6th Teaching K-6 Carnival

Welcome to the June edition of the Teaching K-6 Blog Carnival. The weather is getting colder now, here in Australia, and we're looking for opportunities to cuddle up by the heater with our laptops and search for some good reads. This month offers some great tips for those of us trying to make it through the cold of winter AND also for those in the Northern Hemisphere who are finishing off the school year and preparing for the summer months. This month we have a special category: "Taking it Home", for posts about extending learning into the home.

Brain Strain

As my regular readers are aware, I have been busy working on a Graduate Certificate in Educational Leadership. My contribution to the carnival this month is my post about the Microsoft Innovative Schools Conference that I attended in early May. Check out some of the links and watch some of the recordings - they're well worth it.

Taking it Home

For those in the Northern Hemisphere who are putting together Summer Packets of work for students to work through during the holidays, you might like to use the suggestions from Meaghan Montrose at TutorFi.com this month. They also make great homework supplements for those of us in the Southern Hemisphere.

• 5 Ways to Encourage Young Children to Read
• 10 Tips to Improve Your Math Skills Everyday
  

In her post Free Tutoring posted at Note from the Teacher, Erin shares tips for parents about ways they can support their children with learning at home. Erin provides practical examples that provide for a more consistent approach to consolidating new learning.

Gripes and Brags

Glowing Face Man presents Teaching With Pronouns posted at Awaken the Badass Within, saying, "An article about why you should make a conscious effort to use less pronouns when teaching."After reading this, I know I'll be paying more attention to my use of pronouns this week!

In the News

In "Hell is the classroom"nightwalker of My English Pages presents some strategies for creating a respectful classroom environment. He emphasises the need to have a preventative approach and outlines how this can be done by teaching with "love and logic".

This month Fiona Lohrenz presents the following two posts at Child Care Only to guide you through Child Care management:

• Guidelines For Preparing A Day Care Safety Statement
• Preparing For Day Care Toileting Accidents

Innovate - Beyond the Slate

At the Teacher's Desk Wm Chamberlain presents Allowing Students to Differentiate with Vocabulary Strategies. Here he and his students share strategies they find useful for learning vocabulary in reading. See how Wm Chamberlain differentiates to meet the needs and hear the students explain for themselves.

Myscha Theriault has got it right when she says that we need the right amount of spelling activities to provide students with variety but at the same time familiarity. This month she shares Spelling Activities: Twenty-Seven Ways to Practice in Style posted at The Lesson Machine Blogazine. She gets the balance right and her ideas can be applied in the classroom with minimal prior preparation.

Mathew Needleman presents Open House Parent Engagement Tips posted at Open Court Resources.com Blog. These tips will help you to think through the reasons parents come to Open House and consider the best way to hold their interest.

Look No Further

R. Garza presents "A remarkable collection of cutting edge resources for parents and teachers." with 41 Things To Do With Your Kids This Summer‎ posted at Educational Games for Children.

Why not submit your post for the next carnival?

The Teaching K-6 Carnival is posted monthly on the 7th. I am collecting submissions throughout the month, looking in particular for posts that discuss and exemplify innovative teaching and the integration of technology in the K-6 classroom. I also invite a few "brain strains" to keep our minds alert and challenged. Please submit only articles of which you are the author and refrain from using this merely as a sales pitch. For full details, please read my call for submissions.

If you have a relevant post that you would like to submit to the next edition of teaching k-6 carnival use our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Support this Carnival

If you enjoyed this edition of the carnival, you can support its continuation by sharing it with others. Link to us, add us to a tweet, stumble or digg us. Thanks!

Friday Fun - 3/4/09

Fun this week

This week was packed to the brim with exciting learning experiences.

Communication - Assessment Task
Students began this task last week. This week they finished preparing their presentations and presented them. Three groups chose PowerPoint presentations, two chose role plays and a talk, and others chose posters (with or without a talk). It was very interesting to see how students organised their ideas and cooperated in their teams. As this was the first time I've given my students this level of student direction with a task, I learnt a lot from the process. This time I gave explicit details about what the presentations needed to contain - in the way of a rubric - but I did not give students a tool to help them organise their information and plan their presentation. Fortunately a very experienced relief teacher was in the classroom with me at the time and was able to throw something together to give students more direction. This is something that I will remember for next time.

Maths
We got to play with angles again this week in our Maths lessons. Miss Eschauzier (an intern who will be with us for eight weeks) took small groups out to work on ordering acute angles and measuring them with a protractor. I worked with the rest of the class exploring angles with compass directions and clock faces. Yet again, students loved playing with angles and learning how to name them. Students also completed a test to determine areas of strength and areas for development from this term.

The Ridge
We finally started our ridge project this week. Doug and Jenny from the Park Care group, came to speak to students about our school's previous involvement with the ridge and start a project with this year's Year 4s. They showed us pictures of some of the plants to look for, and some of the weeds that we will be responsible for pulling out. It was really enjoyable to learn from people who are passionate about plants and maintaining the natural environment on the ridge.

Part-way through lunchtime, we walked up the ridge to see it all for ourselves. I chose a few people to be our photographers, and other students had the option of bringing notepaper and pencils to record information. The following slideshow is a collaborative effort from students and myself.

