Em Holliday

Having been so successful landing a job in Australia I figured I'd have no problem getting one here in Amercia. Boy was I wrong. The economy crashed, the USA started saving money through bigger class sizes (in other words they fired a bunch of teachers). In comes me with a puny 1 year's experience and hope. Well it's now November and my hope has gone. My determination is wavering and generally it's a bad mood. BUT there is always something. I've decided to get my Masters in Education From UW. In the meantime I'm going to get back into the curriculum. I've downnloaded the Power Standards from Washington School District and I'm going too expand my content knowledge. Reading through the Powers I recognized lots of words/terms/concepts I once knew but have forgotten. So I'm going to go through each power, dissect it, define it and provide examples for it. I'm working on Kindergarten Math, Reading and Writing first. This will take me a while but it will also get my curriculum brain back into gear.

So works sucks - subbing is not what I want to do but I'm dragging myself into the light and switching on my brain again after an 11 month hiatus. Lets see where it goes.

Last term we read "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory". Oh my goodness we had fun with it. Not only is it a great book but we have so many fun activities to go with it.

Dahl Dollars - at the end of Term 1 I was very concerned by the difficulties my students were having with money. Many could not even work out how to put together a dollar. I pondered over the holidays and came up with Dahl Dollars. In class we created money with Roald Dahl's head on the back and a picture from his books on the front. The money was in the same denominations as Australian Money. The children were then able to earn "Dahl Dollars" for good beahviour in the same way they earned stickers for lucky dip prizes in Term 1. 5c equalled 1 sticker. 50c (or 10 x 5c) won them a lucky dip prize.

So far so good but there was of course a twist. The children each had a 'purse' in their desk (a labelled plastic bag) in which they kept their coins. I would open the bank and they could exchange their 5 c coins for bigger coins suchs as 10c, 50c and so on. I made a big deal of students getting the 'big coins' as I was trying to encouarage them to exchange and learn how to put together a dollar from smaller coins. (They had to tell me what coin they could get.)

To encourage team work I also introduced a shopping list of more expensive prizes. They children could save up their money to buy 'free play', 'drama activities', 'pancakes' or the ultimate 'Chocolate surprise'. These were prizes that could be bought by some children who saved and the whole class benefitted from. The children loved counting their coins to see if they had enough money to get free play or even food. The first group of 8 children who bought the class free play I rewarded with certificates in assembly. It was a big deal because they were giving up a lucky dip prize to buy something for the whole class to enjoy. The 'Chocolate Surprise' was the ultimate goal and at $8.35 every child in the whole class gave up at least 1 or 2 lucky dip prizes to win it - and they did. All 20 children donated ( I helped them keep track) and they bought a chocolate surprise. (We made hideously sweet and sticky chocolate drinks with all the trimmings). They loved it so much that they've been asking to have Dahl Dollars back all term - I'm trying to think up a Christmas themed one now for 4th Term.

We also paper mache'd Wonka Words - We created big cardboard cutouts of our favourite words from the book and paper mache'd them into 3D and hung them from the roof. It was great, messy, fun.

You can also buy Roald Dahl magazines which are fantastic and the children couldn't get enough of them. I bought about 12 from the website http://www.magical-world.co.uk/ and they are such an amazing resource. I know of at least 1 child who is now a fortnightly subscriber to the mag.

So if you are doing Roald Dahl or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I hope you enjoy it as much as 2H did.

Well my first thought is how amazingly busy I've been, as you can tell since I haven't blogged in over 6 months! well I've certainly enjoyed most of my year so far. My love of the job is still strong and I still find those hours spent in the classroom with the children are completely great - except on the days you are ready to strangle them! :) Not that I ever would.

I've noticed how flexible I've become - I now spend less time planning fully structered activities as more often than not they are interupted in any case. Although, in saying that, when I do sit down and take the time to plan a creative and exciting series of lessons (usually in maths which is my fav subject) I get an immense amount of satisfaction from seeing a new and exciting lesson taking place.

