The Truman Show - Character Analysis

I can't believe it is the end of a term already - this one flew by! I am disappointed in myself for neglecting my blog so much over the past term but am chalking it up to being in a new school and spending more time getting adjusted and finding my feet. So to end the term, I would love to share some of our character analysis posters with you. 

I was pretty proud of how lovely and colourful our display turned out. Students worked in a cooperative group structure to complete this task in which they needed to identify the personality, appearance, feelings/emotions, actions and famous last words of one of the characters from the film. They then took turns in presenting their posters to the class for the students to complete their character analysis chart learning about all characters in the film.

One Year

It's been one year since I created this blog and I am overwhelmed with all the support and encouragement I've received in the last 365 days. I've posted over 100 times... an average of 1 post per 3 to 4 days which I'm quite proud of. I've also had over 26, 000 page views which is so much more than I ever expected. 

Thank you so much for a wonderful year and I look forward to another amazing year of posting on new secondary school ideas!!! :)

The Truman Show - Film Analysis

Our Year 8 English classes are studying "The Truman Show" for their film analysis unit. I actually love this movie which makes it even more exciting to teach. I think that film analysis units are great as students are exposed to a different form of expression. Students are often more engaged with films as it appeals to different types of learners also. 

Now, to "The Truman Show". Since this is a short unit, I am only spending one session on themes and one session on characters. This will hopefully lead into our assessment task quite well, as I am hoping to really scaffold that so the students can achieve success with it. Our unit starts with students viewing the film and then completing a series of comprehension questions while viewing to deepen their understanding. Although a lot of the themes and concepts in the film are quite easy for me to grasp as an adult, I feel that some of them need to be explained for the students to actually understand what is happening. Sometimes the little gestures or comments have deep meaning and thus need to be discussed. 

For our character session, we are going to do a character analysis in a jigsaw activity and then students will use that information to create a Facebook profile for one of the main characters of the film (this will be in another post once we complete this task). Students will work in groups to complete a character analysis for one character and then we will present and share to complete our character analysis chart. I hope this activity runs well and will post about it afterwards too.

New Fonts :)

I started to create some activities for my students this week and realised that all my fancy fonts had disappeared when my computer was reloaded. So I took some time this morning findings some cool fonts because they make worksheets all that much better looking and awesome! Who wants to do work on a boring looking worksheet... right? RIGHT!

It takes no time at all to download new fonts and a lot of them are free. Seriously, all you have to do is press "install". So here are some wonderful links to free and fancy fonts that are great :) :

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Font-Buffet-Free-Collection-of-19-Fonts-Commercial-Use-728673

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Fonts-by-The-Learning-Tree-392092

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Fonts-for-Personal-and-Commercial-Use-Wizard-of-Boz-Starter-Set-426733

Those are just a few links but I am sure there are many more!!!

G.R.I.N - Getting Ready in Numeracy

One of my tasks over the past few weeks has been to design a new literacy and numeracy support program for my school. I have done heaps of research on programs currently being used in Victorian schools and actually got the opportunity to go and see some of these programs in action.

Today I want to talk about GRIN, also known as Getting Ready in Numeracy, a program designed by Peter Sullivan and Sue Gunningham. The GRIN model seems to have some positive successes in the different schools I have been in contact with. The model follows a format in which students are withdrawn for 15 minute sessions prior to their numeracy lesson. The focus of these sessions is on the language of mathematics. Students work on reviewing what they have learnt in their maths classes and then the GRIN tutor quickly addresses some of the concepts the students will be learning that day in their math classes. This in turn gives students greater confidence in their maths classes as they will already have heard some of the terms and understand the concepts the teacher is teaching. 

More information on the GRIN program can be found here: http://education.monash.edu.au/research/projects/grin/elements.html

I would love to hear some feedback on what other schools are doing for their literacy and numeracy support programs! This is just one of many that are out there achieving success. Essentially, my goal is to make sure that these students become more confident in their classes and are able to come out with the basic fundamentals that will help them achieve success. 

"My Place" for Teaching Year 9 Humanities

It is time for me to start sharing some wonderful activities I have run during the past few weeks. In the last three weeks, I have taught Year 9 Humanities, Year 8 Maths, Year 8 English and Year 7 English. It has been a learning curve but also a great way for me to use some old activities and strategies and refine them for a different age group. 

