End Times

So, aside from some marking (creative writing and numeracy), my teaching is finishing for the year.

Mostly, I'm really sad about that. I've had an amazing time at Queenspark, I've learned so much and hopefully have grown as a teacher. I'm going to be writing up some of the things I've been up to during the last month.

Tomorrow is the Junior Sports' Day, which I'll be helping out at and my students will be partipating in. I'm bringing each of them a lollipop, as well as a certficate of some way they have achieved while I was there- that idea was from my host teacher. As a side note, this site is amazing for creating kid-friendly certificates, it was no trouble at all to whip up one for each student. I'll also be bringing her a little gift to say thanks, there is no way I can possibly say how grateful I am but at least it'll be something.

From Monday I'll be back at university, frantically completing assignments and portfolios and research projects. To be honest, I'd rather stay at Queenspark and continue with what I've been doing there- I was honoured to be part of such an amazing team of teachers and staff, if only for such a short while.

New Layout

After many hours searching around, I finally found a blog layout that I liked the look of. So many of the edu-bloggers out there have beautiful blogs, and I felt like I was slacking! The new layout is brighter and (hopefully) easier to read. The only downside is that it's two columns instead of the usual three, but I'm sure I'll get used to it.

At the moment, the back-end of Blogger is having some trouble. Every time I try to tweak the layout, Avast anti-virus tells me that the javascript trying to load is a trojan. It's very frustrating, so I hope that Blogger/Avast sort themselves out. I want to fidget with my layout some more!

Getting Ready for School

You will see a lot of blog entries with this title at this time of the year- Getting Ready for School. As you all know, in the Northern Hemisphere school starts in September. The majority of edu-bloggers are from the US and, as expected, all of the bloggers I follow are discussing classroom layout, parent packs and display ideas.

Here in South Africa, school starts in January. The big summer holiday is December - January, with a smaller (but significant) winter break June - July. This fact also makes a lot of beautiful calendar and planning resources useless to me, they are often decorated and planned seasonally and our seasons are opposite here! Let's see some love for the teachers in the Southern Hemisphere! Gecko at The Red Pen of Doom is a South African teacher, hi Gecko!, but I wonder if there are any more out there? If there are signs of life, maybe we could get a Southern Hemisphere linky-party started.

 The emphasis on starting the school year at the moment is beneficial to my own plans, though- I start my final teaching practice in two weeks! I've met my host teacher and discussed our plan for the first week of term. I'll be at Queenspark School (as usual, not it's real name) for 5 whole weeks. My class, Grade 2 (age 7/8), will be starting third term with me there from the first day. I love this because it helps to cement my authority if I'm there from the 'start'. There are 16 students, with a 50/50 split between those who are home-language English speakers and those who are not. It's my first time in a private school, so I'm excited to see the contrast between Queenspark and Sandlot, which was a well-supported government school.

My host teacher said that she wasn't happy with her current method of classroom discipline, which was grouping rows of desks into teams. This wasn't working for two reasons:

• The students are young and not very assertive, meaning members of Dragonfly Group didn't feel they were brave enough to tell other Dragonflies to be quiet/behave.
• My host teacher often changes the seating plan to accomodate her students' needs.

We discussed this and I mentioned my Clip Chart which had worked so successfully at Sandlot School. The result: I'm going to make another Clip Chart and bring it into my new Grade 2 classroom! I'm excited to have the opportunity to create another Clip Chart so soon, and I hope that my class will like it. I have 1 week before school starts, so with luck I'll have more pictures up here of Clip Chart #2 soon.

As a side note, I finally realised I didn't have the "Follow My Blog" gadget installed- whoops! If you read my blog, please sign up and follow me. There will be cookies! Virtual cookies.

My First Clip Chart

I had a chance to visit Sandlot School today. My old class are coming along well, I'm so proud of them! They are really growing up into fine little people. While I was there, I was able to take some photos of the Clip Chart that I made in June. Here's how it looks!

As explained in this amazing post at Clutter-Free Classroom, each student in the class has a peg with their name on it. For behaviour, they are told to clip up (good) or down (bad). It's a great, visual, way for younger students to understand how they are doing. What I loved about it is that it really worked with my class. I introduced it and, within two days, students who were normally troublesome were hovering around the top of the chart. When I left Sandlot School, my host teacher asked to keep the Clip Chart. To my happiness, they are still using it over two months later.

"We like the colours" - student, age 7, when talking about the clip chart this morning.

Each student goes back to Ready to Learn at the end of every day, showing that being ready to learn is the goal of this operation.

• Here is a link to the free Clip Chart ebook, which details exactly how to use the chart and how to make it. 
• Some cute Clip Chart record sheets over at Frogs and Fairytales, for noting down all of that good/bad behaviour.
• A spotty Clip Chart design from Teaming Up To Teach, just print on white paper!
• Interesting portable 'Clip Stick' from First Grade Wizards
• Queen of the First Grade Jungle has a jungle-themed Clip Chart
• Babbling Abby at The Inspired Apple made a rockin' Clip Chart

I don't have a .pdf to share with you all- my own Clip Chart was just made from labels I made in OpenOffice Writer, stuck to coloured card/paper. The coloured paper was then stuck together and the whole thing was laminated. I punched two holes in the top and threaded a shoelace through it, to make the hanging height adjustable. My cutting of the labels wasn't exactly straight, if I use this method again I'll use a guillotine to do the cutting!

In general, I'm pleased with how my first Clip Chart turned out- and especially thrilled that my host teacher wants to keep using it with her students. Now that I know how well they can work, I'm looking forward to creating the next one!

