Teaching: A Beginners Journey

Crazy, exhausting, hectic, manic. A few words many in the education world would use to describe term 4 (or perhaps any term as a teacher!). 

Yes term 4 comes with it’s challenges and it is all those things and more. However, for this blog, I have decided to reflect on the positive things that we get to experience as a teacher during Term 4 (and throughout the whole year!).

“Teaching is an exhausting, people centric job. But we’re in this work to change lives.” 

Mark Scott - IOTF6 conference 2019 

I am not sure I would word my reasons for teaching in this way but I do agree with Mark that teaching is: ‘an exhausting people centric job’. Teaching is exhausting because we walk alongside our students sharing in all of their experiences; suffering the lows and celebrating the highs. So much so that I usually end up calling them “my kids” or “our kids” with my teaching partner Sophie (@missclavertblog).

Term 4 is known for end of year reports, student led conferences, and parent meetings. Although these events bring exhaustion and stress, it also provides opportunities to reflect on how far ‘our kids’ have come. Each child’s learning journey is different. Some rocket through while others struggle over each and every hurdle but every achievement or ‘victory’, however big or small, is always celebrated with great joy. 

Just yesterday Sophie and I were dancing around the room cheering with excitement for a student’s small victory.

One of ‘our kids’, a year 2 student, has had quite a few struggles with their reading this year; having had a significant drop at the beginning of the year from the end of last year and working so hard all year to re-develop their reading skills. Yesterday, during a running record (reading assessment), they easily and fluently read a level 21. Now this doesn’t mean much to the outside world. Even within the teaching world or amongst their peers there would be questions and doubts about why we are cheering for this insignificant achievement, especially considering they still have a long way to go to be working where they need to be. BUT in our eyes this was HUGE. They have worked so hard all year and yesterday we could not have been prouder. 

This is just one of thousands of times that we have celebrated the small victories of our kids. Teaching is exhausting but it’s moments like these that make it all worth it. 

This term, in Religious Education, Stage 1 have been journeying on an inquiry driven by the question ‘How Do I Belong?’ This inquiry has led to some incredibly deep thinking from students and has inspired action. 

We commenced the inquiry by looking at where we belong mainly through the form of groups in the community that we belong to. 

We then started looking at the Sacrament of Baptism. We explored the purpose of Baptism; to be welcomed into God’s family. This led to some interesting wonderings by our non-christian students who had not been baptised. “If I am not baptised, am I still part of God’s family?” In a standard unit about baptism this question may have been brushed over or pushed aside with no time to explore it. Being in a process of inquiry we let the students questions and wonderings lead the process so we decided to facilitate a discussion about it. Having less than 40% Catholic in our school and probably less than that in our classroom we realised it was an extremely important question to address and explore.

This week we had our liturgy where we sing and pray as a stage community. Within this liturgy we also take time to celebrate the learning that has taken place throughout the term. During this, the same student who had that huge wondering at the start of the unit (If I am not baptised, am I still part of God’s family?) stood up to share her learning: “Baptism is a sacrament of initiation that welcomes people into God’s family but even if we aren’t baptised we still belong to God’s family and he loves us very much.” 

As part of our exploration of belonging we also encourage students to take action. What are we going to do with our new learnings? Students decided that their inquiry project would be to create a class welcome box for new students that arrive in our community. Our school is continuously growing and it is quite normal to have new students arrive and start even as late as Term 4. Students designed welcome items to give new students. They made welcome cards, maps, a timetable of our learning day and lots more. These will be stored in a box and new students will be able to pick something from the box on their first day at school. 

 

This term, I have seen the power of inquiry. Students driving the learning through actively questioning and wondering and then being inspired to take action.

I recently read this quote (in the image above from Albert Einstein) and was a bit taken aback at the harsh nature of his words. But when I stopped to think about it, It just summed up the reality that; we are all lifelong learners. 

I know I, as a teacher, learn something new everyday. I learn from the students in the classroom, the parents, and the staff and colleagues that I am fortunate enough to work and interact with. This term I have also been given a couple of opportunities for learning (or  as most like to call Professional Development) that has taken place outside of my usual workplace. I am going to share some of the key learnings from each of them. 

 

Let’s read, write and talk K-2

This was a 3 day course (with a few weeks in between each day over the last term and a half) run by the Literacy Teacher Educators of the Parramatta Diocese. The course focused on best practice in the literacy block. This was an incredible opportunity and I learnt so much at each of the three days. In between each day we had to trial at least one strategy to then bring back and share how it went in our space. This made the course very practical and helped to consolidate and transfer the learning taking place at the course into our everyday. 