A few students discovered the magic of moss in a drought-stricken land. The following video shows their discovery.



When we returned to class students worked in self-chosen teams to "graffiti wall" all the things that they had seen and learnt. Each student had a different coloured texta. They worked simultaneously to record their ideas. Most of the groups filled a huge page in just 15 minutes!

Our project on the ridge will involve students in taking responsibility for the care of their local community through protection of the ridge. We hope that students will develop a greater understanding of and connection with nature in the local region.

Performance
Students performed for parents this week to celebrate their learning this term. Students from the Fife and Drum Band performed five songs and Readers' Theatre people performed four plays that we learnt throughout the term. I was really impressed by how well the students read and played. They looked really professional and seemed so confident. Parents were invited to stay for light refreshments, and many commented that they had enjoyed the performance.

Homework
This term students have had the flexibility to work with a Homework Matrix. We encouraged students to choose at least two activities during the term and do quality work in presenting these. Activities chosen relate to the Higher Order thinking strategies of Bloom's Taxonomy and Gardner's Multiple Intelligences. Students have chosen a range of activities to explore and demonstrate their learning. One student created a video about friendship and welcoming a new neighbour. Another student created a lego animation of one of the scenes from Rowan of Rin. Please visit his blog and leave an encouraging comment.

People who support us
After exploring some introductory resources on "Support", students considered people who support them at home, school, and in the wider community. They used Kidspiration to create a diagram of these connections and wrote about how these people support them. Students got off to a great start and their mind-maps were very detailed. They will have the chance to finish them off at the start of next term. We hope to add these to the student portfolios. Once students have finished, I will check if someone is willing for me to share their diagram here.

Self-evaluation
Next week we will be having three-way interviews. These involve the student, parent and teacher coming together to discuss the student's progress. We prefer for students to do most of the talking in these interviews. Students have been reflecting on their development in their "reflective journals" since the beginning of the year. Each week they write about their challenges, successes and plans. They used these reflections and their recent maths test to decide what they will share and discuss in their three-way interview. I haven't done three-way interviews with students this age before, so I am keen to see the result.

Rowan of Rin
I will not be posting about Rowan of Rin this week, but instead will include a final Rowan of Rin entry next week.

3rd Teaching K-6 Carnival

Welcome to the March edition of the Teaching K-6 Carnival. This month we don't have as many articles, but the ones we do have will really challenge you to stretch and grow as a teacher and learner.

Innovate - Beyond the Slate

Kelly Hines shares Why I Have the Best Job in the World posted at Keeping Kids First. She reminds us of what children are capable of when asked the right questions. Kelly posed the question "What can you do to change the world?" andgot an amazing response from her students.

Kakie presents How do children see & learn about race, color and culture? posted at Bur Bur & Friends: Community Park, saying, "As educators in this diverse world, it is important for us to understand how ALL children come to learn about color, race and culture in a way that is developmentally appropriate. This post is an excerpt from a book that does just that. It was written based on extensive research and studies and is a book all parents and educators should read."

Christina shares Present Movies posted at Early Childhood Teacher. Here she outlines a great video project she did with her students around the holiday season. She encourages students to form clues around a mystery present and as a result students develop oral language skills and thinking skills.

Also on the theme of holidays, Vera Lang presents Free St Patricks Day Crafts Templates: Prancing Leprechauns posted at Fine Craft Guild .com, saying, "This great project just costs 2 sheets of paper. ...and you'll have a REALLY CUTE Leprechaun Marionette! FREE template & tutorial. Pull the strings to make him dance to the rainbow's pot of gold. Fun & Easy Project for K-6 kids."

Brain Strain

In this edition we have two posts that will stretch your mind and help you to consider the mental workout required by teachers as students in their various roles. Both point out the importance of stretching beyond the comfort zone in order to make progress with learning.

Scott Barry Kaufman shares Learning about Learning: an Interview with Joshua Waitzkin posted at SharpBrains. This is a fascinating interview revealing what one can achieve when fully committed to learning. Enjoy a human brain in full display.

Graysen Walles presents Teaching - A Tough Career that makes a Difference posted at The Teachers Movement, saying, "Teaching is the greatest career on the planet, and it is also the most challenging career on the planet. Why?"

Look No Further

Susan Greenwald presents her book Two Plus Two is not Five at Teaching Addition, Subtraction, and Multiplication Facts. This resource can be used for systematically teaching children number facts.

Meaghan Montrose presents Effective Learning Strategies and Study Skills- Part 1 posted at TutorFi.com. This post is a set of study tips for students to use for completing homework.

Why not submit your post for the next carnival?

At this stage, editions of The Teaching K-6 Carnival will be posted monthly on the 7th. I will be collecting submissions throughout the month, looking in particular for posts that discuss and exemplify innovative teaching and the integration of technology in the K-6 classroom. I also invite a few "brain strains" to keep our minds alert and challenged. Please submit only articles of which you are the author and refrain from using this merely as a sales pitch.

