It takes a village...

After almost 8 weeks of consistent effort with my students this year to improve their writing skills, I feel that today I have had a memorable moment!
My 27 Year 4 students are good little students and okay writers, but eight weeks ago, they were happy enough to give me a response that was "near enough" and not quite good enough.
Little things like capital letters, punctuation and editing for basic spelling were not a high priority for them. If they felt they had completed a task with a mediocre effort, they saw no point in refining their response, editing their work, or sometimes even putting a capital letter for their own name.
Turning them around to actually taking some pride in their work has not happened overnight but lots of practice and feedback, feedback and more feedback has had some effect on their writing habits.
Earlier in the year we watched this great short video about feedback:

We discussed the role of feedback in helping us to grow as learners and the students have had many opportunities to give and receive feedback and to reflect on what they learnt from the feedback.

This week we are looking at how we are part of a bigger, global community of learners, and my success with my young writers can be attributed to the work of other passionate and dedicated educators around the globe.
In particular, I can thank three great educators for my success as a classroom teacher this week:

Julia Skinner @100word from the 100 Word Challenge

Sue Wyatt @tasteach from the Student Blogging Challenge and

David Mitchell @DeputyMitchell from Quadblogging

Each of these people is passionate about making a difference to the learning of students not only in their own schools, but all over the world. They share their amazing talents and energies to assist other teachers like me to make a real difference in classrooms all over the globe.

This year is the first time I have been involved with the 100 Word Challenge after having seen it somewhere (probably Twitter) a while back. Each week Mrs Skinner posts a prompt and around 2000 students from around the globe respond to the prompt in 100 words. They post their responses to a class or student blog and then a band of volunteers provide specific and effective feedback to the students about their writing. The look on the faces of students as they discover that their assignment has been read and appreciated by someone from another part of the world, is priceless.

The Student Blogging Challenge was a (very) lucky find after I decided to try using Edublogs as my blogging platform for my class this year. The Student Blogging Challenge has been running since 2008 and through the weekly activities that are interesting and relevant to student bloggers. As a bonus, many activities align quite well with a lot of aspects from the Digital Technologies curriculum and ICT capability continuum from the Australian Curriculum. Participating in the challenge (I'm only four weeks in) has already helped to push me as an educator into trying new things or rediscovering old tricks. I know my students are benefiting from their involvement too. So far, we have focussed on protection of personal information, writing quality comments, and understanding creative commons and copyright issues. All of these are important issues for digital citizens and learning these things alongside hundreds of other students and teachers from around the world makes our learning even more exciting and purposeful.

Quadblogging is something I have been involved with before. I have just been assigned to a quad for this year and after sending out a first welcome email to our quadblogging buddy teachers and adding their blogs to our side panel so the students can easily access their blogs, I am eagerly anticipating getting started on a new adventure with classes from Sweden, US and UK.

What these three opportunities have in common is that they have given my students a real purpose for their learning and particularly for their writing. When you know that someone else (besides the teacher) is going to read your work, then there is suddenly a reason to make sure that what you have to say is both interesting and well punctuated. While they enjoy reading and commenting on their classmate's work, receiving a comment from a stranger who has taken time out of their day to say how much they have enjoyed what they have to share is so much more special.

So today, we shared our thoughts on how we can save water after World Water Day 2015 and as I approved the comments a tear came to my eye as I noticed how far they have come as a class with taking pride in their work and editing for punctuation and basic spelling. While their sentences are still not perfect (and I have some concerns for the hygiene of the child who has pledged to have 40 second showers in a bid to save water) I can see that all the hard work is paying off. (If you have time to drop by the class blog and leave a comment - they really love comments)

Thank you to those inspiring educators who inspire me and challenge me to push my students to new heights! 

The 100 Word Challenge

This week I tried the 100WC with my students for the first time.
If you have never heard of the 100 Word Challenge, then you can find out more about how to enter on their website: 100wc.net
Basically, once a week, some amazingly committed and enthusiastic educator posts a writing prompt and then children from all over the world write 100 words inspired by the prompt and posts it to a class or student blog.
The great thing about the 100WC is that the students can become part of a global community of young writers who are all working together to get better at their craft.
A team of dedicated parents and teachers (known as Team 100WC) volunteer to read and comment on the students' work. Students who enter are also encouraged to read other entries and to comment on other people's work.
At the end of the week a select few entries are chosen to be the "showcase entries" for the week. This gives students something to aim for, but also an easy way to identify some entries that are good examples of writing.
It was only our first round, but I was so excited by the way that my class were so motivated to write, read, reflect, write, read and write as they posted their own work and commented on their classmates and read the comments they received.
We did have some discussion about comments the week before.
I used the T.H.I.N.K. acronym to introduce a discussion about what might be appropriate or inappropriate in an online discussion. Since some of my kids have appeared to have confused blog comments with "chat", we really discussed the "helpful" and "necessary" components. I added to our blog expectations that the comments needed to be on topic, as opposed to random chit-chat.

