do published posts. Eeeek. So one of my many summer goals is to remedy that!

So I'm going to start working towards my goal of recording my thoughts more with a post reflecting on the amazing learning fest that was #educampchch.

On Saturday 22 November, teachers from all over Canterbury met at St Margaret's College in Christchurch to learn from, encourage and support each other. The unconference was initiated by the wonderfully passionate and generous Pauline Henderson with support from the very talented Allana Taylor from Springston School.

Like all good professional learning events, we began with caffeine, sugar and networking! It is always so great to put faces to twitter handles! I was excited to meet Shaun Wood, @mrwoodnz, who I had not realised was now based in Christchurch- what a win for Chch kids! It was also great to meet educators I had not yet had the pleasure of meeting including Stephen, Jared, Surin, Ruth, Carolyn and Blake as well as catching up with lots and lots of educators who I have previously had the pleasure of meeting and being inspired by. Christchurch is full of fabulous educators who are passionate about teaching and learning and strive to better themselves for the sake of their learners.

After we were suitably "caffeined up"  the Smackdown got underway. Well, it would be more accurate to say that Part 1 of the Smackdown got underway for this smackdown was the mother lode of smackdowns, unlike any Smackdown I have seen before (How many times can I use the word Smackdown in one sentence?) Each slide was presented with enthusiasm and passion and there were questions and comments and it was a big and beautiful thing. There was definitely something for everyone!


This was followed by a selection of workshops including Scratch, blogging, using twitter in the classroom, filming lessons and other gems. My teaching partner, Maker guru, Liz Fairhall led a workshop on using Makey Makeys to teach about circuitry and problem solving amongst other things and this workshop was very successful and loads of fun. It really highlighted how much fun hands-on and discovery learning is for everyone, children and adults.

Liz shares movies of our girls at Selwyn House discussing their Makey Makey creations.  

Blake, Stephen, Ruth and Gerard are very engaged in experimenting with Makey Makeys. 

Educampchch was followed up with more revelry at Brigitte's. All in all it was great day for learning, connecting and feeling refreshed at this exhausting time of year. Educamps are such a fantastic way to learn from our peers and I now find myself wondering if we could have an educamp in my classroom.........perhaps without such vast quantities of coffee!

Year 8 Passion Projects

I am still smiling about the amazing learning that we saw on display last week at our Year 8 Passion Project exhibition. Our Year 8s surprised and delighted me with the projects they have produced; the quality and variety has blown me away.


And now it is time to reflect. What can we do to improve the process? What systems need tweaking or a complete rehash? How can we ensure our learners are getting the very best possible learning experience?

To reflect on this process, I've gone right back to our vision for the Year 8 projects. A book that I have loved is Sir Ken Robinson's Finding Your Element: How to Discover Your Talents and Passions and Transform Your Life. Ken Robinson defines your element as the place where your talents and passions meet. For many years, he has been spreading the message that schools are killing creativity and not equipping learners for their future. Enabling learners to find their element and work within it is engaging and gives them purpose.

How can schools ensure we are giving our students the opportunity to find their element?

Our Year 8 passion projects enable our learners to explore this. The girls spend three terms immersed in a learning experience of their own choice. The only stipulations are that they create some sort of product and that at the end of three terms, they share their learning at an exhibition for families.

7 things you need to know about Selwyn House's passion projects-

• Student- chosen
• Independent
• Students have a mentor on the teaching staff
• Keep a Learning Journal
• Work with Experts in Community
• Create a Product
• Personal Learning Groups for support

What sort of projects do our learners choose?

A student has finally made peace with her dyslexia after learning about it, mentoring younger students with dyslexia and creating an app to support them in their learning. 

We often have community service projects such as Francesca who raised money for an orphanage in Cambodia or Holly who created an entire activity program for children who are sick in hospital and provided ready-made craft kids. 

This student's family home is a full rebuild after the Christchurch earthquakes. She found an architect in the community to mentor her about house design, then worked with her parents on a design for their new home. 

ICT/ technology projects are popular, such as Georgia's blog teaching HTML/ CSS or Lydia's very engaging reading blog.