If you have a relevant post that you would like to submit to the next edition of teaching k-6 carnival use our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Support this Carnival

If you enjoyed this edition of the carnival, you can support its continuation by sharing it with others. Link to us, add us to a tweet, stumble or digg us. Thanks!

Friday Fun - 6/3/09

Fun this week

The Egg
Our egg finished hatching and the alligator swam out into the container and kept on "growing". The girls took it home on Friday as we think it may have grown as big as it can.

3D Model of Rin
The same girls also made a lego model of Rin (from Rowan of Rin by Emily Rodda). They brought it in to share with us. They said I could include a photo on the blog. (I hope I've labeled it right!)

Readers' Theatre
This week's script was about a family walking across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. It included lots of facts about the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Prior to reading the script for the first time, I played a Flickr slideshow of images of Sydney Harbour Bridge and gave them some time (about 5 minutes) to talk about both the images and their own experiences of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Students were allocated to new groups and settled and sorted themselves quite quickly. We performed on Thursday - some in the school hall and some at the school amphitheatre. I made a video recording that we can look back on later to determine the progress students are making.

Integrity
Our Integrated Inquiry focus this week was on Integrity. This is a tricky concept for children (and many adults) to grasp. We broke it down to honesty and responsibility. I also tried to explain it as knowing the right thing to do and doing it, even if no one else will see. We read and discussed a story about a king who was looking for an heir to his throne. You can read a version of the story here. We watched the following video:

We read and reflected on a comic about a boy, George, who wanted a puppy and had to learn about responsibility. I tried to show the following video where adults discuss the topic of integrity, but only the sound would work.

Maths
We were working on four times tables this week and using the strategy of double it, double it again. For example, if you are trying to work out 4 x 3, you can double 3 which is 6, and double 6 which is 12. I found that I needed to use a number of strategies with the four times tables as some students were finding them quite difficult. We will use next week to review the strategies we've learnt so far for the 2, 5, 10, and 4 times tables.
We've also been trying some more difficult number patterns that include two elements. For example, in this pattern the rule is + 3, then -1:
6, 9, 8, 11, 10, 13, 12, 15, 14, 17, 16
We also did some pre-algebra work balancing equations. For examples, please check out this video clip.

My Classes and SuperClubsPlus
In the lab this week had all the passwords we need so we spent some more time becoming familiar with My Classes. Students were able to create their own book reviews for others to read and comment on. The reviews were pretty good for a first try, but I'd like to see a little more effort put into content and editing. Students are getting a little lazy in an attempt to get their ideas down quickly.
Students are incredibly engaged with SuperClubsPlus and it's giving them a chance to achieve many of the outcomes in our curriculum. Students are communicating with one another both online and in person in order to "get their stars" and set up their homepages. In their reflective journals, this week, many students commented on their challenges, successes and plans in terms of what they are achieving in SuperClubsPlus.

Thoughts on Homework

I am sick today. I have laryngitis so there is no point being at work. If I can't talk, I can't teach. If I can't teach, the kids play up. If the kids play up, I can't tell them not to. If I can't tell them not to, I find myself yelling hoarsely. If I yell hoarsely, I can't talk. If I can't talk...
So, I'm having a day off talking - hoping that my voice will heal miraculously with juice, vegemite on toast, water, fruit and lozengers.

Whilst lying in bed this morning, I caught up on what has been going on in my computer world. Loonyhiker from Successful Teaching had 'tweeted' about a Conversations Show at EdTechTalk, so I lay and listened to the show. It was all about pros and cons of homework - why we do it, what we expect, what we could do instead. I was really happy as I listened because I feel that my school is actually doing pretty well with this.

When I was in New York, the curriculum I taught had set homework for students every night - usually two sheets of Math homework. On top of this, I sent home a book for the children to read to their parents. And this was in KINDERGARTEN! Here in Australia, that is unheard of.

Homework is generally more relaxed here. In my current year 1 class, students are encouraged to change their readers daily. And that's it. However, we provide other opportunities for children to explore their learning further at home.

As part of our Jackie French Author Study, we started sending home a stuffed wombat with a diary. Students take turns to take the wombat home and write about what he got up to. They see this as a reward - not homework.

During our units of work, we encourage kids to think more about the topic at home. For example, at the moment I have children who bring in artifacts from the past and interview their grandparents for our The Way We Were unit. It's not 'set' homework that parents sign off on - just motivated students taking it further at home.

This week my class has been learning about postcards, so one girl asked her dad to send a postcard from the place he is visiting with business. Another boy went away for a week's holiday, and may send us a postcard while there.

Our P&C raised enough money to provide membership to Mathletics for all the students. It is an online Maths program with questions the students answer, levels they progress through, and live mental arithmetic competitions against other kids. This is one way that students can practice relevant maths at home at their own pace and level of difficulty. Teachers can monitor student activity and set tasks for students to complete. I often use examples from Mathletics during maths lessons, so students are familiar with them and can practice them more at home.

I'm really enjoying doing homework this way, and see benefits for the children's learning. The kids are taking responsibility for their learning, and are really motivated by the whole process. For me, there is no marking to have to do, but I can still see what the children are doing and achieving.

What are your thoughts on homework? Leave a comment below.