We also watched one of my good-ole-favrits: Mrs Yollis' Guide to Writing Quality Comments.

This week as part of our focus on the qualities of a good learner, we looked at the role of feedback in helping us to reflect on our work so that we can improve.
I can never get sick of the video about Austin's Butterfly on the effectiveness of good feedback, and any student or teacher I have watched it with has enjoyed it as much as I have. It really helps students to visualise how learning can improve when they receive and reflect on good feedback.

After discussing the role of feedback and watching this video, the students were excited about the prospect of getting feedback on their own writing, and the quality of the feedback they gave to each other was much better than the usual "Good job" or "Nice story" because they had an understanding of what good feedback might look like.
I would like to get the students to read the feedback they received from me, their peers, parents and other readers from around the globe to set themselves a personal goal for their writing that they can work on for the rest of this term.
If you would like to give them some more feedback, I am sure they would love for you to read and comment on their work. Our 100 Word Challenges can be found at: http://mrsbathamsclass.edublogs.org/
We will continue to work on writing comments and feedback throughout the year.
Yesterday I found another good website that also promotes writing using peer feedback: http://www.writeabout.com/
I particularly like their guides to writing comments and self and peer review.
They have a great little poster that I might add to my growing collection of "tech help" on my back wall:

WriteAbout have also produced a short, student and parent friendly guide to writing comments which elaborates on the messages in this poster.

It is early days yet with our writing, but if we can maintain our enthusiasm, the 100 Word Challenge seems to be a very useful resource for improving student writing!

Our Marvellous Toys

To assess the students listening skills this week we listened to an old song about a marvellous toy by Peter, Paul and Mary.

The first time we listened to the song, the students sat on the carpet with their eyes closed and concentrated hard on listening for key details that told them what it looked like and what it did. (Listening for key details is one of the English skills identified for Year 2 students in the Australian Curriculum.)

After that, they returned to their desks and we listened to the song again, this time pausing it after each verse and chorus so they could write down what they had heard in a concept map.

The third time they listened I let them draw what they thought it looked like based on what they had heard in the song.

While they were drawing I walked around and checked their work quickly to identify who had heard particular details. Fortunately I have a student teacher at the moment so she was able to scribe for my student who wasn't able to record his own ideas.

I explained to the children that the toy is imaginary so there is no "right" answer but we discussed the features it needed to have to be the toy from the song.
Finally we watched an animated version on YouTube and also read a book about the same marvellous toy the next day. The children really loved the song.

Here are our pictures of the marvellous toy:

We have started a written task as a follow up as well. Once they have finished I will have them post their descriptions on our class blog.

This was an enjoyable way to quickly assess their listening skills and to discuss different artists' impressions.

Winding up our History mini-unit

For the past few weeks, we have been engaged with the new History content from the Australian Curriculum for Year 2.
Our focus has been on our local War Memorial, as a site of cultural significance, and this has led us into exploration of Anzac Day and its associated symbols.
I have enjoyed the opportunity to make the history component of our learning more engaging for the students through a variety of craft activities.
I have written posts about these over the past few weeks during my planning, but I wanted to show some of the finished products in case they might be of use to others in the future.
Here is an example of the finished slouch hat:

The template for the slouch hat activity is available through my TpT store.
We also baked Anzac biscuits. This activity linked to History, Science and English.

One of my favourite activities (because it was both simple and fun) was our poppy potato prints. We ended up doing these in several steps. First we painted a blue wash and sprinkled it with a pinch of salt. The salt soaks up some of the moisture so it leaves patterns that look like clouds in the blue sky, and added a bit of interest to the activity. Next, we used a dry brush technique to make some green stems. We didn't try to match the stems one-to-one with the flowers because we were going for the "field" effect. Thirdly, we printed some bright red poppies with the potatoes. Once they were dry, we used dabs of glue to attach some real poppy seeds to the flower centres.

