Students... A few of my favourite things

I am sure that we all know the song 'My Favourite Things' from The Sound of Music.  If you are 
unfamiliar with it it goes like this... 

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens

Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens

Brown paper packages tied up with strings

These are a few of my favorite things

Cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudels

Doorbells and sleigh bells and schnitzel with noodles

Wild geese that fly with the moon on their wings

These are a few of my favorite things.

Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes

Snowflakes that stay on my nose and eyelashes

Silver white winters that melt into springs

These are a few of my favorite things

When the dog bites, when the bee stings

When I'm feeling sad

I simply remember my favorite things

And then I don't feel so bad.

I was walking along the beach in the holidays looking out over the sea and marvelling at how lucky I am to be working in a job where I am able to take holidays in order to rejuvenate and regain my spark back for the following term when I realised that as much as I love the beach and the holidays I only have one more term left with my class before they move onto intermediate and that they truly are my favourite things.  These children are the reason that I became a teacher and they bring joy, laughter and brightness into my life everyday.  I decided to write my own lyrics to favourite things...

Bright eager eyes and a passion for learning

Telling their stories and playing with yearning

Watching young children frolic and swing

These are a few of my favorite things

Duty with kiddies holding my hand

Listening to my students play in the band

Helping my students to grow their own wings

These are a few of my favorite things.

Students in leotards doing forward rolls

Young students singing with all of their souls

Those 'aha' moments that make kids go 'ping'

These are a few of my favorite things

When reports are due, when markings not done,

When I'm feeling sad

I simply remember my favorite things

And then I don't feel quite so bad.

Recently I was talking to a teacher who is trained in high school physical education.  She noted that the amount of work that we have to do as primary teachers is phenomenal compared to what she had to do at her old school and queried how we manage to get through it all.  At the time I just shrugged my shoulders and was not sure how to answer, but when reflecting back on this conversation I realised that I do it because I love the children I work with and I know in the bottom of my heart that if I did anything less than the best I could for them then I would not be worthy of being their teacher.

At the moment that workload is growing even more - we have normal school life, summative assessments needing to be done, reports that are due in and camp that we are needing to prepare for - however students still deserve to see the best of us every single day and not have teachers who are worn out, stressed or tired.  I know that I can be talking to other teachers in the morning and be feeling stressed out about what I have not yet done as the to do list in teaching is never ending, however the second I see my students those feelings of stress dissolve and smiles and laughter fill their place.

Part of what makes working with children so special and so rewarding is finding out what makes them tick and what helps them learn.  This year I have a number of Maori/Pasifika students and so this has influenced the way that my classroom has been run, from our greetings, to commands, to the way that the students are able to work in groups and support each other.

I feel blessed to be working in a job where each day the relationships that I have with my students and their families makes a difference - whether this is due to a child achieving something special and their parent knowing, helping a young child who is hurt on the playground or looks as though they need a smile, encouraging a student who has lost all motivation or cheering a student on as they achieve a goal that they have been persevering with.

Reflecting on Room 16

Halfway through the year the students take a moment to reflect on their time in Room 16 - why they like being part of the class and what their favourite part of the year has been.

PD - Applying learning in my classroom

Towards the end of last term I spent half a day at a local school that work primarily with Maori and Pacifica families.  My school does not have a huge proportion of these students however nearly a third of my class have Maori backgrounds and so it is a need of mine to be able to teach these students in a way that they best learn.  I have attached a photo of notes that I took whilst observing a number of teachers in this school in action.

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Based on these observations and further reading on POGIL work I have begun to adapt my reading lessons.  

Applying POGIL to my programme, my reading lessons naturally took on a more self directed format - however these students were given a must do and a can do list - as well as evaluation sheets that they filled out every week.  The sheets look like this but usually included a can do sheet also.  

This week, we have completed two immersion lessons where the students have had the opportunity to become fully engaged with this task.  This provided opportunities to do hands on work where they were exploring the school to try and locate living and non living things within their own environment and using MRS GREN to help them determine whether or not they are living.  Armed with this knowledge the students today looked at different native animals and identified which MRS GREN life processes they had adapted to best suit their environment.  As habitats tie in closely with adaptations the students spent an hour today identifying their own habitats which they thoroughly enjoyed and which allowed them to link their lives directly to their learning.  Over the next week they will be choosing four of the six activities on the following sheet that interest them most - as well as completing activities on the blog in order to allow them to self direct their learning to their own interests but yet stay within the learning focus.  In addition to this they will also be pulled out for guided reading sessions with me about specific animals that are native to New Zealand and have had to make appropriate adaptations.

I look forward to seeing how this will engage my Maori - and non Maori learners and whether it will be more effective than the current practices that are underway in my room.

Hello to Blogging

17 June - Final year of teaching and starting my blogging journey!