Things I'm doing well - Teaching Maths

At the moment, I'm taking a bit of time to reflect on where I want to improve and what I'm doing well. You can find the master list of reflections here.

Teaching Maths

This last week I took 15 children to the district maths competition. The maths competition is rather awesome - around 150 6th and 7th graders working in teams of five to solve very difficult maths problems. In this competition, brains are everything, and cheers ring out when students solve a particularly difficult problem.

I love it. I love the enthusiasm and I love the way the children approach the problems. I even love giving up my lunch times to help them train.

The rather sad thing is that I really love maths. It's always about solving the problem - about unravelling the different strands to find a secure answer which can be absolutely proven. And I love teaching this to my class.

One of the things I do well in maths has been in increasing the confidence of students who think they are terrible at maths and that there's no way they'll ever get better. These students tend to be girls, who are very good writers, and somewhere along the way have 'found out' that being good at writing means you can't be good at maths. I firmly believe that everyone can do maths - we just need to find the right way to teach it or approach it. And if that means we're outside making angles with students, or turning mathematical concepts into comic strip - then that's how we do maths.

We've had some interesting investigations this year, but our best one was the 'school tour' maths investigation where we went and did maths based on the school library. One group was out measuring different parts of the library, another were using compasses to work out distances, another were estimating the number of books in the library, while yet another group mapped out the library. Everyone was engaged and doing maths and it was exciting.

Another success this year has been the introduction of novel problems. Basically, you put up a problem the children have not seen or been 'taught' before. The students try to work it out and are graded on the amount of help they need to eventually solve it. This allows us to see the students' thinking and reasoning. At first, some of the students would give me the worst death stares when I'd put one of those problems in front of them. After some time (and some sticker bribes) those students are now completing these problems first. Their confidence is growing and so it their enthusiasm and their skill. I love it!

Where to now? Well more investigations. More different ways of learning. I keep looking wherever I go online and finding more ways of making math exciting. We're a class happy to be doing maths!


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Things I'm doing well - Writer's Workshop

At the moment, I'm taking a bit of time to reflect on where I want to improve and what I'm doing well. You can find the master list of reflections here.

Writer's Workshop

It’s funny how much easier it is to be critical when reflecting than being positive. But one thing which has worked really well in my classroom this year has been the implementation of a writer’s workshop. The premise of it is pretty simple – students are able to write anything they like. Each session begins with a mini-lesson covering grammar, spelling, writing skills, genre etc. During writing time we have small group and one on one conferences.

There have been some awesome results including a whole heap of published work (which gets entered in the school writer’s club), a movie, and real advancement in the student’s writing. The students really enjoy the autonomy, and are getting really good at identifying where a piece should be improved.

There have been some glitches. NAPLAN ended up taking a lot of time which would have been better spent on writing. We haven’t been as consistent with some things as I would like, which is more of an organisational issue. And I’m still learning about it, which means I’m constantly making improvements. But, all in all it’s a lot of fun and there are some great results.


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Carnival of Education

I had a gorgeous post all ready to be posted - and then my browser crashed . . . grr.

The only thing that can compensate? A post linking you to this week's Carnival of Education!

As always, many many wonderful links. Enjoy!

Things to Improve: Getting Caught in the Negative

At the moment, I'm taking a bit of time to reflect on where I want to improve and what I'm doing well. You can find the master list of reflections here.


Getting Caught in the Negative

I'm an anxious person. I worry about doing the right thing all the time. I get horribly frustrated when I am stopped - in any way - from doing the right thing. And I can get caught in the negatives associated.

NAPLAN was one area which caught me up and stressed me out to an unreasonable level. I felt it was a weight pressing down on me all the time. I let it, and my feelings about it, rule me day in and day out. I had trouble letting it go.

The negativity is definately not good for me, emotionally. I get all wrapped up in it and let it shadow all the other things I do.

So how do I get around this. Surround myself with positive people. Keep things that make me happy on my desk (this has worked a treat this year). Put in place the organisation and anti-procrastination ideas which will help me keep on top of other things which stress me. Laugh.

I feel positive about working on this one!


Next time - into the things I do well!