There are often girls who want to challenge themselves by learning an entirely new skill such as silversmithing or portrait photography and then there are girls who want to share a skill they already have with others such as Makenzie's video tutorials for those who want to learn barrel racing or Lottie's hockey tips series.

There are girls who want to create a product using brand new learning such as Taylor's bronze statue or Hana's lip dub about our school. Juliette built an entire dog agility course from scratch and then taught her labdradoodle Frodo to complete the course and Abi built an electric cello using the parts of a piano that was going to be taken to the dump.

For me the highlight of these projects is that they create a level playing field. Often learners who benefit from lots of support in other parts of the school day, absolutely thrive when it comes to passion projects, producing projects that blow the rest of us away! I love that giving agency back to the learners enables them to share a new aspect of themselves with their classmates and teachers and that the learners themselves really sparkle with pride at what they have achieved. 

These projects are a "rite of passage" at Selwyn House. They are designed to bring together all the threads of our inquiry-based and learner-centred programme before they embark on that huge, new adventure; high school. Having seen and heard what our Year 8s have achieved, I feel confident that these learners have the skills, the growth mindset and the drive to go out and make a difference in their world.

EdChatNZ Blogging Meme

If you get included in the blogging meme: copy/paste the questions and instructions into your own blog then fill out your own answers. Share on twitter tagging 5 friends. Make sure you send your answers back to whoever tagged you too.

1. How did you attend the #Edchatnz Conference? (Face 2 Face, followed online or didn’t)

I was there for every awesome minute. 

2. How many others attended from your school or organisation?

I was the lucky sole delegate from Selwyn House but I was very lucky, along with Aimie Sibson from SMC, to spend the two days as a "hanger-on" of the very welcoming StAC staff. We flew there and back together, shared a hired van and stayed in the same motel. Lots of fun! 

3. How many #Edchatnz challenges did you complete?

Hmmmmm.....I was in a lot of grelfies....... but honestly, I was pretty abysmal on the challenges. Too busy getting excited when I met new people! Having said that I think the challenges were a great idea and attempting a challenge was a really great way to "break the ice" and introduce yourself to people you admire! 

4. Who are 3 people that you connected with and what did you learn from them?

Gosh there were so many. 

First of all, I loved spending time with Ginnie Thorner and Aimie Sibson and catching up with people like Nicki Tempero, Jennie Lyall, Anne Kennelly, Allana Taylor and getting to know the StAC crew better. 

With regards to people I hadn't met face to face, funnily enough, of the three that Mark mentioned in his meme, I'd mention two of them and himself! So it was really fun to meet Reid, Annemarie and Mark all lovely people that I have connected with on Twitter. I also loved talking with Danielle, Daniel Birch, Georgi and loved the amazingly strong coffee made by Pete McGhie while hearing more about the ins and outs of HPSS. There are many, many others too.  Danielle's face to face twitter chat was fantastic for meeting people I've connected with on Twitter.

5. What session are you gutted that you missed?

There were lots! In every stream I could have attended three or four. I would have liked to have been at Amy McCauley's session on personalised learning as I loved what I saw at HPSS. Having said that, getting to chat with Nanogirl was awesome and she introduced us to the perfect product for the door in our new wetroom/ en suite. Result! 

6. Who is one person that you would like to have taken to Edchatnz and what key thing would they have learned? 

So many people I'd love to have taken. I'm going with my great friend Stephanie Glubb @sglubb because she is such a maths guru and I saw some things at HPPS that I'd love for her to have seen; I know she'd love some of the tools their learners use for self- regulating their maths learning.  

7. Is there a person you didn’t get to meet/chat with (F2F/online) that you wished you had? Why

Yep, there's lots. Next time! 

8. What is the next book you are going to read and why? 

One of the books recommending by Steve Mouldy for cultivating creativity. Doesn't matter which one.....

9. What is one thing you plan to do to continue the Education Revolution you learnt about at #Edchatnz?

Tomorrow I'm doing a face to face twitter chat (a la Danielle) with my class in preparation for a Kids' Twitter Book Chat they want to launch. I'll keep enabling their passions to come into our classroom as much as possible. Also, during Connected Educator Month I am hoping to lead a twitter challenge amongst the staff at my school - a number have said they are interested. Fingers crossed. 

