Category: Teaching

Planning ongoing.
by Kimliatach

 

 

Planning ongoing and N is planning ongoing on a Dubbo run independantly tomorrow.

I’ve finally got a more cohesive plan of what and how I will teach English to my mixed grade classroom. I went into this term with less planning than I have ever started a year before. Mostly as a function of a lack of handover from the previous year’s staff member but coupled with a change of system and a whole host of familiar things relabeled with new acronyms.  Anyway We are going to do narratives, persuasive texts in two forms and letter writing as our overarching English and reading themes.

With this in mind, I spent the morning giggling and crying my way through famous letters from history some familiar, most not, searching for excellent examples to use in reading and writing. My intent is for the class to compose real letters to their grandparents/elders and actually post them (republished post marking). I settled on a few examples, most notably the best cover letter ever and one of the great mic drops of history. but Ill need more than one a week through the term so the hunt continues. For narratives I’ll be using what is available of the Pixar/Khan Academy story writing course, supplemented by reading a class set of YA Fic fantasy novels in class.

I’m struggling to find really impressively good examples of the most hated format in writing, the five paragraph essay. But I’m not giving up yet and we will be making print ads as a second persuasive text type. For ads at least I have a mountain of very good examples.

L and I had a play with Dreamscope this morning. It has been a while and it has definitely improved and increased the number of filters since my last try. While impressed by the tech I haven’t yet managed to produce a really strikingly good piece. Inserting images into the post is being problematic this evening.

 

 

Art is a major part of a good maths curriculum.
We began using compasses on Thursday. Beginning Tuesday we will be using them and protractors to produce fraction diagrams and building from here.

 

Long weekend
by Kimliatach

Here in the western district school not only starts a full week later in term one, we also get a midterm break in week five of each term. That is a full four day weekend in the middle of each term! ostensibly to allow visits to medical professionals and other difficult to access businesses in regional centres. I’m making stuff.

Both boys were booked into and well enough to attend day care today. F and I have cleared up and L never got the bug for a blessing. So today I made some good progress in planning, primarily in writing in which I’ve got content for at least the next eight weeks nailed down.

I’ve also began painting detail on L’s costume and have only just finished the first pass with silver.

Still reaping the benefits of paying for ‘Alien Side Boob’ by Birmingham with genuine lol’s on Fridays, Mondays are generally amusing but not as humorously vitriolic as with today’s which included the lines:

“Like a Brylcreamed Huntsman spider you thought you’d drowned in bug spray suddenly coming at you from a dark corner, the Abdominator dashed out of the shadows ‘to unveil a sweeping conservative manifesto for the next federal election’. Like his last spell as PM it was all but satire-proof by reason of congenital hypercrazia.”

 

Book Tree
by Kimliatach

Up past my bedtime to post this having only just finished a couple of the tasks I set myself today.

The costume is built and all foam pieces have been given a plastidip undercoat. Time allowing through the week I’ll add some detail in acrylic before clear coating and calling build complete.

I also did a bit of carboard dumpster diving yesterday, for N’s photography, sheet mulching the ever recurring catheads in the garden and building and hanging a new classroom feature. My very own book tree. The leaves of this tree will be made from book report/reviews done by students throughout the year. It will make an interesting way to show participation in the premiers reading challenge later in the year as well.


Just finished putting the fiction leaf template together now. A variant for non fiction books will also be required. Students can earn in class XP by participating in such activities beyond the two I will require from everyone.

 

 

NCI Training
by Kimliatach

I spent today in Nonviolent Crisis Intervention training. Which was illuminating and built well on a number of other training types I have received over the years. I honestly wish that training had been a mandatory part of my teaching education as it would have helped manage a number of situations I have been in over the past few years better. I have never yet needed the physical defense training and honestly the hold breaks taught are inferior to Aikido anyway. The strategies for deescalation of crisis situations, avoiding trauma and supporting and being supported by other staff are definitely useful though.

I’m working tonight on the planning task sheet for a daily short speeches program. Normalising presentations and public speaking in the classroom. I have been using the first ten minutes of the day as a time for a morning meditation. Shortened to five minutes at the beginning of this week, but as I am still not getting full participation I plan to revisit that program later in the year. Starting late next week I will instead use the precious first ten minutes allowing two students to do a one minute presentation in the morning each day for the three weeks it will take for everyone to have a go. For the first round topic we have drawn countries from a hat.

