We finished off our 3 Little Pigs study today with a glyph about all the stories we read. Amazingly enough we got this completed in 45 minutes. Last time we did a glyph it took almost an hour and a half!!!! It wouldn't take us 45 minutes either if the class would listen half as much as they talk!

Each part of the pig tells information about the creator. Eyes, type of ears, colour of pig, each thing means something. Didn't they turn out cute? One of my favourite things about directed activities like glyphs is that each student hears the same instructions and, yet, each creation turns out to be as unique as their creator.

Last week we did a character analysis of the wolf. We wrote down all of the character traits we could think of to describe the wolf as he is in the stories we have read. Then I read The True Story of the 3 Little Pigs to them and we wrote down all of the characteristics that described the wolf now that we had heard his side of the story. I found this activity at TeachersPayTeachers. Haven't heard of it? Well, click that there link and head on over. You will be amazed!

We are done with the in depth book studies. We did Cinderella, Goldilocks and The Three Bears and The Three Little Pigs. With only 3 main stories, we managed to read over 20 versions!  I plan to read a few other fairy tales like The Emperor's New Clothes, Rapunzel and The Princess and the Pea. I am toying with the idea of having the students write their own fairy tales but am not sure yet. Not all of the students could do it independently and I have to think about how to support those students who won't be able to write it on their own.

 In Science these days we are working on plants. We have started a lap book on plants. It looks like this.

Isn't this one great? The student turned all the letters into little people holding gardening tools. So creative! Inside we are putting all of our work. Like this,

So far we have done the parts of a bean and a few pages in the Lima Bean book. Last Thursday, we put lima beans into makeshift greenhouses using plastic bags and wet paper towels.

Then we did a scientific observation. We will do these every couple of days. Today was day 5 and not much has happened yet. A couple of the kids have beans beginning to sprout but the rest are taking it very slowly. Hopefully, everyone will have at least one bean sprout.
On Friday we planted grass seeds. Eventually we will have some very hairy grassy friends! We will be measuring the grass as it grows and using a graph in our Plant Study lapbook to record the data. Nothing had started to grow today. Check out the little grass guy on the left below. He is wearing a jet pack! And, yes, they do all have jingle bell noses. I am determined to use up as much of my stuff as possible before the end of June so that I don't have to pack it when we move into our new school in the fall. The noses are a little silly but the kids liked them. Hopefully, we will see some hair growing soon!

 Today we started the life cycle of a plant booklet. Tomorrow we will be cutting out the pages, sequencing them and then adding the book to our lapbooks.

It is starting to feel like there is not enough time in the day to get everything done that still needs doing. Yikes! Only 5 weeks left of school. I am starting to think about report cards and class placement for next year. June is such a crazy, busy month and I just want to slow down and savour these last few weeks with my class in this classroom, in my Turtlepond. I will get a few weeks in the classroom in the Fall before we move into the new building but this is the last June I will have there. And, the last year for Turtlepond. I won't be working in my own classroom the same way next year and can't expect my colleagues to like having a gazillion turtles around all of the time. Plus, I am ready to move on. The turtles have been with me for over 10 years and I am ready for a fresh start.

It is crazy to think that by this time next year, the building will be gone and a parking lot and playground area will have taken its place. Change is inevitable and I am super excited about the new building but, must admit, I will miss the brick facade of our current building. It represents a bygone era. But I think it is important to remember... 

and our new school will reflect this. We will no longer have to try to make a space work for how we teach. Instead, the space will have been built with how we teach in mind and we can put our creativity and energy into the teaching and not into trying to force a space to work in ways it was never intened to work. And the building will be earthquake safe. It is a win-win as far as I am concerned!

A Little About Assessing Students

I believe that what I am teaching and why I am teaching it should be as transparent as possible to both students and parents. I hold students accountable for the work they produce and the effort that goes into it. I tell them clearly what is expected of them and then mark accordingly. For my fairytale unit this year, I included a basic rubric for general expectations and a marking sheet in each student's folder. I am able to mark as we go, giving a comment when needed and the students can easily see where they are at and how their work holds up against the expectations.  

In our district we grade on a 4 point scale that looks like this:

N - Not meeting expectations
A - Approaching expectations
M - Meeting expectations
E - Exceeds expectations

Students aim to be at the M level on the scale. This scale works well for report cards as it clearly lets parents know where their child is in terms of learning outcomes and expectations. That said, the Meeting expectations can be a bit tricky as a student can be just meeting or fully meeting and still have the same mark on their report card.