Great giveaway at First Grade O.W.L.s!

There is an amazing giveaway happening at First Grade O.W.L.s right now, have a link: Click here to check out the giveaway.

What you could win:

• 4 Writing Work Stations The Complete Set by Deedee Wills
• 4 Everything OWL Classroom Bundle by Nicole Bunt

On the same blog post, there is also a great freebie for Whole Brain Teaching. I was discussing the concept in one of my previous posts- here. When you have your classroom rules, it's essential to have them posted in the classroom.The ones that are up at First Grade O.W.L.s are just adorable, look!

I can't wait to get my own classroom and have it decorated beautifully, much like the colourful polka dots on display there.

Freebies and giveaways are just some of the valuable things you can gain from joining the online world of networking with other teachers. I have already learned so much from my fellow educators around the world, and perhaps I should do a post at a later date talking about how the blogosphere works in a teaching-sharing context.

Whole Brain Teaching - Guff or Great?

In my constant quest for classroom management techniques, I stumbled across Whole Brain Teaching. WBT is a structured classroom management approach which has had great results.

Immediate pros of WBT:

• Structured - The drilling of routines and commands is hugely helpful to students, particularly those in my area of specialisation (pre-school to Grade 3).
• Energetic - the gestures and sillyness of it keep students engaged, which is very difficult to do
• Free - The materials (videos, articles and ebooks) are all free. They aren't trying to make money from educators. I was able to legally read their primary manual this weekend.
• Easy to understand - By this, I mean that the many Youtube videos demonstrating WBT in the classroom are hugely helpful in seeing the techniques work in practice. Their techniques are not complicated and I feel any class I go to could use them.
• Flexible - WBT seems as if it could work on students of many age groups, the founder of WBT uses his techniques on college-age students.

Immediate cons of WBT:

• Their explanations of 'why' their techniques work feel very pseudo-sciency. The fact that it is named Whole Brain Teaching, to start with, makes many student teachers I talk to skeptical. I don't need to buy into their 'reason' for why tightly-executed, entertaining classroom management works, but still. I don't feel completely comfortable with using a system that may be based on pseudoscience- see Brain Gym.
• By watching all of those WBT videos, I saw that often the students seem robotic/hypnotised. The Youtube comments tend to agree with me, though they are definitely not a source of real insight. You see students who are watching the teacher, following and matching her actions and even voice patterns correctly. It looks eerie, at times, from the outside. 

I've thought a lot about using WBT as the method of improving my classroom management during my next placement at a school, which is happening in about a month or so.

Obstacles to using WBT in my placement

The biggest one would be my host teacher. They might be fine with the idea of me using WBT, but not willing to use it themselves. The inconsistency might not let WBT work, it needs to be used daily. Alternatively, they might hate the idea entirely and not let me use it- which is totally their right as the head honcho.

Another is that I wanted to incorporate WBT into my research project, which I have to frame around, "How can I...?". My idea was to phrase it as, "How can I use WBT techniques to improve my classroom management". The concern is, though, that is WBT hasn't got many specific academic studies which were done on it (I've found one so far, and it was published in a WBT manual so might not even count). If it fails I may not have much of a research project. On the upside, perhaps it could make it a very interesting topic to present!

Gaming and Learning

Now, gaming and learning is a huge topic for me. I'm an educator (to be), and an avid gamer. In addition to the stigma that gaming receives from the 'mainstream' community, I am also a woman. Female gamers receive additional stigma from the 'mainstream' gaming community, which is ridiculous. Despite this vicious cycle, I still consider myself a proud gamer- no matter what anyone else thinks about it.

While researching for my essay on behaviourism as motivation, I went back to the topic of gamification. Gamification is the use of game design techniques or mechanics to enhance non-gaming contexts- such as school. There are a lot of naysayers about 'turning education into a game' and how students already spend enough time gaming at home. The truth is, elementary schools already use forms of gamification in their classrooms. Do all of your work? You get a sticker. Fill up your chart? You get a certificate. These response-reward pairings are basic behaviourism, so why not develop it further and take it beyond simple psychology? There is a reason why 400 million people play online social games with only virtual rewards. Gamification can satisfy human needs, such as rewards, status, achievement, self-expression, competition and altruism. It can become a valuable tool for developing intrinsic motivation in students, by using extrinsic motivation to start them off.

A good book on the subject is The Multiplayer Classroom: Designing Coursework as a Game by Lee Sheldon. He discusses using games as frameworks for delivering the content to students. Instead of "writing an essay" you can "explore". Instead of taking a test you can "complete a quest". The hope is that using the same kind of strategies which make games compelling can also cause the classroom to become even more compelling. 

Gabe Zichermann at TEDxKids discussing gamification.

John Hunter at TED 2011 discussing the World Peace Game.

I came across another fascinating project while on the hunt for gamification strategies- WoW in School. They are a group of educators who have created an after-school programme around World of Warcraft. Aimed at middle school students, it uses the medium of MMORPG as well as Tolkien's The Hobbit to improve language arts- all while following their national guidelines. I think it's brilliant, especially since I'm main healer for our guild's second raid team...Their guidebook is here if you're interested.

While my future little kidlets will most likely be between the ages of 6-9, I think that gamification concepts can still apply- even at that age. I was always a fervent gamer, even at that age (and younger!). It is the exact age-group which already uses behaviourist motivational techniques already, so I think that a motivated teacher could make a gamified Foundation Phase class thrive- see Gamification, your first grade teacher was onto something.