10. Will you take a risk and hand your students a blank canvas?

I will find a way to hand them a blank canvas in some way in 8C, give them something they can have control of within negotiated constraints- does that still count as a blank canvas?! 

Who will I tag with this meme:

These people may well have already done this reflection........

@ginippi

@aimie_sibson

@benhilliam

@cky_cathy

@NicolaCClark

Edchatnz Conference- the future looks bright

I have just returned from the most remarkable conference. Remarkable because it was the dream of an inspiring young teacher named Danielle Myburgh. Danielle started a twitter chat using the hashtag #edchatnz two years ago and it has blossomed into something big and powerful and amazing. Just four short months ago she had the idea to hold an #edchatnz conference. A small team jumped on board to support her and voila, Danielle created an amazingly inspiring conference and it sold out to boot!

I have so much to say about this conference that it's hard to collate these thoughts into a coherent blogpost. Here are three things that struck me.

Bridget, Ginnie and Aimie from Christchurch are excited to meet the amazing Mrs Hyde from Rotorua!

1. The future looks bright!
Some of the most inspiring people I met were very young teachers, first and second years. They were confident and curious and constantly working to better their practice for their learners. It is a long time since I was a beginning teacher (ahem) but I know for sure I wasn't inspiring others with my zest and passion. In fact, I ended up in hospital with glanjular fever and felt very alone, contemplating giving up teaching. I was so unconnected as a young teacher in Western Sydney where I started my teaching- I rarely even made it to morning tea to connect with other teachers in my large and very low decile school. Has the advent of social media helped new educators to feel more supported? I sure hope so! @chasingalyx, @ariaporo22 and @MissDtheTeacher....you guys inspire me. You are headed for amazing things and your learners are lucky! I'm in awe.

2. Being connected is essential if we are to be effective educators.

Christchurch Represent! 

I am incredibly lucky that I am not a lone nut at my school. I am surrounded by great educators and there is something I want to learn from every single one of them- I want to learn more about Philosophy for Children from Pauline, I want to learn how Liz uses the Design Thinking process so effectively with any age group, I want to learn how Greg uses the Performing Arts so stunningly to teach ANY concept at all from Maths to inquiry and I want to know how Steph is such an incredible whizz at facilitating deep and powerful maths talk amongst her Year 7s. My colleagues inspire me everyday so my story is a little different from those who struggle as "lone wolves" in their schools on a daily basis.
Having said that, joining Twitter was quite simply the most powerful thing I have ever done for my professional learning. And the #edchatnz conference shows why. It gave me access to incredible community of educators across New Zealand who inspire and support each other everyday. Despite the fact that I had never met many of them face to face before Friday, I feel like I have known them forever. My great friend Ginnie put it best when she said,

#echatnz conference - the only place where it’s not creepy to say: “I’ve been following you - can I have a hug?” @MissDtheTeacher @mrs_hyde
— Gin (@ginippi) August 9, 2014

If you have somehow stumbled across this blogpost and you are not yet on Twitter, start lurking, dipping your toes in and the best place to start? Why #edchatnz of course!

3. The Learners must be at the centre of the learning
And my main takeaway from all the amazing learning I did this weekend is that we must ensure our learners are at the centre of their learning. To be successful in life, our learners need to be directing their own learning while we support and mentor them. We are doing far too much for our students. We need to be explicitly teaching them the skills they need and then getting out of their way! Yes, it is messy and at times it might be uncomfortable for us but giving students control over their learning is engaging and empowering. Hobsonville Point Primary School are doing an amazing job of this. I was incredibly inspired by how articulate and engaged their learners are and how effective they are at directing their own learning. What incredibly lucky kids!

Hobsonville Point Primary School- Learning Commons 1.
Stunningly, beautiful design has a real impact on how the children learn. 

I have so much I'd like to add about specific workshops, keynotes and even a somewhat startling political debate but I'll save that for another day. In the meantime, I'll leave you with this cartoon from Amy McCauley's workshop on personalised learning.