From this I have:

• developed a deeper understanding of the content within the English syllabus which has influenced how and what I teach during the literacy block 
• incorporated a new approach to teaching writing especially by giving students more opportunities for free choice writing
• Trialled a new form of small group writing; interactive writing 

 

iOnTheFuture6 “More in us then we know” 

This was a conference aimed at developing teachers’ ability in implementing effective pedagogy and thus engaging students in opportunities for deeper learning. There were a lot of takeaways from this conference (if you follow me on Twitter @Miss_Hoban16 you will know from the huge amounts of tweets I had from that day! If you don’t go and follow me and have a look!) If I had to choose just one or two key learnings from the day they would be from the masterclass I attended with Ron Berger. This masterclass was looking at deeper instruction to empower, challenge, and engage students. This was a new concept to me and I found it really interesting looking at how they structured and embedded this in to all learning across all KLAs. There were also some affirmations of what we do e.g. We start with ‘challenge’ not engage because the challenge is what’s engaging. This is similar to how we run our maths program already with a rich task that students have to struggle on their own first, then struggle together with a partner and then have a workshop to share their thinking. 

 

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Even though I try to take something away from each PD that I attend, most of them have also been very reassuring. Even though I know there is always room for improvement, I know that I am on the right track. There are elements of my teaching that were affirmed in these days. I could sit in some of the sections of presentations, hopefully without sounding arrogant, and say that I am doing that and I think I do it well. But I know that that is as a result from prior learning that I was exposed to. I am extremely grateful for both external and internal PD opportunities and I will continue to seek out these opportunities as a committed lifelong learner.

Term 2 is arguably one of the busiest terms of the year for a teacher. With data updates, reports and parent meetings, on top of the everyday workload, teachers (especially this one!) can get stressed, overwhelmed and exhausted quite quickly. However, in amongst all of this comes one of my favourite parts of the year: Student-led Conferences. 

At St Luke’s we don’t have parent teacher meetings we have student-led conferences. The process for preparing students for student-led conferences is year round. We do this through the constant integration of our 6 pillars into every aspect of learning. In each part of our day, students can be found reflecting on their learning, identifying strengths, and naming their next steps for themselves as a learner. In Stage 1, prior to the student led conference,  students identify two pillars that they think are their strengths and one weakness. They also have to justify why using our smiley face scale. 

In the words of our students…

1. The straight face means I can’t do it yet and I need lots of help
2. The thinking face means that I can do it some of the time but I still need a bit of help
3. The smiley face means that I can do it by myself 
4. The sunglasses face means that I am an expert and I can teach others. 

Working alongside teachers, students choose a piece of work that showcases their strengths. Students also chose a weakness, identifying something that they need to work on. 

Some would say that this is an impossible feat for six and seven year olds but the ability these students display each year continues to blow me away. The feelings of joy and pride that I feel in my heart for every single one of my students during these conferences is met and felt (probably tenfold!) by the looks and comments of the parents in awe of their children. This term, one of the exciting things for me, was to sit in with a couple of students who I have taught since the beginning of last year. To be able to see the huge growth in confidence and ability to communicate their learning since last year was incredible. I would be confident in saying that some of my stage 1 students are more reflective and honest about their capabilities then some adults I know. 

Considering how well they have done now in Stage 1, it blows my mind to even begin to think about what they will be able to do in Stage 6 (Year  11&12). My dream is that they will continue to develop their ability to know themselves as a learner, being just as proud to showcase their strengths and what they can do well but also continue to be reflective and honest in what they can continue to work on as a lifelong learner.

This term Stage 1 moved into our new learning spaces in the new building. Stage 1’s level has the theme: ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ We have Tin Man’s Forest, The Lion’s Den, Wizard’s World, and my space is Glinda’s Castle.

Moving into a new space almost felt like starting the year all over again. We were fortunate enough to have two ‘moving days’ at the end of last term to move and sort the bulk of the furniture and resources into the new space as well as some time over the holidays to come in and set it up ready to go for a new and exciting term of learning.

With a new space comes the explicit re-teaching of expectations. To ensure students looked after our beautiful new learning space these expectations were and still are set to a very high standard. ‘Respect for the environment’ has been and still is a huge focus this term. Students take pride in their space and enjoy looking after it (although still with many reminders!).