Summative and formative assessment is my best friend. In the organised chaos which is a classroom so often you turn around at the end of the week and think "Did I actually teach anything at all? Are they learning or are we just having fun?" and that's where those comparison tests from the start and end of term are so invaluable. They tell you what you actually did teach - and yes, those things you didn't as well.

In my year group we give the children a comprehensive maths test in week 1 of term which covers all maths subject areas to be taught that term. The children sit that test again at the end of term. It is a very useful diagnostic tool and you can churn out great data and graphs to prove to 'the powers that be' what you have and have not achieved. It's also great for really focusing your teaching/instruction into weak areas and grouping children for support and extension.

Literacy is a bit more vague but BM reading levels are very informative and making notes on the children's habits as they read on those Running Record sheets helps remind you later of what to focus on. This is also great for when parents appear at your door 5 minutes before the morning bell and want info on how to help their child improve - I have a good memory but not that good!

Behaviour Management techniques - I've trialled many of these over the year and am still looking for new ones. I started out with the behaviour cards I blogged about earlier this year. Right now I am trying a new technique which was explained to me by an experienced teacher. Every time a child does a 'negative' to another person, such as a put down, they have to counter with 2 positives, one of which must be a sincere apology. We only started last week but it looks like it will work well. I think, though, the most important thing is consistency, I've noticed this term I've been a bit lax on the old discipline methods - using my voice more than anything, and discipline is suffering slightly because of it. My goal is to return to using the behaviour cards as the children responded well to those and I didn't have to use my voice so much.

Probation - is six months at my school and the report is a useful tool to help you channel the areas that perhaps you are not doing so well in, I found the management extremely supportive in helping me to improve those areas. Probation is not about being 'caught out' but having a chance for professional dialogue with people who see you work and identifying areas for improvement and being told that you are actually doing a good job too.

Organistation - is the most important thing in my classroom. I receive hundreds of emails per week not to mention paper work, marking, art for the walls, parent/teacher notes yada yada yada. Every week I try to 'zero' my desk by filing, actioning emails and notes as quickly as possible and keeping clutter down to the absolute bare minimum. I'm not, as yet, as accomplished as other teachers in this but I'm doing pretty well - not much goes missing.

Student supplies - There are so many things the students need every week and I'm forming the opinion that they need as much help as possible in keeping it all straight and not lost! I look after their computer log-ons, their white board pens, their art pens, their spare paper, their notes, their work sheets. Everything you can possibly have centralised and organised - do. Otherwise you spend all your time sorting through desks and bags hunting for things the children loose! My golden reply to "I can't find it" is "Have you searched your desk?" 9 times out of 10 it is in there.

There's heaps of other things I could say about being a first year teacher - it's a year of experience. Perhaps on another day. Just remember why you teach - because when everything else in your professional and private life is in chaos, the children still have boundless love and joy from being with you, as you do them.

Ah I can't express the joy I am getting from teaching my own class this year. I'm a first year out and haven't stopped smiling since term began. Well, I've enjoyed all the teaching anyway. Even if I've had a rotten week (like this one), arrived at school near tears, am tired, grumpy or simply not 'cheerful' I find that as soon as I am with the children I am smiling and enjoying myself all day.

I adore the kids in my class, they challenge me, annoy me and make me laugh and I'm sure it would be the same with any class. I enjoy talking to the parents and working with them and the school to sort through issues, espescially when I can tell parents of a new skill or improvement I've noticed in their child and see their happiness upon hearing about it. I even enjoy programming and then being able to tick off all those outcomes as I see them being achieved.  Sure, like any workplace there are ups and downs but on the whole teaching is a wonderful profession and I hope that I continue to enjoy it as much as I am right now.

I experienced one of those amazing light bulb moments, we all teach for, in the classroom today. We are learning about multiplication and one of my students made a discovery. (we had many but this was one of those enlightenment discoveries). She came to me and explained that she had discovered that "for 7x2 you can start at 7 then just count on 7 more and you get 14". A gem of mathematical discovery - discovering that you can 'count on' rather than starting at one every time. The maths world is her oyster!