We were talking about nouns with my senior writing group today; common nouns, proper nouns and pronouns – what they are and when would we use them.
So just for the last 10 minutes I thought I’d set them a challenge for proper nouns – I wrote up the following categories:
people
city
month
important day
country
region
Then one of them called out, "Hey, Mr Evans we could do civilisations." Never one to turn down self direction and general enthusiasm, I wrote it up.
When the group reached "civilisations" they blew me way, here is the list they came out with, off the tops of their collective heads: Ancient Greeks, Egyptians, Romans, Norse ("Rub out Viking Mr Evans, they’re the same thing"), Aztecs, Chinese, Mongols, Spartans, Persians and Atlantians.
That is quite a collection for a "special needs’ writing group so I asked how did they know so many.
One said " I used to be into the Egyptians, went to the library all the time. Go loads of books and videos and stuff."
Another answered "Some of those are in Age of Empires too."
The conversation followed:
" Hey, can we do a civilisations thing in this group?" they ask.
"Sure, why not." I say.
"Yeah" says one. "We could write a book about different characters and creatures and legends and cities and stuff, eh? Mr Evans."
There is the motivation right there. I’m looking forward to gettting their computers networked next week, then I talk about wikipedia and google searchesand all that sort of stuff. I love it when I stumble cross a button like that… Switching the kids on.
The priority has to be ‘raising the standards’ – of course we have to raise the standard in Education- Why would we lower them. But I’m wondering how best to do that without developing the League tables for schools idea that has had such a detrimental effect on the teaching profession. How do we raise student achievement without beating the life (and passion) out of teaching?
Shane Taurima questions Helen over Labours failure toward Maori boys. Youth appreticeships form 13?? Surely there is a need for a more though grounding in education than that. I feel that this is spelling of the 19th century model Ken Robinson spoke of with broadening out the ‘working class’ education for the majority of the ’skilled’ labour. Perhaps if education isn’t suiting my kid I could just send off down the pit to work those blast door for ther pit pony’s and leave the educating for those smarter kids!
All I want for my kid in primary school is that he is learning to read and write. Perhaps the two of them are talking about opposite ends of the education system. Of course I want my primary kid to learn to read and write. But equally, I’ll want my 16-17 year old being prepared for the work in the 21st century, I’m not sure appreticeships will address that issue.
Now we’re onto parents paying for Free education. Of course if I want my kid to go on the school trip skiing or to Japan or on some geographical fieldtrip to investigate lava flow I’m willing to pay for that… It looks, feels and probably is above and beyond the classroom experience. But would I expect to be charged for the regular ‘in class’ education of my child, certainly not if it is touted as ‘Free’.
My current situation is partly board funded due to the Ministry of Education stating that the class size is too small to warrent an extra teacher. So what does ‘board funded” mean? It means the school is having to raise addition funds to pay for me to drive up the road and deliver that ‘free’ education labour talks about.
Now I’m off on a rant so feel free to stop reading… but….
It’s a little like the ‘free 20 hours’ for 3-4 year olds. That scheme was under funded and had to be subsided by the parents. The hourly rate underthat scheme was too little to support the wage requirements of the teaching staff. If the government came out saying it was a subsidised scheme there would have been no issue but them saying it was free caused a right row in the ECE sector.
Helen Clark highlights the fact that we do not have to pay these school contributions. Wow what a statement. I’d love to see what would happen if, as a result of that statement ALL PARENTS, EVERYWHERE, right across the country went into their schools and asked for a refund. What would happen to those school budgets this late in the school year.
Today, I think, has to have been the longest day of my life. Certainly since coming to New Zealand.
I have felt like I’ve been trapped in some educationally-bent episode of 24.
The following takes place between 8pm (the night
before) and 12pm the day of the ERO visit.
If I could do the tick-dum, tick-dum noise I would:
8pm (last night) My Prinicpal calls for a quick chat about the run through of the day, beginning with “You know they’re coming a bit earlier, don’t you?”
9.pm (ish) last night, I am reviewing some plans for the ERO visit. Running through the day in my head, checking the resources et al.
11pm-1pm Still running through the events of tomorrow while relieving my bodily system of dinner. I wonder if I ate something funny, I’m not laughing- that’s just great.
2.30am Son wakes me with news he needs the toilet- what a fine time for him to be trying to get out of the ‘overnight nappy’
3.30am finally manage to get to sleep (did I mention, my boy fell asleep whilst on the loo about 2.34am)
6am Woken by son saying – “I can’t go to sleep!” Probably has something to do with you having slept 11 hours I manage NOT to say. Anyway I’m up heading toward the day
7.03am I’m out the door for the $10 ride to school – It takes me 30minutes – 36 km but I measure in the cost of fuel now, not distance.