Students rarely get Exceeds expectations overall for a subject as it means that a student is working well above the Meeting expectations level. A full year or more above. Probably the most common place to find an E in early primary is in reading. There are often a few students who have taken to reading like ducks to water and are reading well above grade level in grade 1 or 2. These students are given an E in reading for grade 1 or 2 but have that same mark drop down to an M by grade 2 or 3 when the other students have caught up. This can be confusing to some parents who expect an E to stay an E and end up in the next year's teacher's class asking why their child is no longer Exceeding. An E on a report card does not mean that a child will always be an E. It means that the child is exceeding expectations at that time.

If you stop and think about all the people you know in your life, probably most of them would not be exceeding expectations in all areas of their lives or for all of the time. Most of us go along in life meeting expectations for our jobs, families, co-workers etc. Meeting expectations is good. It is where you want to be. It means you are doing your job. Doing what is expected of you in an efficient and timely manner. Getting the job done. You can be counted on to do what you say you will do. This is good. This is a productive member of society. There will be times when one is moved to go above and beyond expectations and that is great. And society needs people to have passions, to have areas in their lives that they try to do more, be more. But chances are that those people who exceed expectations are not doing it in every single area of their lives all of the time.

When I stop to think about my daughter and her school years thus far, I realize how little many of the grades mean. Will it really matter if she got an A or a C in Math 8? No. What I have always looked at and counted as more important than the grade are her marks for work habits and effort. Does she try her best? Does she keep going when it is hard? Can she work independently asking for help when needed? These are the attributes that are going to make her a successful and productive member of our society. Not her marks in Math (which are consistently on the lower end of the scale and which is a subject she hates) or her marks in Social Studies (which are consistently on the high end of the scale because, wonder of wonders, she actually likes social studies!)

And, yes, I know what some of you are thinking.They need to have good grades to get into university. This is true. However, there are plenty of highly successful people who went to community college first and then transferred into a university or, for that matter, who went to different types of learning institutions altogether like technical colleges or trade school. Society needs a lot of different kinds of people with a lot of different kinds of skills to be successful. Many of the jobs that will be available when my daughter finishes her post-secondary education haven't even been invented yet! I believe that in the years to come, it won't matter so much what schooling anyone has so much as whether they are problem solvers, independent thinkers and capable of getting along with others.
 
In my blog hopping this morning I came across a teacher who has the students self assess after a lesson so that she can get a quick idea of where they are at and who will need immediate support to complete the lesson. And I thought, "What a great idea!" Her name is Alison Eber and her blog is called Eberopolis . In her district they grade students on a scale of 1-4. This corresponds nicely to our 4 point grading system in primary.

The scale in her district looks like this (picture taken from her website) :


with Novice being a 1 all the way to Expert being a 4. Expectations are that students are striving to be a Practitioner or a 3.



I am going to tumble this idea around in my head for a little and let it percolate. I know that it would be a great visual and really easy ways for students to quickly self assess and for me to get a quick count of students requiring immediate support after a lesson. It also really shows how learning is a continuum. Saying that someone is not meeting expectations does not necessarily send the message to that person that they will eventually meet the expectations with continued effort. If you think about any of the trades like woodworking, plumbing etc., where one starts as a novice and through effort, practice and hard work becomes an apprentice and then eventually a practitioner and (perhaps if one has a particular talent for that trade) an expert one day, you can see how through time and effort one can work through the levels to be at the meeting expectations level and how the language supports this transition from stage to stage.

Maybe I will try using this vocab with the plant unit we are just beginning and see how it works out. I mean, it makes total sense to me but will it make sense to a 7 year old? I think it is worth a test run. Will keep you posted on how it goes!

STOP for a TED talk

If you have 21 or so minutes to spend (or, for that matter, even if you don't) stop and watch a TED talk. Any TED talk will do. You will learn something. I promise. 

Here are a few of my favourites. This one by Sir Ken Robinson. I was fortunate enough to get to hear him in person last year. He is charming, personable and speaks with conviction about his beliefs on creativity and education. His words resonate with me.

This one by Simon Sinek about leadership.

And this talk featuring Sugata Mitra about his Hole in the Wall project on self teaching.

And the amazing Sarah Kay, spoken word poet extraordinaire. Who says "I use poetry to help me work through what I don’t understand, but I show up to each new poem with a backpack full of everywhere else that I’ve been.”

And one of my all time favourites (and only 3 minutes long so you have no real excuse not to watch it!) by Talor Mali called What Teachers Make.