It is a very simple piece but they look effective as a frieze along one wall of my classroom and it gave the students an opportunity to experiment with a few different techniques.
I have a freebie poem activity about poppies that goes nicely with this idea.
For assessment, the students used an iPad app, SonicPics, to sequence some photos of the memorial and record some thoughts about how it has changed over time.
Next week we have two more simple art activities planned to finish up our War Memorial mini-unit, as well as a concept map as an assessment piece.
The first art activity is a simple watercolour rosemary using a cotton tip as a brush:

And the second will be a photo montage with crayon and watercolour based on the artwork of Patricia Mullins in the book, Only a Donkey.

An Anzac Poem

One of the parents from my class happens to also teach Year 2 and they are doing a very similar unit to us at the moment. (You've got to love this Australian Curriculum - it makes collaboration easier!)
She was kind enough to share some of her planning ideas with me, and this included a reference to an Anzac Day Poem.
I googled it and found the poem here.
Here is the poem:
Why are they selling poppies, Mummy?
Selling poppies in town today.
The poppies, child, are flowers of love.
For the men who marched away.
But why have they chosen a poppy, Mummy?
Why not a beautiful rose?
Because my child, men fought and died

In the fields where the poppies grow.
But why are the poppies so red, Mummy?
Why are the poppies so red?
Red is the colour of blood, my child.
The blood that our soldiers shed.
The heart of the poppy is black, Mummy.
Why does it have to be black?
Black, my child, is the symbol of grief.
For the men who never came back.
But why, Mummy are you crying so?
Your tears are giving you pain.
My tears are my fears for you my child.
For the world is forgetting again.
Author Unknown
I love the simplicity of this poem - perfect for my Year 2s and it will go well with my poppy potato prints that I plan to do early next week.

I immediately decided I needed some comprehension questions to go with it so I whipped up a worksheet with some NAPLAN style multiple choice questions just for good measure.
You can download it for free from my TPT store.
Oh, and we made our slouch hats last week. They look great!

Anzac Biscuit Science and English

I love a good science experiment and a chance to get messy, so I am cooking up a storm this week! Well, cooking up a batch of Anzac Biscuits, actually.
I have developed a series of ideas around the idea of Anzac Biscuits that will tie in nicely with our History unit on the Anzac Memorial.
I have linked the lessons to the Australian Curriculum for both Science and English for Year 2, but the activities could be useful to anyone who wants to do some science and writing about cooking.
The first part of the lesson (or series of lessons really) is the Science. Our Science concept this term from the Year 2 Australian Curriculum is: Different materials can be combined, including by mixing, for a particular purpose (ACSSU031)
The experiment question looks at the changing size of the biscuits as they cook, so it really addresses the Science Inquiry Skills - making predictions, participating in guided investigations, measuring, comparing observations etc.

Download the science experiment for free at my TPT store.
After the science and cooking part, I will look at the recipe itself. I have made a file with a number of resources in it to support these activities.

You can find it at my TPT store also.
The students will complete a cloze activity for the procedure text which draws attention to the verbs used in the text. This highlights they way that most of the instructions begin with the verb. The words are written in the right order down the bottom of the page. It is not really designed for a comprehension test - more a lesson on procedures.
The next page is a comprehension page (NAPLAN style multiple choice - just so they have been exposed to this style of question) and then a reflective activity on the cooking which looks at adjectives.
I plan to do a joint construction of a recount of the cooking and we will post it on our class blog. I have made a sheet in case someone wants to do individual written recounts. Or maybe I will change my mind between now and then, and at least I will be prepared.
Finally, I will compare the two different texts - the procedure and the recount. I have made an Anzac cookie Venn diagram worksheet which we will probably do in small groups during literacy blocks.

Greetings and Salutations!

Howdy! Hi! Hello! G'Day!

How many ways can we say hello?

Inspired by Chapter 5 in Charlotte Web by E.B. White, I have created a simple PowerPoint presentation with various greetings and a Charlotte's Web theme.

The Australian Curriculum for English for Year 2 requires that students

understand that language varies when people take on different roles in social and classroom interactions and how the use of key interpersonal language resources varies depending on context.

This simple presentation that you can download for free can be adapted to suit your own needs and to add in greetings that your children might either use or have heard.

The slides can be used on a whiteboard projector to promote discussion about the different greetings that are used in different situations.
This is a great opportunity to practise manners and talk about the different expectations in various contexts and audiences.

The slides could be printed one to a page and laminated for a classroom bulletin board display, or they could be printed with several to a page to make small cards for activities.