Term 2, Day 1: With excitement levels through the roof we were expecting behaviour management to be a bit challenging… However, the echo of most staff was “I can’t believe how settled the students are.” The spaces are so well designed and purpose-built to ensure meaningful learning can occur within its walls.

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With a new space comes new learning opportunities. This term we have trialled a new way of using reading goals in the literacy block. Students’ reading goals are displayed and colour coded depending on the focus of their goal i.e. Structure, Visual, Sight words, Meaning, Fluency, Self Monitoring. The first rotation, while I am running a guided reading session, the students participate in ‘Partner Reading.’ Students must first name their goal then read. When the bell rings their partner must give them feedback  and then they swap.

On the second rotation they are either completing a goal activity or a choice activity. Each colour coded focus has a bank of activities which we choose and display each week. Three days of the week students must choose a goal activity (colour coded to match their focused goal). The other two days are “choice activity” days where students can choose any of the activities on the wall. We have noticed a positive impact on students’ ability to name their reading goal and reflect on their reading.

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Now that we have been in the spaces for just over a month it is my new normal. Being so accustomed to it, I love having visiting staff or casual teachers walk through and listen to their comments on how amazing our learning spaces are because it reminds me to stop, look and be grateful for the blessing of these incredible learning spaces that we have and the incredible learning opportunities that come with it.

I will leave you with a few snaps from today when we had some guests from ‘The Wizard of Oz’ visit our learning space!

Activities Club Adventures

This year I signed up to be part of the teaching team for our “Activities Club.” For those who don’t know, “Activities Club” forms part of our extended school day operating between the hours of 6:30am-8:00am and 2:40pm-6:00pm. Each day educators deliver a high quality mix of STEM, Creative Arts, PDHPE, RE, English, technology and so much more!

After a small taste of it last year, I put my hand up to teach activities club one afternoon a week this year. Every Tuesday I start at 10am and finish at 4:30pm. This term I was placed on Early Stage 1 (ES1) which, to be honest, has been more challenging than I thought it would be. Sometimes I forget how little the kindies are at the start of the year and just how huge of an adjustment the first term it for them. After just one afternoon with a group of 38 kindy students (supported by an assistant) I was exhausted! I immediately messaged all the ES1 teachers and told them that they are all superheroes and just all round incredible human beings. I continue to let them know this after my short glimpse into the life of an ES1 teacher each week.   

Each day’s activities are planned and implemented based on our school’s 6 pillars of learning (Witness, Manage, Relate, Inquire,Think, Create). Tuesday’s have been focused on “Inquire & Think” which include activities in areas like music, STEM, coding, and science have been the basis for my teaching on these afternoons. Having a passion for STEM, coding, and music I was so excited to be on the Inquire & Think afternoon but I may have started off a bit adventurous… I prepared a coding for beginners activity for my ES1 group after only 4 days of Kindy… What was I thinking?! It was a challenge to say the least…  

So I quickly adjusted my learning experiences and after a few weeks found that hands on STEM tasks were exactly right for this group of students. Here are some of the tasks that I have implemented so far:

Tumbling Towers: You need to work as a group to build the tallest tower. You can only use what is on the table. (paddlepop sticks & bluetack)  Be CREATIVE work as a TEAM. We will see who has the tallest ‘freestanding’ tower by the end.

 

Design and make a house: Miss Hoban is moving from an apartment into a house. Design a dream house for her! She needs at least 3 bedrooms and a big backyard, you decide on the rest!

 

Create a Maze: Create a Maze for a friend to play.

 

Design and make an Easter Basket: Create an Easter Basket using only paper, scissors, glue and sticky tape. It must have a handle and be able to hold at least one plastic egg.

 

Although challenging, ‘Activities Club’ has been one of the many things that is continuing to help me grow and develop as an educator. Each week I look forward to planning exciting and challenging activities that engages students in learning experiences beyond the hours of a normal school day. I look forward to continuing my own learning and supporting the learning and engagement of the ES1 students in activities club next term. I can’t wait to see what adventures we will go on next term!

 

Last year St Luke’s Catholic College designated Wednesday afternoons to “Adventure Learning.” Teachers designed courses based on students’ interests and after an exciting showcase of courses students chose their top 5 activities and were placed in a course. students were working with peers from other stages and teachers they hadn’t worked with before. It was a great success. Here is a link to my blog about my experience with my Radio Course.

