A Musing

Have I mentioned I’m pregnant?  I’ll be 30 weeks tomorrow.  10 weeks of baking this bun left.  Right now I am sitting in a noisy multi-purpose room watching the 2nd to last rehearsal of our class play, while 48 kids cut vegetables on the other side of a blockade of tables.  I can feel my baby moving around right now.  It’s a magical feeling - totally distracting when it occurs.  

This year our play is in November.  Last year our play was in March.  The ironic thing is I was pregnant during that play too, but not with this baby.  Had it worked out, I would have been due this week; instead our baby boy should arrive towards the end of January   Oh how the world keeps turning.  

I have one month of teaching left before winter break, and then another few weeks before an extended maternity leave.  I won’t return for the rest for the rest of the year thanks to a generous administration and a dream replacement.  

Last weekend, a fellow teacher and dad of two asked me what I will do for me during that leave.  He is the first to ask this question.  He is a very hands on father from what I can tell.  He knew about all of the mommy groups in our neighborhood, dished on the the best library story hours, and recommended some nearby playgrounds with good bathrooms. “What will you do for you?” he asked.  And truthfully, he hit a chord that has worried me.

It will be the darkest days of January when my baby is born.  Spring won’t show up until at least April, thanks to the return of the polar vortex.  I am from California and hate the cold so I assume we will be pretty housebound. (I am thankful I tricked my husband into staying in our walkable, shoppable neighborhood where there are lots of options for idly wandering the aisles, as long as the baby is quiet.)  I’d like to think of myself as an intellectual.  One who really likes reality TV too.  I’m not a crafty lady or a tinkerer.  I don’t knit or code or scrapbook or cook.   I don’t like team sports or group exercise situations where people remember your name.  I never really had many hobbies - I like to work.  To fill up time in the past, I’ve signed up for committees, coached cheer, found tutoring clients, and started this blog.  Even when I volunteer, it is usually to do more teaching. Maternity leave is about not working and paying attention to your baby.  All of my usual crutches and time sucks will be less accessible. Everyone says I won’t have the time or energy to do anything else except mother anyways.   Then again I hear some people go crazy if they delve too far into the infant mind, and you’ve got to have a mental place to come up for air.  

What will I do for me?  

I don’t know yet how this will all play out.  I require eight hours of sleep, which I am reluctantly accepting will not be possible anymore, so that is my first concern.   I also have learned one should turn the TV off while the baby is awake lest you forget to talk to it and deprive it of early verbal exposure and social interaction.  And I was going to upgrade to the good cable…

What will I do for me?  

I guess the real problem is that I don’t know who I will be after this baby is born.  I do know it will fundamentally change me.  Having a baby is a life changing event, and I am going to literally be a different version of myself once it occurs.  I don’t mind this process.  I’ve gone through it before - when I moved to New York, when I discovered I was a teacher, when I got married.   Each time I like who I am a little bit more even as I miss the various skins I have to shed in order to grow.  I have also learned that it is hard for an old self to make big plans for a new self.  The old self has little idea what the new self will want, so it’s best not to get too invested in big ideas about what the new self’s life will be like.   

So for the moment, like all good questions that don’t have answers, I am just glad someone thought to ask.  

A Return to Paper Blogging

I'm back! And ready to admit that I completely failed in my goal to use this blog to reflect on my teaching at least once a week.  The lesson learned?  Don't set such lofty goals.  

But let's not dwell on the past.  Success lies in the future and after a whirlwind spring, summer, and fall, the dregs of winter are setting in and I am once again motivated to share my work with the people.  The latest project is jump starting our class blogs.  Last year's experiment went really well - over 500 blogs posts!  Over 500 pieces of writing, artistic projects, personal experiences, and you tube videos about raining tacos shared.  I learned a lot (which I should probably write about in a separate post) and I am really excited to see what this class of students does with the opportunity.  Already they blew me away with our first step: Paper Blogging!