Last week, I ran an activity with my Year 9 Humanities class based upon the book "My Place" by Nadia Wheatley and Donna Rawlins. I have used this book before at the primary level when teaching history and was so glad that I was able to use it again. This book, if you haven't read it, is absolutely wonderful and can be used for practically teaching anything! It focuses on a house and tracks the owners of the house on a ten year basis. It starts in 1988 and each new page is ten years prior and is written by a person living in that house. It goes all the way back to 1788 (the year that Australia was settled). 

The Year 9 Humanities class I was teaching is working on a unit called "Sunbury vs. City" where students look at the community they live in and how they can make a difference. This is a cross between history, geography and civics and citizenship. For this activity, we looked at the skills of creating a timeline as well as investigating family history and what changes and remains constant over time. Students worked in pairs and were given one time period to investigate from the book. They needed to identify who lived in the house during that time period, what significant events were occuring to both the family living there and in the time period, and what locations were significant for the person living in the house (each time period has a map of the local community). Students then shared their findings with the class and we created a massive timeline across the room with the information. We were then able to identify when families moved out of the house, what stayed the same with the house, what stayed the same and changed with the neighbourhood. 

It was such an enriching and amazing activity as you could really see students making so many connections; between the time periods and the families, with the time period and historical events (e.g. WWI, Vietnam, Great Depression, immigration). I highly recommend that all teachers get themselves a copy of this book. It is full of colour and imagination and can be used to for all sorts of activities and to teach and lead some wonderful discussions. It is exciting to find such a fantastic book that can be used across the academic levels!

10 Days - 10 Realisations

It have been two weeks of working at my new school so I decided to write a reflective post about the past two weeks. Below are some things that I have enjoyed, found interesting, or compared with other schools I have worked at:

1. Year 7 students are really young: I had a little bit of first day nerves and as soon as I saw the students, my nerves went away as I realised that most of the students I would be teaching are still kids. Thus, I could use quite a bit of my primary teaching skills with the middle year classes.

2. Year 9 students are the same in Canada and Australia: Since Year 9 is the first year of high school in Canada, students come in with a mix of attitude and apprehension (both excited to be in high school, but also go back to being the little fish after a year of being the top dogs). I guess I thought that year 9 students in Australia wouldn't have the same issues. Well, I have found that regardless of it is your first year in high school or not, Year 9 students are the same! It must be an age thing. It can sometimes be tricky to teach this year level as you are dealing with students moving from a pre-teen to teenager stage. So I am bound to use my charm and skills to work with my year 9's and get them on board!

3. Relationships, relationships, relationships: From when I first started teaching to now, one of the most important lessons I have learnt is that teaching is all about relationships. Whether it is a primary school class or high school class, students need to be able to trust their teacher and feel comfortable in their classes. My first week in the new school was tough as I had gone from knowing all the students in my year level (even those I didn't teach) and having such a strong presence with them, to starting fresh. I guess I wasn't prepared for that feeling and the huge realisation that I now need to build new relationships with my new students. Week two was much better as I became more familiar to the students and we have started to build an excellent working relationship. Some students who gave me a tough time in week one have become my biggest fans in week 2.

4. Time: High school teachers have less contact time and more planning time. I cannot stress how important it is for teachers to adequate time to plan and organise their classes. With this planning time, teachers are able to really focus on their lessons and create more engaging and exciting lessons for their students.

5. My height: Since I am teaching high school students now, I feel even more shorter than I did teaching primary school. I just need to maintain my presence in the classroom and everything will be alright!

6. Team teaching/planning: One thing I loved about teaching in a primary school was working so closely with my team to plan and teach lessons. In high school, the ability to work with other teachers teaching the same classes is far less. Perhaps this will be my challenge, to be able to work with other teaching the same courses to maintain consistency and to have professional dialogue and sharing of ideas to strengthen our course.

7. Support for Students: My new school (from what I have seen) has a great team of support staff that are there to work with students in addition to teachers. It is so important to have other staff members at the school that are able to assist students in both their academic and social success. Sometimes as teachers, it is difficult to give students the one-on-one attention that many need, so having a welath of support workers is wonderful to ensure that students are enjoying their schooling.

