Immersion Week

Our big theme this term is 'Dream It, Think It, Do It!' so KW and I designed a week of immersion which allowed our students to be involved in a range of ideas and topics to allow us to negotiate the learning path with our students.  In our school we work in pods - this year my pod of 4 classroom consists of 2 Year 2 classes, 1 Year 1 class and my own year 5/6 class.  KW and I planned a range of learning opportunities and also within our immersion week we held 4 sessions where each teacher from our pod took a different immersion session where we split our students up within the 4 groups.  Within this pod time we saw students take on game making, drama, modifying sports and hat creation challenges that saw them working within different aspects of creativity.

For the rest of the week KW and I planned immersion learning opportunities for our Year 2 and Year 5/6 students to be working alongside each other.  Each activity was carefully planned to allow students to work within 6 main dispositions to develop their understanding of 'Dream It, Think It, Do It!'  We identified 'flexibility, risk taking, creativity, thoughtfulness, thinking and challenge' as our key dispositions and these became our focus of conversations and reflections with the students throughout the week.

Our first challenge for the week was simple in spirit but provided a wealth of information for us, as teachers.  We collected as many boxes and bits that we could find.  Large, medium, small and more... we had them all!  From this we started with very little instructions... choose some boxes - create something!  This was to give us a range of information about our students! We were expecting some far our creations, but found we had very 'normal' creations - a house, a bus, a rocket ship.  It allowed us to see that risk-taking for our students is a key disposition.  So after a lot of discussion, we decided to set up a 'ninja cave' the next morning.  This was a huge hit for the students the next morning when they came in to find it - it ended up morphing throughout the weekend to become more and more challenging each morning.  It was through our 'ninja cave' that we were able to have an amazing conversation around risk-taking and what that entails.

We discussed what makes risk-taking harder and examined elements such as 'when people are watching' the risk level can go up.  Our principal arrived on the tail end of this conversation and was then invited to take the risk.  The kids were more than stoked to see their principal go through the 'Ninja cave' and supported him with a huge cheer and pakipaki at the end.

The biggest learning curve for most students was the concept of 'guerrilla knitting' or yarn bombing.  The idea being a semi-permanent form of street art that changes the street side from the drab into the colourful.  It's the concept of creativity for giving and thoughtfulness that we were working with through this learning experience.  So we headed out to our school fence with balls of wool and got to work to create our rather plain looking school fence into a work of art.  The students worked in pairs - 1 Year 5 or 6 student with 1 Year 2 student and began with small hearts.  However, students soon wanted to try different patterns and designs and got more enthusiastic as they saw the fence take shape.  We ended up with some diamonds, larger hearts, S and L shapes.  Unfortunately time and weather was a factor for us and we have both spoken about heading out with our classes to work on these again.  The concept of their own creativity for giving was one that was talked about over and over again during the week.

The coolest element of this was the reaction they saw from their peers, teachers and families.  On Friday we arrived back to class to an awesome letter.  This letter now has pride of place in both our classrooms on our door - so everyone entering can read it!

These are just a selection of the learning experiences we developed as part of our immersion week with our students.  We also designed playgrounds, made marble runs and more.  It allowed the students a wide range of experiences and allowed us to see where our students interests and passions lay for our next steps of the negotiated learning path.  I really enjoyed collaborating and planning with KW and it allowed us to each draw on our own experiences and strengths.  I learnt a lot from working more closely with her and it was great being able to sit down at the end of each day and reflect on what we saw for each of our kids.

At the end of the week we used the Kath Murdoch 'Learning Wheel' as a reflection tool for the week to help us decide where our next steps were and the guerilla knitting was a firm favourite.  From our Learning Wheel reflections and conversations my class have chosen to go down the path of investigating 'how my creativity can benefit others'.  I'm really looking forward to seeing where we go with this!

Educating Boys

Around 6 months ago a friend recommended a book called 'Educating Boys' by Michael Irwin to me.  I started it and then, like most books in term time, it got put to the side. Even thought I've been desperate to read it!  These holidays have meant that I have picked it up again and continued to read it.  It's a worthwhile read for anyone who are working with boys in education or who have boys at home.

Not a lot of the ideas and concepts are all that new to me e.g. boys need more movement, action learning and hands on approaches. But so far it has reinforced a lot of key teaching and learning concepts and approaches as well as ones that I have changed or don't use as much as I have previously.

A concept I linked into with learning is the idea of 'Play' as a basis for learning.  A place to hook old learning into new learning and to make discoveries.  Last year as part of our Daily5 reading work the students did 'Work with Words' which is basically spelling/grammar work.  As part of this I gave my year 4 students purple sand to draw words into and wikki stix to make letters with, amongst other tasks.  Initially I thought perhaps they wouldn't use them as they might deem them as 'babyish'.  Interestingly enough these were the items that were first taken by the students working in this area over and over again.  There was also a student developed system for letting people know you wanted to use them next.  Both of these were play items and I will use them with my Year 5/6 students this year again!  I also really liked the idea of having 'explorer' areas where there are things for the students (not just the boys!) to create or dismantle.  But also it's made me think about how I can create more areas for play in curriculum areas to diversify the teaching and learning process.

Exercise and Physical Education as a catalyst for more focussed work.  I know this and do a lot of this already as I see a huge difference in the students when there is more activity in the day.  But it's made me interested to look at starting each day or the breaking the middle block with a burst of focussed physical activity.  I've done this previously with 'Brain Breaks' and it's made a huge difference but it was something this year that I didn't use.
Also how I'm teaching Physical Education and the importance of making time for it.  Our school is well set up with our syndicates taking part in syndicate wide sports each term for at least 1 hour and also whole school Jump Jam each week.  This is a great base for our students and I know that my boys are always the first ones to be asking what sports they will be undertaking during this time and the first to complain if the weather is bad on sports afternoons!

It was interesting to read about the students who are coming into schools and the importance of teaching them to read and write from the first day and as early as 5.  Irwin talks about the fact that a lot of the teaching and learning for literacy has moved away from play based, making and creating into more 'talk and write' examples.  He stresses the importance of linking back to the play concepts and developmental play in the early years.  There has been a lot of talk about the Finish education system lately and how they excel with teaching and learning in worldwide comparisons.  Irwin interestingly points out the fact that students don't start school in Finland until they are 7 giving students more time to be involved in play.  Such a focus on literacy which in turn pushes out areas such as The Arts, Physical Education and Science out of the daily curriculum.  All areas that boys tend to excel in but don't get the opportunity to be as involved in.

So, I will continue to read, reflect and make links to my teaching practice and challenge ideas I have or have had and why I may not do them anymore.  I think it is a worthwhile read and while the focus is on educating boys, I do believe many of the concepts and ideas can equally be forwarded to girls and their learning needs.

Flame

This is someone's experiment who got it completely right! Peter Blaskovic has created Flame as part of his 'I Am An Artist' project.

If you are anything like me and love creating photographs from moving lights and anything that shines - you will love this site.

Basically you can play around and create your own artwork using 'lights.' You have the control to choose and change colours, opacity, size and more to create your desired artwork. Without anymore explaining, the best thing you can do it to head over to the Flame site and have a play!