This year's students really took the paper blogging challenge on with gusto (click here for a post on last year's lesson).  First we watched a really great video from BrainPop on exactly what blogs are and discussed the purpose of a blog: to share ideas and connect with other people.  I explained that paper blogging would let us practice the three roles of blogging (writers, readers, and commenters) offline before we moved online to our KidBlogs.  Then students got to work writing their first blog posts on something that they loved.  

It was really fun learning more about my kids and the things in their lives that they like and love to do.  I think they enjoyed learning more about each other too - an added community building bonus!  They added an artistic design and submitted it for "publishing".  This year we "published" the paper blogs on lockers.  We used post-its for "comments" and everyone was encouraged to make sure they continued the conversation.  They actually are going back to read each other's comments, ask questions, answer questions and generally make their paper blogs a really vibrant place for discussion.   Some students took the opportunity to redesign their blogs or added updated posts - all really cool ideas that they will be be able to do with their online blogs.  The next steps are to transfer these skills online, get used to KidBlog as an app/website, and start sharing, documenting, and reflecting on our work! 

Exploring Buddhism

Our study of The Three Ways began with Buddhism.  This study is close to my heart as I connect philosophically to many Buddhist beliefs. It has been my favorite part of traveling in Asia. Many of the artists in our displays are items I brought back with me.

We also meditate daily with the help of these resources:

Teaching Poetry

It really is my favorite writing unit. For me the key words are "freedom" and "choice".  We expose kids to lots of types of poetry, give them lots of inspiration, and challenge them to be thoughtfully experimental.  They explore the many tools in a poet's toolbox and put them to good use. 

Our big question is "Why is there poetry?"  What can the poet do that is different from other writers? What must the poet do that is similar to other writers? 

Our guiding questions are:

How can we use the form of verse to express thoughts in an imaginative way? 

How can we use language to communicate feelings and create images?

How can use figures of speech and symbols to extend the meaning of a poem?

Here is our poetry board with favorite poems alongside connected objects and illustrations. 

We also read Spinning Through the Universe by Helen Frost out loud and together. It's a brilliant book on so many levels. It seems to be out of print but it's worth searching for. We found a bunch of library copies. The ups and downs of a fiction class are told from a variety of perspectives using a wide range of poetic patterns and forms. My students become invested in the stories and fascinated by all of the secrets the poems beg them to discover. 

Not all of my students come in loving poetry, but I try to change their minds. Best of all is when the ones who love poetry write a verse just for them:

The First Leaders Club

What is a "good" leader?

We talk to fourth graders about being leaders all of the time. As the oldest members of our community the expectations for their behavior and scholarship are high.  But what is a "good" leader?  What qualities do they exhibit?  What actions do they take? To think about this question we take two first leaders, Qin Shi Huang Di, the first emperor of China who united that empire, and George Washington, our first president.  Both of these men left lasting legacies, but of what sort?  We did our research, looked the facts, formed our opinions, and had a debate.

Not everyone got to debate something they believed, but a few argued very convincingly for their side and changed their own minds!

In the end, qualities and actions like fairness, thoughtfulness,  empathy, and communication, along with the ability to make tough decisions and do the right thing even when it isn't popular were greatly admired.

Exploring Area with Tangram Animals

Tangrams are an ancient Chinese puzzle and therefore a no brainer for math integration in our classroom. After exploring various animal shapes we were ready to tackle an exemplar. What is the area of a Tangram animal? Well it depends on which Tangram equals 1.  We made some choices and took notice of the results.

The Lull

Wow its been a while since I wrote...or reflected.

The truth is I feel a bit of a lull and I am indulging in it.  School is not stressful right now.  It feel good and fine and under control.  But it's not like I am not working...so what am I working on?