8. A library/resource centre: Oh how I love the library! Books, books, such wonderful things! In two weeks, I have read such a large number of novels for my classes.

9. Canteens: Canteen food is canteen food...it doesn't matter where you are! (canteen = cafeteria for my North American friends)

10: I love teaching!: It is a little strange how excited I get about planning new lessons and finding cool ideas and strategies for teaching new skills. I absolutely love it, perhaps a little too much. Prime example: I am beginning my literacy and numeracy intervention program next week and needed to create my own timetable. Well I created three different ones, just because I didn't know which one I thought would be best for the students. Yup, that's me! Although teaching can get the best of you at times, I don't know what else I would rather do :)

Some Very Big News...

As some of you may have noticed, I haven't been posting in a while. The end of Term 2 was a very busy time with report cards and parent-teacher interviews but I also had something else my mind was focusing on...securing a new job!

Yes, that's right folks, I have made the big decision to change schools and positions. As of July 15th (the beginning of Term 3), I will be starting a new position at a high school! So that means that I am making the big transition from primary to secondary and I am so excited about this move. My teaching methods are actually secondary and I did teach years 10 -12 in Canada. I now will be given the opportunity to teach years 7-9 in Australia and perhaps even higher next year. Not only will I be working in a high school again, I also have been put in charge of designing and organising a literacy and numeracy intervention program for my new school, and I will be working on this with one of my previous teaching mentors. So, needless to say, I have been busy planning and coming up with brilliant ideas for my new role. 

What does this mean for my blog? Well, it might be taking a new direction in regards to the type of posts and activities I will be sharing. But I do promise to try my best with blogging and sharing new strategies and lessons that can be modified and adapted to different year levels. As you can imagine, I may be a little busy as I begin my new role, but I will try to update you on how it's going and what I am working on with my new classes.

Hope everyone in Australia has a great term break and all my American and Canadian followers have a great summer break!!!

Renaming Whole Numbers

When teaching place value, I believe that it is truly important that students are able to rename a number. If they can do that, it shows the students' understanding of the number. 

Here is what I mean by renaming. My example number is 253. 

Students should be able to identify that 253 can be represented as:

253 ones

2 hundreds 5 tens 3 ones
2 hundreds 53 ones

25 tens 3 ones

As a challenge for my upper primary students, I asked them to rename whole numbers of six and seven digits. I organised this activity as a challenge between groups; the group that was able to rename the number in most amount of ways won. One point was allocated for every correct renaming of their numbers. 

Although at first, it was a bit of a struggle, once groups got into it, they really impressed me with their skills. I also was able to see that some students need to work on their spelling on larger numbers. This was a great activity though to truly identify which students full understood place value.

Our Values and 5 Star Work

Although this is an old item, it is something that we do at the beginning of every school year and that I believe I will continue to do with every class that I have. I think that in order to establish routine and expectations in a class, it is important to set out the values that are determined by the students themselves.

Here are the values we created this year: 

We value positivity, acceptance, co-operation, respect, honesty and organisation.

We also create a criteria for what qualifies as five star work in maths, reading, writing, handwriting and independent work. These are posted in the classroom and are referred to while students on working on activities in all subject areas. Before students can submit work for marking, they need to check that they have created five star work. 

Q

Comparing and Contrasting Text

Like I mentioned previously, I really wanted to start finding great texts to use for teaching different skills in reading. In my post about Cause and Effect, I used some texts that worked really well. 

 

For teaching comparing and contrasting, I absolutely love the book "Mirror" by Jeannie Baker. It is a lovely book of comparisons between an Australian family and one in Morocco. The book is designed so you can see the pictures and story simultaneously. It also opens "left to right" as English books do, for the Australia story, and then opens"right to left" so you read in Arabic. 

It truly highlights both difference and similarities between families living in these two different countries and cultures. An absolutely wonderful story to use for comparing and contrasting and so many activities that can follow-up with it. 

Follow-up: Venn diagram, T-chart, self-to-text connections, etc. etc.

\

This website has a great blurb about the text and also some great activities: http://www.literacyandnumeracy.gov.au/mirror

Shopping in Morocco

Shopping in Australia

Comparing and Contrasting

I begin my unit on comparing and contrasting in reading on Monday. Below is my "Comparing and Contrasting" anchor chart. Fingers crossed that all my activities will work. I will post a follow-up with more comparing and contrasting ideas :) 

Place Value Poster

This idea is from Runde's Room's Interactive Maths Journals. When teaching whole number place value, I created a place value columns poster based on Runde's idea. The slight difference is that I added the place value houses as I believe it is an added teaching tool for place value.