An interesting activity would be to do a Silent Card Shuffle to sort the greetings from casual to formal.

Students could brainstorm more greetings and easily add more slides to the set.

Let me know how you would use these slides in your classroom!

Exploring Charlotte's Web

I love, love, love this book! I can't wait to read Charlotte's Web to my kids next term!
We are doing a local history study with a focus on the annual show that is held at the quaint, country-style showgrounds in our area.
To get us in the mood for going to the show, I am going to read Charlotte's Web to my class.
Charlotte's Web is the perfect opportunity for me to help my students develop a little more "staying power" when sitting on the carpet - one of my goals for them next term.
Charlotte's Web also lends itself to many great literacy activities!
I am busily reading the novel (again) and trying to come up with innovative and engaging activities to inspire and motivate my children.
I am developing a series of activities for people who want to use Charlotte's Web to address English core learning outcomes. We are implementing the new Australian Curriculum so I am using these standards as a guide, but Charlotte's Web is such a universal favourite that I am sure the activities will be useful for many teachers.
I am keen to develop activities that are more than just worksheets. No more "death by blackline master!"
The activities for the first chapter of Charlotte's Web are discussion, drama, cooperative work, display making etc.

I plan to include vocabulary words and comprehension questions for every chapter but then have a unique focus for each chapter as well.
Since in the first chapter, Fern is pleading with her father to spare the piglet's life, I thought this was the perfect opportunity to play around with persuasive texts. It is still a whole year until my students have to face the dreaded NAPLAN test but this is a great opportunity to get them started in thinking about persuasive texts. Developing comprehension skills never hurt anyone either!
The other key focus in this chapter is speaking verbs. In the English curriculum for Year 2, students need to look at how words are used to show gradation of feelings. E.B. White uses some great "saying verbs" in chapter one to describe the way that poor Fern is pleading with her father!
Download the Chapter 1 Activities for Exploring Charlotte's Web free!
Please, please, please let me know what you think. I would like to be developing activities that people find useful so feedback and suggestions are most welcome.
I hope you and your students love Charlotte's Web as much as I do!

Assessing Calendar Work

In order to see who meets the standards for the Year 2 Australian Curriculum for Mathematics, I have put together a Calendar Quiz for students to complete.

To celebrate the end of this work on calendars, students will work with a partner to create a page for our class calendar. We will use this calendar in our room this year and by writing some of our favourite memories on it, it will become a memento of our journey together.
You can download a free template for a blank calendar page at my TPT store.

The following table shows how this can link to the Australian Curriculum in Year 2 for Mathematics and English.

Literacy and Numeracy Rotations

I have launched into literacy and numeracy rotations for an hour a day. I do Literacy for an hour three times a week and Maths for an hour on the other two days. Obviously there are plenty of other whole class lessons, games and activities, but this is the time for direct instruction and ongoing assessment. I was going to wait until I had a bit more response from parent volunteers but I thought since I have such a variety of learners that I may as well get the routines ironed out as soon as possible.
I have only had the rotations for two days so far, but I am really pleased with this way of teaching and I feel much more effective than when I try to lock-step the whole class through a learning episode.
I read this scholastic site on Math Workshops a few weeks ago and I have implemented some of these ideas, particularly the order in which I see the students. I am really pleased with the logic behind the rotations and I think it is working.
Basically, the class is split into three main groups. (When I get more help I will try to increase the number of groups so they are smaller and they are getting through more work). I work with the lowest group first and basically go through the workbook activity, giving a bit more instruction and teaching explanation along the way. It is a good chance to work with hands on materials and really see that these students are understanding the concepts. During this time the middle group is working on a game or using the iPads on a related activity and the top group are doing the workbook independently. In the second rotation, I work with the middle group and do some small group teaching and a basic introduction to the workbook activity to get them started. The lowest group go straight on to completing the workbook activity that they started with me, and the top group play a game to consolidate the skill they just practised in the workbook.
In the final rotation I check the work done by the top group to ensure they understand it and then do a challenge or extension lesson with them. The lowest group are ready to play the game and the middle group get a chance to finish the workbook activity.

So far it is working well (after two whole days). I would love to differentiate the games a little more and make sure that the independent groups are working effectively but I'm sure this will come as we get used to the routine.

I am keeping the same groups for this week to make it simpler for me (and the kids of course) but once I learn more about the Daily 5 and CAFE system I would like to make the groups more flexible.

How do you manage rotations?