7.30am (give or take the logging truck I followed up the Taihape road) I arrive at School. Final prep for the visit – remember they are coming in early- I want to check the students desks – if they ask to see an example of the writing matrix in the students books I want to have every confidence that I can open any students desk without the fear of having my digits chewed off by any lurking rodents.
8.25am First bus arrives and I begin my mantra for the morning. “Have checked morning routine, do you have your writing kit out, sharp pencil, been to the loo, cut your toe nails, removed the boggies from your sleeves.
8.40am ERO due any minute, students appear ready and I struggle to find them extra stuff to do to keep them off the computer games (they are maths games- most can be found on my delicious account so its all educational stuff, but not a good first impression I guess)
9am Still no sign of ERO, call comes via the secretary, they’ve gone to the wrong school- That poor principal, just imagine ERO turning up on your door step, no warning just a friendly “Hello, we’re the ERO team come to inspect your school.” – ERK! Apparently they did not actually arrive at the school before they realized- but saying they did paints a much more amusing picture.
9.30am The Board begin to arrive, some earlier than others but all looking a little nervous- Funny that, I was nervous meeting the board for the first time, so where does that put me in the pecking order?
10.05am ish Inspectors arrive. They meet the board and we in the class are finishing up writing and heading toward fitness- I’m actually very disappointed they missed the writing lesson as the principal and I team teach it in a very inter-reactive way (if there is such a word).
10.10am We’re in doing Reading- Big book is on the IWB. Wish I’d printed it out to show then later but hey ho.
10.45am ERO appear in my room as I am mid flow with a reading group. Lots of positive feedback about classroom displays looking great and ‘feel of the room’ being directed toward student learning. Yippee.
11.00am Morning tea. I walk into the meeting one of the inspectors is having with the chair of the board. Oops! Then they have to leave the staffroom on account of my presence- Double Oops!
11.20am DEAR time in the classroom. Observation begins. I hate the few minutes at the start of the session while students prepare themselves for their learning. It always appears chaotic but in reality on lasts a few minutes (despite it feeling like an age when the inspector is right there).
11.42am Been working with a maths group and have set them off on an independent task. One inspector is now working with them. Not sure if it’s a good thing or not, so I head over to check. Everyone is smiling so I return to the individual kid I’m working with. With my current maths group numbers being 2,1 and 2 it is hard to argue that the learning isn’t personalized.
12.30am Lunch- I’m on duty so I sit and eat with the kids- We get into a great conversation about middle names, whose got one, who hasn’t. Then they spend the next 7 minutes trying to guess mine…. And succeed I have to add. These kids are not worriwed about our visitors. And rightly so, I’ve never met a group of kids so supportive of one another and clued in socially and educationally. These kids ROCK and I’m so happy to be called their teacher.
I’m going to leave it there for now but the afternoon was equally eventful. 10.32pm I’m signing off.
Over the last week my boy has been practising with the mousepad on my computer. Here are a few links to helpful sites than enable your average pre-schooler to engage with the Web.
With ‘no fixed abode’ I have come across one major draw back; the issue of my ongoing Professional Development.
As scathing as I have been in the past regarding the value placed upon my own ICT PD (It being one of many, many foci) I am now in the rather unique position of having NO PD outside my ICT focus. This has come about by me not being attached to a particular school for half the school year, and now having the majority of my teaching in a school with very little left in the PD budget.
So I have taken the bull by the horns and ‘affiliated myself with the school I teach at on Wednesdays and went along to my first ESAS (Inquiry Learning) session this week.
ESAS officially stands for ?????? none of the teachers I asked could tell me.
Emily effectively introduced and directed us through the “Sharing circles” – 42 of us into 4 groups.
Here are some rough ideas and notes from my time with them.
Before we broke into groups a helpful list of purposeful ‘rules’ for sharing were discussed and I figured that I might just use them for when I am introducing “Thinking Buddies” next week to help students open up and share their ideas with each other.
Purposeful Sharing
Deep Respect
Light Spirit
Inquiring questioning
Non judgmental
Affirming
and Confidential
Emily spoke at some length about each of these but I couldn’t keep up. Having said that I feel they all speak clearly enough for themselves.
Typing in Inquiry Unit into Google (apparently) is not a bad place to start. It’s where one staff member found the link to Wanganui ICT cluster . There are a great number of helpful templates their all adaptable for the general Inquiry Learning process.
There are a key key features in the Inquiry process
Provocation – This is the catalyst event or statement that gets the ball rolling, the two examples given in our session were “Art- Just a pretty picture?” and “Is all rubbish really rubbish?”
There should also be Big Questions which give the Inquiry purpose and direction.
Some teachers found that they had to generate a large number of the question for the Tuning In portion of the Inquiry, so that the students where able to get on the right track for the Inquiry and tangents were minimized.