I used this poster when working with small groups to help them read and recognise whole numbers up to six digits. My students eventually made their own posters and we were able to have small competitions with our posters. In small groups, I would read a number to the students and they had to create the number with their number pullouts on their poster. Other teachers in my area have used the place value posters in their maths class as well with great success. It is an easy poster to create and you are able to model so much with it. Definitely worth the time creating it!

Decimal Poem

http://pinterest.com/pin/169236898469148083/

I found this on Pinterest and loved it. It is definitely worth sharing.While teaching decimal place value, students often get confused with how to read decimals. Although I teach using place value columns and houses, sometimes it just doesn't stick. So, I found this poem, and even though song is more of a lower primary thing, it worked well for my kids in upper primary.

I highly recommend using this when teaching decimal place value. Whenever a student would read a number incorrectly, I would just point to the poem and students were able to self-correct. 

An excellent tool!!!

Texts for Teaching Cause and Effect

Every time I teach a new strategy/topic in reading, I try to find texts that work directly with that topic to use in my whole class focus. With the help of Pinterest, I was able to find a few books by an author called Laura Numeroff that related directly to cause and effect.

I only used "If You Give a Dog a Donut" with my class but read both the other two and they are as good to use. These are great texts to created cause and effect chains about as for every cause there is an effect and that effect then becomes a cause for another effect (I know that sounds confusing, just read the books and you'll understand!). I will definitely use these books again when teaching cause and effect, and they can be used for students at all age levels too! Enjoy! :)

Cause and Effect Anchor Chart

As our school uses a fluid grouping structure, my reading class is full of PSD (funded) students, EAL students and low academically achieving students. It is sometimes a struggle to get these students motivated and interested in the class activities so I am constantly trying to find new ways to approach different topics. I have always found "cause and effect" an easy topic to teach in reading and the one that most students understand right away. This year, it was a little harder for me to get through to the students. I don't want to overload them with cause and effect and I want them to also enjoy their reading sessions. I have found numerous activities, games and online games on the internet which helped out during this unit. Above, is my anchor chart for cause and effect. Although it may not seem at a grade 5 level, it is targeted to the needs of my students with examples that are easy to read and understand.

Pirate Place Value

I found this wonderful and creative activity pack called Pirate Place Value (from Frogs and Cupcakes) and absolutely had to use it. My maths class loves to do activities and so I love making maths a "students-don't-think-they-are-learning-when-they-really-are" experience. Thus, rather than just having students do repetitious worksheets, I often use either activities or hands on learning for my lessons.

When learning/teaching place value, students should be able to represent a number in standard, expanded and word form. Here is a cute and fun activity for students to represent a number in all three ways. 

Build a Number

This is a great activity to test students knowledge of place value and decimal numbers. Although a few of my students struggled with this activity, many others were able to "step up" to the challenge and took their time to work out each problem.

A really good way to have students manipulate numbers and use the same digits to create decimals and whole numbers. I will definitely use this again!

Woolworth's Teaching Decimals

At one of the EAL (English as an Additional Language) professional development workshops I attended last year, the speaker discussed how useful "junk mail" could be for teaching maths. She had us look at a flyer for a local grocery store and come up with different ways of how it could be used in our maths class. Going on this trend, I decided to use a Woolworth's flyer to create an application activity for decimal place value, addition and subtraction. 

 

I can always tell the success of a lesson based on the engagement level of the students in my class and throughout this activity, all students had their heads down and were working diligently with their partners. First, they were asked to find the prices of ten different items in the flyer. Next, they had to organise the items from the most expensive (number with the greatest value) to the least expensive (number with the lowest value). The third thing students had to do was purchase as many of the items as they could with a $10 budget. This required students to both add decimals to create a total and subtract decimals to see how much money was left in their budget. 

A very simple activity to create and students were able to improve their skills with ordering and comparing decimals as well as decimal addition and subtraction!

Creating 3D Shapes

As an application activity for 3D shapes, our maths class created their own 3D shapes with marshmallows and toothpicks. I was surprised with how talented my students were with quickly creating numerous 3D shapes. 

