4 Season Magazine Tree Collage

During art last week we made a collage using magazine clippings! We are focusing on tree's this week as a part of our National Parks HSIE focus. I printed each student a tree stencil broken up into four parts (one for each season). We discussed what kinds of colours you would see on trees in different seasons and looked at photographs of trees in summer, autumn, winter and spring! They loved looking at the pictures and talking about the colours. I drew the outline on the board and labelled each season for them and wrote what colours each season needed to be. They then cut out clippings from magazines to create a collage for each part of the tree. We used  dark greens for summer, red/orange/browns/yellow for autumn, newspaper or black and white for winter and pinks and lighter greens for spring. We put kidz bop on and they sung while they searched for colours and pasted clippings onto their stencils. They are coming along very nicely. The kids are just far too careful; I need to find a way to motivate them to take risks and worry less about the state of perfection of their artwork. Here is an example that I showed the students prior to the lesson. If there is one thing I have learnt from teaching art; it is that you must always show then a finished product first. That way they know exactly what it should look like and can use the example to guide their ideas. 

Walk Safely To School Day

Hi guys! I have recently ran Walk Safely to  School Day at the school I am doing my internship on! It was so much fun coordinating the celebrations for a special day like WSTSD! And it wasn't hard to organise! I highly recommend coordinating the day if you ever get the chance, or if you need an easy way to get involved in the school whether it's for your accreditation (fulfilling the standards) or your CV! It is so important that students understand basic road safety and know the importance of physical activity and how they can get moving! To celebrate the day we had a poster competition. Each class participated. I gave each teacher an information pack containing the road safety guidelines that should be teaching their kids (dependent on stage) and some lesson ideas, find a words, crosswords, ideas for posters as well as colouring in pages. I let each teacher decide what they wanted to focus on, what size paper they would choose and how in depth the posters should be. A few of the younger grades did simple colour in stencils that their teachers had made for them, while the older grades came up with their own ideas, slogans and illustrations. I showed my class some posters I had found online (regarding road safety), some road safety campaigns and some tv advertisements regard info road safety. I then got my class to brainstorm slogans, and asked them to think about what would catch their eye when looking at a poster. Some kids got really creative, it was great fun! And such a great time to revisit road safety and stranger danger! So here are each of the winning posters for the whole school. Each teacher had to pick a class winner (as we have limited space to display the posters) and each composite class was allowed a winner from each year. Today I hung each poster on display in the library and presented them with their certificates at assembly, they turned out so well! So there is an effortless way to refresh kids memories on road safety, obtain a nice display for the school library or office and have a lot of fun creating posters!

Hi everyone, I hope you have all had a wonderful Easter! I would like to give you a little Easter suprise, and that is my 'Persuade Me Game'!. This is a simple game that is played with dice (dice on the IWB are great for the whole class to see). This game is all about persuasion and getting students confident to give reasons for a particular point of view. In this game 2 students come out the front of the classroom, each student rolls a dice, the dice reveal which statement the students are given on the game board. The students then need to decide who is 'for' the statement and who is 'against' (if they cannot agree, you may choose who is doing for and who is against). Students now have to give 3 reasons that support their argument and have to convince the class to believe their argument as opposed to the other students. Set a timer, so kids have to give reasons quickly therefore thinking on their feet. Once the time is up, the rest of the class take a vote to determine whose argument was more convincing. 

This game is an excellent way to get students thinking of reasons 'for' and 'against' a point of view, and persuading others towards their opinion. This resource gets ideas flowing and helps students practice with persuasion informally, as opposed to always working with persuasive texts. This game utilises talking and listening to practice persuasion, and promotes safe and supportive classrooms when students are taught to play properly. It must be established that there are no put downs, and that the game does not have a "winner", just a more convincing argument, and to leave each round on a positive note, get the rest of the class to give pointers to the less convincing student e.g. Maybe if you said it like this........ it would have been more convincing. 

Take a look, and please let me know how it goes if you use it in your classroom! Don't be shy, drop a comment below and tell me what you think. Feedback and constructive criticism are welcomed.

Happy Easter, enjoy your holidays,

Jordie

Persuade me game

I encourage you all  to WATCH this video: Reteach and Enrich: How to make time for every student.
The video centers around a group of teachers at a school in the town of Mesquite in Tuscon, Arizona. The video reveals an excellent strategy their school employs to make sure no one falls behind and each student is reaching the objective for the week. Each week the teachers decide on the objective (based on outcomes and indicators) and students take a short exam on the objective at the end of the week so teachers can assess whether or not they achieved the objective. If the student did achieve the objective they get put into the "enrich" group and those who didn't are put in the "re-teach" group (this is done across the stage so one teacher can take the "re-teach" group and whatever teachers class had the most students in the "enrich" group got to take that group, as they obviously had a good way of teaching the subject due to the amount of students who passed that particular objective. There is then a period of time where they teach these groups the following week, so every week half an hour is dedicated to reteaching and enriching, so the students who just didn't quite get it, get another chance to reach the objective and those who did "get it" are able to have their learning extended. 
That is the basis of the strategy, please watch as you get a really good idea of the strategy and see just how practical it is! What I love is that each week you have different kids in each group. One week Timmy might have not passed the test on say long division and was therefore was placed in the "re-teach" group but the next week he might have achieved the objective in fractions and then be placed in the "enrich" group. So kids are always changing groups and don't feel downhearted, the teachers in the video have made it clear that both groups are positive, and "re-teach" just means you need a little more help in that area. 

