A New Meme - 5 Things That Make My School Unique

I really enjoyed doing the "7 things" meme and reading everyone else's responses, so I decided to get the ball rolling with an educational meme about schools. I have found that each school I have worked in has a unique culture. Some of the things that create this culture are big, some are small and some you'd barely notice. Through this meme I thought we could reflect on those things that make our schools unique.

The general format for a meme is to 1) mention the person who tagged you 2) write your response 3) tag someone else. I want this meme to be flexible, so there is only one rule: "If the shoe doesn't fit, change the shoe". If you want to change the number of things, change it. If you want to change the wording, change it. If you don't want to tag anyone, don't. Take it and make it your own. (Feel free to pass this paragraph along)

Here are the 5 things that make my school unique:

1. Last year we got a brand new gymnasium for assemblies, PE lessons and any other purpose we dream up. The principal arranged for a fitness instructor to run sessions for teachers one afternoon a week at a minimal cost to teachers.

2. In the colder months we have a soup day once a week. Teachers who want to participate go on a roster and bring in a soup to share with the staff. Nothing beats hot, homemade soup on those cold wintery days.

3. Our Building Services Officer goes above and beyond normal janitorial tasks. If you want something special made - a display bookshelf for the library, tinkering station for kinder, or a presentation stand for the unveiling of a plaque - he will do it for nothing more than a "please" and "thank you". He drives a mini and is known to make the sound "mee-meep" as he walks past a classroom. The kids respond with a chorus of "mee-meeps" before getting back on with their work.

4. Our classrooms have very few walls. If you were to walk through my school you would see that it is VERY open plan. Some people worry about the noise level and high distractability, but I've been amazed by how well the students have adapted. It's a great set-up for teachers as it encourages teachers to team teach and allows for flexible groupings of students for differentiation.

5. We have a VERY dedicated staff. The teachers at my school give 110% and then still manage to give a little bit more when something special arises. Because everyone is learning, collaborating and challenging themselves, there are more programs and diverse opportunities for students as well. It's a very dynamic learning environment.

Now, because I want to give the meme a good chance to get started, I'm going to tag 10 people, but I hope that you don't all copy me! As I said earlier, do what fits for you. I tag:

Sharon Elin of Edutwist.com

Justine Driver of Digital Learning

Michael Fawcett of Room 9

Jenny She of Jenny's Learning Journey

Melanie Gibb of Moodle Girls' Blog

Kelly Hines of Keeping Kids First

Amanda Marrinan of 2M Gems

nsharoff of Just In Time Tech

Courtney Humphreys of Mrs. Humphreys' 3D Class

Tom Barrett of ICT in My Classroom

Tech Tips Tuesday

This Week's Tip: Take Note of the Beauty Around You

With all the buzz and hype of Web 2.0 - developing a PLN, connecting online, and finding open education resources - I sometimes find that I haven't managed to leave the house all day. I've been so busy doing 'stuff' online that I couldn't tell you whether there was a gentle breeze blowing, or whether the roses are blooming, or the colours in the sunset. Tonight I took my dog for a walk. I looked at the ants crawling up the bark on the trees. I noticed the sun setting over the mountain ranges. And it really is beautiful. So my tech tip this week is to take note of the beauty around you. Capture it, if you can, and share it.

Someone who does this particularly well is Tony Farley. Tony has created some marvellous videos of Beautiful Places in High Definition. The images are breathtaking and the narrative well thought out. Tony gives a description of the place and its history. He then gives you a moment of silence to experience the place for yourself. Tony finishes up with a poem carefully matched to the place he is visiting. Watching these videos is the next best thing to visiting the places in person. The quality of the filming is a visual delight. To view these for yourself, you can watch them streamed from the website or subscribe and download them through iTunes.

I plan to introduce these films to my students early in the school year. I will then get them thinking and talking about local nature areas within walking distance of the school. We will travel to these places, record the area through video, still photos and audio recordings. Students may choose to respond further through researching the area, and recording their thoughts or reflections in poetry. The images and narrative can then be combined through Photostory 3 or Movie Maker. To take it even further, I will help my students to develop a wikispace to share their reflections with others. We can open it up to other people in our school community who also enjoy this local natural environment.

Another suggestion (for those who cannot work with local natural environments) is to encourage students to connect Creative Commons pictures to poetry written by others or to create poems of their own to go with the images. I have done this with Kindergarten in the past - writing haiku poems about images from cut-up nature calendars. I've also done it with Year 3 by running a slideshow of images for students to select from and write a poem about.

I guess my main message this week is not to ignore the beautiful world we live in but rather to cherish and absorb it.

Beautiful Places - A Sample

Here is a sample of Tony Farley's work. You can see more at: http://www.onnetworks.com/videos/beautiful-places-in-hd/

Immersion

Immersion defined as concentration: complete attention; intense mental effort wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

Immersion is the state of consciousness where an immersant's awareness of physical self is diminished or lost by being surrounded in an engrossing total environment; often artificial. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immersion_(virtual_reality)

How do we engage students?