Image from http://www.4freephotos.com


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Things to Improve: Stop Procrasti . . . oh shiny

At the moment, I'm taking a bit of time to reflect on where I want to improve and what I'm doing well. You can find the master list of reflections here.

Stop Procrastinating

Strangely enough, I have put this post off. My very bad procrastination habit does this to me a lot. I get worked up about something, deliberately put it to the side or the back of my mind, beat myself up because I haven't done it yet and then do it at the last moment - often not doing as well as I can.

Some of it has to do with perfectionism and anxiety. Some with this little laziness only my nearest and dearest really see. But it's not helpful. At all.

Instead it gets me into trouble - or feeling like I will be in trouble all the time. This sense of dread hangs over me like some sort of musty blanket and I find myself unable to sleep/feel relaxed.

I really think this is somewhere where jumping in the deep end won't help. Instead I need to take it a bit slower - make one achievement at a time. At the moment, I'm focusing on writing things down - if they're there in front of me, they're harder to put to the back of my mind.

I realise now, that I haven't mentioned teaching at all here. But procrastination affects that too - I put off planning or making resources or arranging special events. I make it difficult for myself at the last minute - making me more stressed in the classroom. And I'm probably passing on some bad habits to my own perfectionists.

So - step, by step - one foot in front of the other.

How do you get around procrastination?


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Things to Improve: Reading Comprehension

At the moment, I'm taking a bit of time to reflect on where I want to improve and what I'm doing well. You can find the master list of reflections here.


Teaching Reading Comprehension

The majority of my class are very good readers. That is, they can read - aloud - just about any piece of text you put before them. But, I always wonder, how much are they really understanding? And how much more could they be getting from the text?

This is where I'm very much like the students I teach. I was reading novels at age 5, adult books at age 9. I could handle almost every piece of text put before me, although - admittedly - I made a few clangers in pronunciation. But a lot of the time I just let the words fall over me, without really engaging in it. I'm sure there are many occasions I still do that. (Especially when reading some of the notices we get)

So, first, I suppose I really need to consider what we should be getting out of texts. It is important, of course, that students are able to read and use what they are reading. They should be able to identify the audience and the purpose of different texts. But what comes next? Should we take the critical literacy approach of asking what the author is really trying to say, even if the author does not realise they are really trying to say it? Or should we take a more methodical approach on how the author has used certain literary techniques to achieve particular effects? Or maybe a mixture of both? And how does this fit into the classroom as I currently have it.

Most importantly to me, in my reader friendly classroom is how do I teach this without removing the love of books and reading my students currently have? How do you protect pure enjoyment of a well written piece of writing without going into why it is so well written?

Where do I get my resources from? We have precious few resources aimed at the higher level, and even fewer ideas which don't rely on worksheets (my distaste of worksheets continues to flourish).

Is there a way to take a more investigatory approach to teaching reading? I know this approach has been a huge success in our maths lessons - how does it translate to reading?

Many many questions. I'm sure there will be much more to reflect on as I continue to walk this path.

How do you teach reading?


Image from Public Domain Images

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Of floods and carnivals

Yesterday the children in our school were sent home early (from 10.30am onwards) due to massive flooding. I went home a little early to make sure we didn't have flooding, and now I'm watching the neighbour's chickens wandering around in a very wet back yard (otherwise known as BIG puddle/pond of water).

I haven't been sent home early because of rain since I was a child - seems the drought is finally over in South-East Queensland!

In other good news, the Carnival of Education is on again today. I haven't had time to go through them all yet, but some really interesting looking links as usual. I'm looking forward to reading When Video is Made Uncritically and The Battleground Bookshelf. I'm also over there with A Time for Teaching Reflection, which is my current series of posts about where I'm heading. It has actually fit in really well with some of the things going on in our school which I'll talk about when I reach the end . . .

Go! Read!

Things to Improve: Teaching Science

At the moment, I'm taking a bit of time to reflect on where I want to improve and what I'm doing well. You can find the master list of reflections here.


Teaching Science

Science. Test tubes and explosions and carefully drawn tables of results. Fully equipped science laboratories. Any kind of science equipment?

I actually like science quite a lot. I learned it for the 5 years of high school, achieving the highest marks in the grade in grade 9. I like the system of predicting, testing and analysing. But, I still feel that I'm not teaching science in a way which makes it engaging and ensures that the students really learn.