Once the students created their 3D shape, they had to identify the faces, edges and vertices of that shape. Each group had to create as many different 3D shapes as possible. This activity was extra engaging as all students were able to participate. A rich learning task where students could enter at their level allowed every student to participate and work together in a group. This task also allowed me to see which students were easily able to identify edges, vertices and faces, which students could identify them using concrete materials, and which students still needed additional help with this. 

At the end of the lesson, we were able to put our 3D shapes up on display and it was great to see how proud our students were of their work. 

I Have, Who Has - Place Value

It's been a while since I've posted something on my blog. I guess this past term has just gotten the best of me. So I have tons of items to blog about as it has been an exciting term with lots of learning. 

Here is a quick item but worked wonders! I never knew what these cards were called and always called them "I have, who has" cards. They can be used for almost any topic you want but recently a coworker told me that they are actually called "loop cards" and there are websites that you can create them on.

These loop cards were for teaching place value up to six digits with whole numbers. They required students to read the number in standard form and then read another number in expanded form. Each students has a card and when they here their number called in expanded form, they need to recognise it in standard form and it is then their turn to read out their card. Although it is a bit confusing to explain, it was an excellent diagnostic tool to see where students were with reading and recognising whole numbers up to six digits in both standard and expanded form and being able to switch between both. I highly highly recommend using these as a quick exercise to start off a maths lesson and get students ready for learning. 

Describing 2D Shapes

We have started off our maths topic with "space" and more specifically, looking at 2D shapes. Now my maths group is full of students who are eager and excited about learning, so I thought we could easily zip through 2D shapes and get to 3D shapes. Well, after this week, I have realised that although they can identify 2D shapes, they struggle to describe them or even match the shape to the description. So what do they need you ask?!?! They need to learn some maths vocabulary!

I have created a poster with terms that I think would be useful for them to know to be able to describe the shapes. For this mini-lesson, students will have to match up my visual definition to the term. They next have to use these words in their descriptions of various 2D shapes.

Maths vocabulary is something that is often overlooked but so crucial! There is no way that students will be able to describe something without having the proper vocabulary. So let's see what type of descriptions I will get now!

Recalling Details (The 5 W's)

The school that I work at runs fluid groupings for reading and maths, and we have now just started it for writing (I will keep you posted on how that goes!). For those who aren't familiar with fluid grouping, students are divided into groups based on their academic ability in that subject and more specifically the topic being studied. So, as an example, all grade 5 and 6 students are grouped initially based on start up tests on, let's say, maths. There are six grade 5/6 teachers, so there will be six groups. Then, if the topic being studied is multiplication, and some students need more help or others need more extension, students can move between the group based on the teachers discretion. Although there are some negatives to this system, I think that from a teachers point of view, it is very helpful to have students in closer ability ranges as it is easier to teach to a more targeted group. It also allows the students to receive more targeted instruction at their level. 

So, after all of that, this year I have been given the lowest reading group. These students are in grade 5/6 but are working at a much lower level. This has been a challenging few weeks for myself as I am needing to re-evaluate my teaching practice. I have been working a lot with the grade 1/2 teachers to get ideas and direction of how to run my reading lessons. 

This week, we are working on recalling details from a story/text. Although the rest of the grade 5/6 teachers are working at a higher level, I have modified this topic to focus on the 5W's (who, what, when, where, why). Hopefully this works for my students. I have created a 5W anchor chart for this week and it includes our learning goal and success criteria.

I have created some very scaffolded activities for the students this week on the 5Ws with their guided reading books. Essentially, like the anchor chart says, I just want the students to understand the 5Ws and how to find them in a text. 

Oral Language

I have been horrible at posting lately as school has got the best of me. But, I promise to make an effort to post more regularly, since we have been doing some wonderful activities and lessons in the past few weeks since school has started. 

 

Here is a quick but handy post on oral language. Teachers are often at a loss for ideas on how to run an oral language activity (I will post some more ideas in another post). This book is wonderful, and although it is targeted for EAL students, it really can be used with an grade and academic level. 

Inside this book, there are numerous flash cards relating to different topics (school, home, activities, food, etc.). I have simply photocopied the flash cards that I wanted onto coloured paper and laminated them. 