 

 

 

 

 

Valentines
by Kimliatach

The Interview with his Excellency Sir Peter Cosgrove went well.

He provided some rich and interesting answers for the students to the questions I listed yesterday. He favours leadership strategies based on inclusion and positive reinforcement (surely unusual in the military). Of the many medals which he has been awarded, he has an emotional attachment to the Soldiers Medal earned at the end of the Vietnam War for bringing his troop home alive and of course his inclusion in the Order of Australia.

He proffers the meat pie as a possible national dish.

I am exhausted and have brought work home with me, even though it is valentines day. But a rom com and some canoodling is sounding mighty tempting about now.

Worth sharing: Humble bundle have put together and extraordinary pack for a ‘Freedom Bundle’ Including matched contributions, proceeds to a variety of charities fighting the Trump admin Muslim ban.

https://www.humblebundle.com/freedom

 

 

 

Put Your Hand Up
by Kimliatach

Tons of laminating, data entry, a spot of printing and some wrestling with IT systems to allow our class tele-interview with the Governor General Sir Peter Cosgrove tomorrow.

My approved list of questions for the GG, chosen by the class with some additions by me and N:

What should Australia’s national dish be?
 
How often do you correspond with the Queen? Do you have to visit England often to do so?
 
What are your favourite fiction, biography and nonfiction books? (Audience is 10-12 Years old)
 
What did you want to be when you grew up as a child? Did you achieve that goal or what changed?
 
As a leader and manager of people, what techniques and strategies do you use to quickly get the measure of people?
 
As a leader do you have favoured techniques for quickly fostering group cohesion/unity?
 
What is the most interesting or enjoyable part of your job as Governor General?
 
Of the many medals you have earned, are there any that carry a particular emotional significance to you?
 
What is your morning ritual?​

Falling asleep in my seat and I’ve a maths sheet yet to modify.

I’ll leave off with this:

Which I heard played on Double J over the weekend and have had it stuck in my head since. And this lovely account of the writing process for ‘Arrival‘.

 

Planning cont.
by Kimliatach

Less creatively productive than I might have hoped this weekend. I did finish all my marking, accomplish a significant chunk of planning and create a number of resources. But I did not; put my new tools to work, finish L’s costume, or paint anything.

I also failed to run or workout, which is simply not good enough. Working on the second draft of my philosophy of teaching statement for school planning documents this evening.

 

 

 

Week One
by Kimliatach

A long hot first week done. A big weekend of making ahead.


Heat, late bedtimes and marking have eaten a few nights in a row.

Today was swimming carnival day, fortunately for me I was on leftover duty at school not out in the thermonucular blaze of the midday sun. We wrote haiku eg.

Cobar summer heat

Sweat sticks my shirt to my back

The cold tap runs hot

We also made tessalation art, played tiddlywink golf and tried a out a Taylor Mali lesson called ‘Build a Better Metaphor’. My favourite result of this last was:

‘The huge watermelon of happiness’

 

 

Snake
by Kimliatach

In addition to a small terrarium I have yet to fill. I now have a large glass tank containing a roughly 1.3m long Southern Carpet Python called ‘Molasses’. He’s a beauty. Unfortunately I haven’t yet gotten a decent picture of him as he arrived in class at midday and meetings consumed my afternoon.

 


Witnessed a motley collection of children chasing a startled rabbit with every intention of catching it, killing it and taking it home for dinner. It got away, this time.

Marking yet to do.

A Good Day
by Kimliatach

Gone in a blur of first day activities, heat and paper. Week one, which is actually week three of the NSW school calendar begins.

This evening I moved and mucked out the hen house, modified the freshly 3dprinted Cardboard VR goggles to accommodate my phone and pulled a few hundred cat head seedlings out of the back yard, not even exaggerating. Everything else in our garden is half dead from the heat and alive only by effort of watering and yet every few days there is a fresh crop of catheads threatening to go to seed. The sheer quantity of seed in the soil and the germination and thriving growth given conditions is extraordinary. We are slowly sheet mulching the entire yard with cardboard and hay but in every nook and cranny, at every edge and in great swaths across every bit of open ground they reappear again and again. I am offended by their very existence as is N. All must die.

Also finally signed up to the local union for the frankly shocking cost of $550 for the year. I am proud to be a member of the federation but geez that stung.