This year, being the beginning of the school year and still getting to know our students, it was decided that Wednesday afternoons would be dedicated to “passion projects” within each stage. Stage 1 students brainstormed ideas about things they would like to learn about and teachers designed courses around the most popular responses. Ss Then chose which course they would like to be a part of.

The courses this term are:

• Animals and Reptiles
• Dinosaurs
• Games
• Inventions
• Music and Dance
• Space
• Robots and Coding

My course is robots and coding. When I first saw the I had coding I was excited and immediately had thoughts and plans about different coding games and projects that we could do. As part of my first lesson I asked Ss to write/draw what they wanted to do during their passion project time. I had anticipated certain answers prior to this discussion but the students came up with all sorts of interesting ideas that I hadn’t even thought of. For example: The first activity that I had planned was a challenge task to create an ozobot maze. I made a presentation with videos and made what I thought was a very exciting selling pitch for this task. Some students loved the idea but all that some students wanted to do was design and make their own robot. My first instinct was to say no and ask them to do the task I had designed, after all I had spent a lot of time planning and organising this lesson! However, I stopped myself and thought about the point of the passion project. These students have an interest in robots and want to use their time designing and making a replica robot. So why can’t they? They would still be problem solving, thinking creatively and most importantly doing something they are passionate about. So I said yes.

This week an outsider walking in to the space may have seen chaos. What I saw was students thoroughly engaged in their project. Making, reflecting, re-designing and problem solving to perfect their design. I heard things like “That didn’t work, time for plan b”  and “what if we tried this…”

   

 

I have been pleasantly surprised at how creative the students in my group have been and look forward to continuing the journey of robots and coding for passion projects this term!

Follow me on Twitter (@Miss_Hoban16 ) to see more photos and videos of our passion projects.

 

 

 

 

Oh What A YEAR!

As I sit down to write this blog I can’t believe I have been teaching at St Luke’s for a whole year. In one sense I feel like I have blinked and it’s already over. In another sense I feel like I have been here forever and, to quote my teaching partner, ‘it feels like we’re part of the furniture.’

Recently, during a tour for the new St Luke’s 2019 teaching staff, my principal Greg Miller put a few of us on the spot and asked us to reveal our greatest joy and our greatest challenge from the year that was. As I was listening to my fellow stage 1 teachers reveal their answers I was racking my brain trying to think of a logical and coherent response…

Although there have been so many joys and challenges during my time at St Luke’s one of the greatest challenges I faced turned out to also be one of my greatest joys.

This year I was placed on Stage 1 with three other, incredibly talented, teachers. We were all new to St Luke’s and Emma and I were new to the Parramatta Diocese. Being a beginning teacher, only in my third year of teaching, I was freaking out! I can honestly say that Term 1 this year was the hardest term of my, albeit very short, teaching career. At the start of the year the focus for our liturgy was “into the deep”. We were definitely headed into deep waters and not only did I feel like I was drowning but sinking! Greg is often quoted as saying that we are trying to build the plane whilst flying it. Well during that term I felt like the plane was on fire, falling to bits, crashing to the earth and I was barely holding on. Ok so that may be a bit dramatic… But hopefully it proves a point as to how overwhelmed I was feeling.

Although term 1 was my greatest challenge it also led to the realisation of my greatest joy. Even though I felt like I was drowning, I had a team who were drowning with me. This doesn’t sound very joyous… but it was! I knew that, sink or swim, we were in it together. We leaned on each other and made it through. Each term that followed became increasingly easier, bring new and exciting challenges. I had to reprogram my mindset, accept the risk of failure and just dive head first into the deep.

Along with my team I had the support of learning coaches who helped me evaluate and develop my teaching practice. At St Luke’s we call it a Professional Analysis Conversation or PAC. At the start of the year the thought of being ‘observed’ for a lesson was very daunting! Now it is part of regular practice. It is not so much about the observation but about the co-reflection after it. Having the opportunity to receive constructive feedback and generate new ideas has been so rewarding. So much so that I would continuously email asking when my next PAC could be. This was and continues to be another great joy as part of my professional development at St Luke’s.

I also had the support of Greg, a principal who gave us permission to take risks and try new things. He is credited to saying “If it doesn’t cause harm, or cost too much, than our default answer is and should always be ‘yes’.” As a stage we were continuously trying something new. Did they all work? No. But what was important was that we learned from those experiences and continued to challenge ourselves as educators to strive to provide the best education for our students, our number one priority.