Part of it is in setting up experiments. We have some equipment at school, but no system to tell us what we have or how we can use it. Similarly, there are some great books - but they never seem to fit into our 'unit'. There's also the problem of finding an experiment which can be done safely in the classroom.

I know some of it also comes down to me. When I find easy to do experiments which meet all the requirements of our theme etc, I need to get organised enough to buy the materials I need to complete the experiment. The lack of organisation I talked about before affects science (and strangely, phys ed) more than most other subjects.

So, how to improve. I know I need to look for more information. We have the books there at school, I need to use them. We have begun approaching science more than ever before this term - I need to keep building on that. I need to plan science experiements with enough time to collect materials - and really plan them so I know what materials are needed. I need to balance experimenting with good explainations and thought. And we need to begin looking at observations and realise that science isn't always blowing stuff up.

I think this is one area where I really can improve. I'm looking forward to doing more science.

Any tips on how you approach science?


Image from http://www.4freephotos.com


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Things to Improve: Classroom Organisation

At the moment, I'm taking a bit of time to reflect on where I want to improve and what I'm doing well. You can find the master list of reflections here.

Classroom Organisation

I can never find anything in my classroom. Most of the time, this isn't a huge problem - I do a bit of searching, look around a bit, shift the piles of paper and books on my desk (must do something about this or that) and ask my students to help me find whatever it is I'm missing.

But recently, I had a supply teacher in who wasn't able to find my role - which was quite embarrassing. And I hate having the cleanliness of my desk being a joke around the school.

It's become a problem. It means I don't get things done properly or promptly. It's become a stress to me because things are always left to the last moment.

What can I do about it?

I have started to try to Write things Down, which is helping quite a lot - at least I'm not losing details as much as I used to. I need to take 5 minutes at the beginning and end of each day to make sure I have what I need where I need it. I've discovered that I use resources more when I can see them, so I'm going to invest in a file holder that puts things in front of me.

Sometimes, as well, I need to hand over some of the responsibility to the kids. There are parts of the room that they're responsible for. They need to see to that. I need to make sure that there's a system and time to allow them to see to that.

It's not going to happen overnight - and I need to stop expecting that. Small goals, small increments, will help an awful lot. Now I need to take a deep breathe, step out and try to reach them.

What organisation tricks do you use?


Image from http://www.4freephotos.com


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Things to Improve: Spelling and Vocabulary

At the moment, I'm taking a bit of time to reflect on where I want to improve and what I'm doing well. You can find the master list of reflections here.


Teaching Spelling and Vocabulary

How do you continue to improve spelling and vocabulary when you're teaching children who are already pretty competent in both?

At the moment, I have no clear plan or path to follow for spelling. I've tried a number of ideas - using Greek and Latin roots to brainstorm words (I always lose my list of root words and have to begin again), using dictionaries to find 'connected' words, children grouping a list of spelling words into groups of their own choosing etc. But I've not yet found something that really sticks. And as the children are already good in this area, I tend to let it slip, rather than really looking for how to extend them.

When I was a primary school student, all I remember about spelling was getting a list of words and being forced to memorise them. I was excellent at memorising, but this skill didn't always transfer into spelling correctly in my writing. So how can I give the children strategies to a) find the incorrect words they are putting in their writing and b) to correct them. And how do I put these strategies into interesting lessons with some sort of guiding plan? Without worksheets.

Alternately, since the majority of my students are good spellers, do I need to teach spelling (and vocabulary) as a separate subject? Or can I bring it into my writer's workshop, by explicitly teaching editing skills and insisting that the students use them? Maybe we could increase our visual clues with 'word banks' of interesting/difficult words? Just because most people do long lists of spelling words for tests, does not mean my students have to do the same.

It turns out it's a question which goes beyond the simple 'I want to teach spelling better'. Instead, it turns into a question about 'What's the best way to teach spelling for my students?". And maybe, the best way to find out is to start by asking them. I'll do that Wednesday and keep you updated.

In the meantime, do you have any ideas to make good spellers even better? Let me know!


Image from http://www.4freephotos.com


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