1) The Panda Problem

We have been studying various problem solving strategies, working on algebraic reasoning, and writing word problems.  The next phase of our year long problem solving curriculum is the Exemplars.   Before Thanksgiving I introduced the Panda Problem which has us thinking deeply and mathematically about panda reproduction.  It also supports our social studies unit on endangered animals and our writing unit on research reports.  It went really well with all students feeling like they could access and understand the problem, as well as find a path to a reasonable solution.  This particular problem does not have an exact answer.  I figured out that the range of answers is 36-124 and I will be satisfied with any justifiable answer in that ranger.   The nice thing about exemplars is that the point in the justification.  In justifying their answer properly students tend to self correct.

I broke this rollout into three parts:  Finding the Solution, Explaining the Solution, and Evaluating the Solution.  Monday I will model building a solid explanation with the hope that student will be able to replicate the building blocks we go over in future problems.  The Exemplars come with rubrics and so we will spend the following Monday evaluating our solutions and making any final corrections.  Then I have a geometry problem I will send home with them to be completed over the break.

2) Geometry Unit

Last year we found through assessment that student were not remembering geometry vocabulary or the difference between area and perimeter.  This year I need to take a slower approach to geometry and not make any assumptions about the difficulty of the material.  I have been trying to break down the concepts I want to go over and match them up with a variety of hands on activities.  I am still searching for some sort of culminating geometry activity that will allow us to use learned vocabulary and concepts in a meaningful way, like pattern making or model building.  I am not sure yet what to work on.  It needs to be artistic too.  I should probably go on pinterest.  In the meantime I have some good activities lined up to support the understanding goals I have identified.  I hope that by going slower we will increase retention and understanding.

3) Blogging

Blogging is going okay for some of my students and terribly for others.  There is a project management piece that some of them just can't handle independently and some are not buoyed enough by the concept of blogging to work these issues out.  Others are blogging day and night and at home and love it.  These seem to be kids who are technologically proficient and who enjoy writing.  If they are hesitant in either of those areas, it seems to slow them down.  Also some of them are not strong typists in general, and others are not sure how to transfer confident keyboard typing skills to the iPad.

With my "mandatory" blog posts, I seem to be creating some stress.  I have removed that word from the categories as it did not seem to generate interest or motivation in actually completing them.  It was just stressing them out.  I am going to keep working on how to give them more time to complete these tasks. I totally see the value in doing the blogs, but we have a wide range of ability in this area.   Since it's our first year, I think I will pay close attention to the true successes and the abject failures.  If there is a middle group that can mostly get it done independently - great.  The successes can show me what is truly interesting, inspirational, and possible with this platform.  The failures can show me what is truly challenging and in need of support so I know what lessons to build in.  I am going to have to cut some of them slack with this particular experiment.  But I need to remember that this is an experiment.

4) Supporting Animals.

I am teaching some writing/research lessons while E leads for her first time.  This is my third year with this unit and we have been pushing the idea of being an advanced researcher and really tackling some of the concrete skills that some children infer, but that all students can do if taught.  Our students run the risk of being too surface and resting on ability that is really "fine" for fourth grade.  However if we can push them to think more deeply we should.  Two lessons that are rocking their world in terms of animal research are the idea of general topic research and working with numbers.

I taught both of these lessons for the first time this year and have been amazed that they really do need them!  The general research lesson was about not becoming too focused on just their animal - that there was value in learning about that animals genus and family too.  Students often skip over resources because they don't mention their specific animal.  But all genus and family information applies and thus they are missing key info.  The research numbers lessons encouraged them  to really investigate what different measurements and time periods given mean by making comparisons,  to do math problems around given numbers so they can write information in their own, interesting ways, and to make charts with information that is other wise confusing.  They grasped these ideas right way and were having many wow moments over their numerical information once they really got down to thinking about it.

The best part of team teaching is that you don't have to do all of the work.  Right now my partner is taking on a lot of the work while running the reading and writing program.  I am okay with that because it is giving me time to think about my passion projects (above) more deeply.  My attention is not being dragged in too many directions and I really have time to think.   I also have time at home to relax which has been really nice.  I am enjoying this little lull as a luxury!