I know that I could not survived this year without the amazing team of educators and support staff that make up our St Luke’s Community. I have learnt and grown so much as an educator and I am so excited to continue my journey in 2019. Bring on another year of challenges, growth and joy!

Reports … if you listen carefully you can hear teachers all over the world gasp and groan.

I understand reports form an important and necessary cycle of assessment and communication to parents. However, this does not make it any easier on teachers to write them.

I would classify ‘reports’ and ‘stress’ as synonymous and I think my family would to…. My sister always tells others that when it is report time it is best to just smile and nod, place chocolate quietly in front of me and slowly back away…

So we have established reports are stressful! But we, as teachers, have to remember to look after ourselves. Even though I am only early on in my years of teaching, already I know the number one rule is to ‘be kind to yourself’. Here are some of my tips and strategies for staying sane during report season:

• Be organised – create a schedule and give yourself plenty of time to complete reports
• Set a solid amount of time to sit and get them done but ensure you have regular breaks to get up, stretch and get away from the screen(s) for a while. I often set an alarm to force myself to get away from them
• Set up a motivation system. Not that I am trying to condone unhealthy eating habits BUT I used to make a deal with myself that for every 2 comments I wrote I could have a square of chocolate. Now that I am avoiding chocolate I will have to find another food to motivate me… carrot sticks? Celery sticks?
• Another blog I read, “Surviving report writing”, made a really valid point stating that one of the first things that we stop doing is our exercise routine. “Taking a break to get some fresh air, raise the pulse and take our mind to other places is vital and makes us more effective. 30 minutes getting exercise is NOT wasted time. Don’t stop walking the dog, going to the gym, walking etc. They are vital!”

These are just a few things that might help you survive this crazy season. How do you survive reports? If you have any other ideas, I would love to hear them.

Finally I would like to leave you with a thought “Reports are NOT the be all and end all” we WILL get through them and we WILL survive.

In a previous blog, “Student choice” , I outlined some of the research that I had found around student choice in an early years classroom. There was little research about incorporating choice in primary schools and even less for students in the early years. Inspired, I started looking for ways to incorporate student choice within my Stage 1 space.

One of the most successful ways has been through what we call “Choice Activities” in Literacy. In most early years classrooms you will often find “Menuboard” activities for students to complete during guided reading sessions. Students are often placed in groups and are rotated around the activities across the week. This is quite practical and easy to manage as the teacher knows where students are and what they should be doing at all times. However, this didn’t sit right with me after reading about the benefits of student choice. What if students have no interest in completing a cloze passage about bugs? Why are students who know all of their sight words forced to play sight word games which they have no interest in? These were just a few of the wonderings that I started to have.

As a response to my wonderings, I then came up with the idea of “choice activities” during literacy. Each week Ss are presented with 6 activities that they can choose from. These activities are created based on either an identified need for the development of a specific skill or interest based activities. Below is an example.

Each activity has a learning intention making it easier for students to identify what they are working on and what the purpose of each task is. Each day I strongly encourage students to choose activities based on the skills they think they need to develop but the choice is theirs.

To keep track of what students are choosing, I created a sign on sheet for each task. Students must sign on to the activity they are completing each day. This helps me track which activity students are completing and how often they complete them.

I started off by asking students not to repeat a task to encourage them to do several activities across the week. However, this led to more wonderings. Why should students be forced to move on to a different activity when they are so engaged in the one they have chosen? What if students need more than one session to practice and perfect a skill? What if students need more than one session to finish off an activity? Why should they have to do a different activity each day? These wonderings led to the removal of that restriction. Students are now able to choose what they want to do each day. However, I still ask students to sign on to activities so I can track what they do and which skills they want to practice.

At the start I was also restricting the number of students in an activity to help with behaviour management in an activity. But then I asked myself ‘why?’ Especially when students were a lot more engaged and ‘settled’ in an activity of their choosing compared to an activity they were forced to complete.

As time goes on I try to seek student input at the end of each week to plan for the next week’s choice activities.

Choice activities in literacy is just one of the ways that I have started to implement choice in my stage 1 space but it’s not perfect! It continues to develop with constant wonderings around the authenticity of student choice and voice.

If you have any suggestions or have ways that you include student choice in your context please get in contact and let me know!