Now, in my reading class, we use they flash cards for tons of different oral language activities. 

Some activities we do with the flash cards are:

- alphabetical order

- categorising

- synonyms/antonyms

- letter patterns

- 20 questions

Hopefully this helps spawn some other wonderful oral language ideas!

First Week of School - Getting To Know You

I feel like I've been neglecting my blog lately but work has just been very overwhelming. The first week of school is often hectic and busy but this year, I am taking on the role of being a team leader which as exciting as it is, gives me greater responsibility = greater workload. So I have been adjusting to this role and getting settled into routines. I promise to post more regularly soon!

This post is a simple one based on an activity we used in our first week of school. Our school merged two campuses together this week and it was crucial that we assisted the students in getting to know each other. One of the easiest ways of doing this is through a "Get to Know You BINGO". I absolutely love this activity and have used it in other school years also. 

Here is the worksheet that I created with a teammate. Essentially, students need to go around the room and place the name of a classmate in one of the boxes. They can only use a name once (no repeats). The first student to finish wins. Enjoy!

Our New School

This past week has been very chaotic trying to get the new school ready for the students. The builders were there all weekend finishing things up and our school isn't fully finished yet, but was ready for instruction to begin. So today was the first day in the new school! The students were so excited and it was a very exciting time for teachers too (especially those who have been at the school since the plans for the new building began). 

Our new building is a complete open learning space. This means team teaching and team planning at its finest. Over the past two years that I have been at the school, we have practised team teaching and at first I was hesitant, but now I love it. So with that said, some of the members of my team have had experienced team teaching so this move is not too drastic of change. In our 5/6 space, we do have breakout rooms to take out small focus groups for work but in general, it is an open space. 

I don't have any before and after yet as we haven't been able to make our area look beautiful since we are still waiting on pin boards to be installed and some more furniture to be delivered.  But, I do have some pictures of what my week/weekend looked like in the unpacking/setting up process:

Our "teacher office" is hidden behind all this sports equipment stored in our area over the break.

This is me in my new home room learning space. No desks to be found at the moment but plenty of chairs. 

All our boxes to be unpacked. We had a superstar team that got this unpacked quite quickly. 

One of the learning spaces in our area. This is a larger break out room. Can you see the blue theme in our area?!

Our wet room - another team teaching space but with lino instead of carpet and sinks. This area will be the primary science and art learning area.

Hello 2013 School Year

Wow! Our school holidays are nearly over and we start the new school year this week. I've had a busy break overseas and have been completely out of touch with the blogging world, but now I am back so you can look forward to more regular blog posts. 

Here's a little taste of what my summer break entailed (a trip back home to Canada to visit family and friends, a one-week adventure to Dominican Republic in the Caribbean for some R&R, and a quick stint in Korea on our way back to Australia):

Highlights included dogsledding, skating, driving in blizzards, family time, endless white sand beach, palaces, hanok villages, and a visit to the infamous Gangnam.

Although I didn't do much school work while I was away, I did happen to purchase some new picture story books that I am pretty excited about. First, I always like to buy a new Christmas picture story book for every Christmas. In 2012, I decided to buy "The Twelve Days of Australian Christmas". My kids and even family enjoyed the humour of that book. While in Canada, I happened to come across a picture story book entitled "The Twelve Days of Canadian Christmas". I had to buy it! And now I have a nice little set to cherish both the Aussie and Canadian Christmas traditions. Even though I won't be able to use this until the end of the year, I thought it was definitely worth a share. 

And now for my favourite book purchase... "The Munschworks Grand Treasury"! Now if you are Australian, you are probably unaware of the author Robert Munsch, but he is a legendary children's author in Canada. I have very fond memories of reading his stories as a child, especially Thomas' Snowsuit, The Paperbag Princess and Mortimer. So I knew when I went back to Canada that I had to buy some Robert Munsch books to bring some Munsch into the lives of Australian children. I made a trip to Chapters (big book store) to make my purchases and that is when I found the Grand Treasury, a collection of all his best stories. I knew right then that I must have it. And here, ladies and gentlemen, The Munschworks Grand Treasury has made its way back to Australia!

We begin school again on Tuesday and I am off to an overnight staff residential so I will be sure to fill you in on all the exciting new things that are yet to come during this 2013 school year!!! :)