Oh my gosh, so very sorry for the rambling! I was processing the strategy in my head while typing so its probably mush. So please watch the video to fully understand and see how wonderful this is. 

Thank you lovely teachers, 
Jordie

G'day teachers, my name is Jordie and I am 3 months away from being a qualified teacher. Yipee! I am so excited to start 'really' teaching. I will be teaching in Central West NSW, hopefully in the town where I live (beautiful Narromine) or in the towns surrounding like Dubbo, Trangie, Tullamore etc. I absolutely love the way of life out West, it is great. You walk down the street and can have a chat to just about anyone, and EVERYONE says hello besides the odd one or two. I am originally from Anna Bay, NSW (just 45 minutes from Newcastle). Anna Bay is such a gorgeous spot and a very popular tourist destination for people from just about anywhere in the world really. So I have gone from the beach to the bush, and I love that I have so enthusiastically dived into my new life and am loving every moment (not only that, but loving the man that caught my eye out there and is the reason I now live here). The classic story really, girl meets country boy, moves to the country and eats a LOT of peaches (well in this case famous Narromine oranges). I just love the wide open plains, from the gorgeous old gum trees to the never-ending wheat fields that disappear at the horizon, and the vibrant yellow of canola when its flowering. I love it all! I came from one of the most beautiful places, and now I have moved to another of the world's most gorgeous places, I am truly blessed to be surrounded by such beauty.

Well that's a bit about my background and where I live. Now a bit about my teaching...
I love to teach HSIE (human society and its environment) which is all about people and places, two things that I am extremely interested in. I love history and learning about the past, as we get to see how we got to where we are today. I think it is so important for kids to understand how things came to be how they are, and why they are like that; and we can learn that when we study history. Secondly, it helps us to have a sense of identity. Learning about where we came from and the people from which we descended helps us to understand who we are. For instance, I am a total ancestry.com addict and whilst researching one of my ancestors 7 generations back I  stumbled across a convict indent with his details of conviction. His name was James Murray and he came from Cork in Ireland. My Dad had always claimed we had strong Irish heritage and by digging into the past I found out just how strong our Irish heritage is. James was sentenced to 7 yeas for stealing 1829 and was to work for a J,P Mckenzie who was a grazier in Bathurst, which explains why my Dad's side of the family ended up in that area. Anyway the detail that blew me away was under the column 'eye colour' and listed in almost indecipherable 17th century writing was the word 'grey'! It hit me like a tonne of bricks because I have always had people tell me my eyes are grey, and they are exactly the same as my brother and Dads eyes. It was really interesting to learn just how strong our genes can be! So as I delved into history exploring my family's past I learned about who I am, as well as who all those other people are that are in my family tree. Another reason I LOVE history is because it helps us to preserve stories from the past. I know some find the old speeches from Nan or Pop ("back in my day") boring, but I feel they are so important to listen to, cherish and pass onto our children. As time passes, it gets harder to preserve these treasured anecdotes, so teaching students to value these stories and remember them so they can keep the past alive is a very important value. The reason I mostly love history is because it inspires me. The past inspires me to be a better person, to do more and to make the world a better place. And when you learn about your ancestors and how they built roads and railways with their bare hands, it makes you appreciate all that they did, so you could enjoy the life you live today. And so I am then inspired to work harder, to create a life that is great and meaningful and to live in a way that will benefit my own children (future children!) and give them a better life again.

I also LOVE creative arts. It is so important for kids (and adults too) to express themselves. And it is fun! I have grown to really appreciate art (especially paintings, oh how I love looking at pieces of art and talking with my gorgeous Canadian friends about what the art means, it is so funny to listen to all of our interpretations and just how crazily different they are). Its important we pass this appreciation onto kids. Art is one of those undervalued key learning areas (KLA's) but it shouldn't be and we as teachers need to make sure we make time for it in our curriculums. While I am no singer, dancer, painter, sculptor, pianist, actor, photographer or media art extraordinaire I love to do all of these things, even if I am not the best. And that's what art is all about, taking risks and playing around with different techniques.

Follow me on pinterest! I am always pinning excellent teaching ideas, you will have to excuse my interior design and DIY pins ;)

Thanks for reading, I would love to hear a little bit about you, so please leave me a comment below
Happy teaching,
Jordie