How do we create an engrossing environment?

How do we gage students' immersion in learning? Do we allow for individual differences in expression?

Credit to the New York Times who originally posted this video at: http://video.nytimes.com/video/2008/11/21/magazine/1194833565213/immersion.html

Good Teachers - Primary School

Today I am going to share a tribute to the teachers I had in Primary School and share the impact they had on me as a learner and now as a teacher.

Kindergarten - Mrs Sykes
My kindergarten teacher introduced me to the world of school and offered me the opportunities I needed to grow. My mum had been teaching me to read at home, and Mrs Sykes let me read Dr Seuss books to the class. She also realised my potential with spelling and allowed me to go to Year 1 in the mornings so that I could do spelling lessons with them.
As a result, I try to give my students opportunities to show their extra learning to the class and provide opportunities for student extension.

Year 1 - Mrs Slater
I loved Mrs Slater. She could play the piano like no one else I knew, and I loved the way she played Gobbolino the Witches Cat. I remember the day Mrs Slater paired me up to work with a little girl with no hair who had leukemia. After that day, we became the best of friends. When Mrs Slater left the school to have her babies I was very disappointed to say the least!
I try to include music throughout the year as it is one way that we can bond as a class. I also mix my kids up often so that they have a chance to work with different class members.

Year 2 and Year 3- Miss Boyle
Miss Boyle had a great sense of humour. When she sneezed she made a huge production of it and the whole class would roll backwards to pretend she'd blown us away. On April Fools Day she came to school and pretended she had no voice! She read poetry and jokes to us every day. She introduced us to poems such as The Triantiwontigongolope and Extremely Naughty Children (which we performed for the school concert). She had a great system for teaching handwriting, where you went at your own pace, but couldn't move on until you got it right (I had trouble with writing fs!) She got us writing and publishing our own books with cardboard covers and all - I was so proud of my first book and wanted to become a writer! Miss Boyle also gave us opportunities to be creative, teach each other and explore our own interests. She gave us some Free Time Days which we had to plan in advance - we could even do cooking if we wanted to!
As a teacher, I try to give my students choices when it comes to special activities. I'm nowhere near as funny as Miss Boyle, but I do try to infuse poetry into the year in one way or another.

Year 4 - Mr Nethercott
I've mentioned Mr Nethercott before. He is the teacher who opened up the world of computers to me. He was on the cutting edge of technology and offered these opportunities to us as we learnt. That year we did research projects on dinosaurs and were able to use computer resources to help us find the information. It was a lot of fun. He also introduced me to the idea of class meetings, where students get to have their say and share their ideas.
I try to introduce my students to computers and provide opportunities for them to explore and become familiar with new technologies. I use class meetings or circle time to allow students to have a voice.

Year 5 - Mr Davies
Mr Davies liked to be called Sir Davies. I used to love his spelling lessons because he would give a whole story behind the words and explain the vocabulary. We learnt about words like phosphorescence and haemorrhage. (You don't know how proud I am that I spelt those right without spell check!) Each night we practiced spelling and times tables and had our parents sign off on them. I loved the challenge of learning these things off by heart. Sir Davies also gave us a lot of choice in the tasks we completed for our Sea and Space units of work.
I share relevant stories from my own experiences with my class. I try to extend kids' vocabulary and spelling according to their needs.

Year 6 - Mrs Burns
Mrs Burns liked to be thought of as the Dragon Lady. On the first day she yelled at me for bending down to pick up my pen lid! (I think it was that whole 'Don't smile before Easter' logic.) At the end of the year she wrote each of us a poem about ourselves. Mine has been locked into my brain ever since and I reflect on it from time to time when needing encouragement. Mrs Burns was big on poetry and presentation. I enjoyed this year as I tried to make my work look beautiful and had opportunities to have a go writing poems of my own. I particularly enjoyed our unit of work on convicts where we each chose a convict name and history and adopted that character. We kept a diary in character as we learnt about the experiences of the convicts as they travelled to Australia and started their lives in this new country.
I try to write encouraging notes to my students and give them a personalised Christmas card at the end of they year. I try to find ways to really engage students in the unit of work, like the imaginary journey we took for our unit 'Are We There Yet?'

As you can see, my teachers have had a huge impact on me both as learner and now as teacher. I was surprised by just how much they continue to influence me today. I also realised how important each teacher's unique style was - if I'd only had the one teacher all the way through, I wouldn't have benefited from the variety of talents and interests each one had to offer.

How about you?

• Who was a teacher that had a significant impact on you as a learner or teacher?
• What is something you do in your teaching that you were taught as a child?
• In your opinion, what makes a good teacher?