57 Flavours ....... or just 1?

A long time ago I wrote  a post called 57 flavours? about how teachers are hired because they will bring the school something it needs, because they will add their own "spice" to the mix. I wrote that teachers should not hide their uniqueness or worry about the fact that they are not quite like anyone else at the school.

However, lately, whenever I talk to colleagues I feel that things are changing. I participate in activities, such as the Teachers' Guild, where I meet teachers from private and public schools all over the world. I am hearing from teachers - constantly now - that administrators want more consistency across classrooms in each grade, and are asking teachers to do the same things, the same way, on the same schedule. It sounds like administrators do NOT want teachers who bring their uniqueness: it sounds like they would prefer to have teachers who are as identical as possible.

I must admit that part of me completely understands this need: it must be difficult, for administrators, to keep an eye on progress across a grade if the teachers are teaching different parts of the curriculum, in different ways, at different times. And, of course, parents tend to compare notes, and a parent who feels that another teacher in their child's grade is doing something better, is going to be unhappy and may complain. Every time two teachers do things differently, at least some parents are going to think the other teacher's way is better, and be unhappy. Unhappy parents are bad for the school, and there is an easy "fix" for this sort of unhappiness: make all the classes do things as similarly as possible.

So, I understand the drive for consistency, but a part of me wonders... by eliminating the things that make us (teachers) different, by making all teachers do everything just the same, are we giving our best to the students?

If we all teach the exact same lesson, the same project, in exactly the same way, don't we lose some of the passion a teacher brings by communicating in the way they feel most excited about, feel is most natural for them? If we don't vary our approach and timing based on the students' response, don't we lose some of the differentiation our students need? If we send the same letter to all parents in the grade every week, don't we lose some of the authenticity we are trying to build in our relationships with them?

This is difficult stuff. We want to make sure that admin can properly track progress in each classroom. We want parents to be happy, and not to feel that their child would have a better experience in another teacher's classroom.

And yet...

Consistency means that innovative, creative teachers must stop innovating and creating. Consistency means that teachers are being asked not to do their best, but to do only those things that all the other teachers can do equally well. Just as every teacher has unique strengths, every teacher has some relative weaknesses: consistency means every teacher must level down, in each area, to match the teacher who is least strong in that area. One result is that it is easier for the school to monitor the classrooms and be sure that every student is getting the education they were promised. But leveling down to every teacher's relative weakness means the students have a very different experience, compared to one where they can benefit from their teacher's greatest strengths.

I have many friends in schools around the USA and around the world, and I am increasingly hearing that many of them are moving schools with the hope that, in a different school, they will again be allowed to keep their "spice" alive. They were hired for their track record of talented teaching but now are being asked to stop being different.

At the Teachers' Guild, I have come across teachers who are trying to find people at other schools who can implement their ideas, to see if their ideas would work, because they are not allowed to do so themselves. You can imagine how frustrated they feel!

The drive for consistency seems to be happening everywhere, all at once. I certainly understand why. Certainly, "creativity" and "uniqueness" should not be used as excuses for failing to properly teach the curriculum; it is important to identify teachers who need help, and to get it for them. But, it does make me wonder: is this the best way to ensure that every student has the most amazing possible experience? Or are we guaranteeing somewhat poorer - but equal - experiences for everyone? And, how can we get the best of both worlds?

Teachers Guild

I have not written for a while. Inspiration is everywhere but the will to sit down and write sometimes is not! But I want to tell you about Teacher's Guild - so time to warm up the keyboard!

I discovered Teacher's Guild (TG) this summer, and had a blast! TG is the result of a partnership between IDEO and Riverdale Country School, and I received an email asking if I would like to join the Beta version during the summer. I answered yes and was invited to join a Google Hangout (GHO), which I did.

Here's how it works: the Guild posts a challenge and you are invited to come up with, develop and select ideas to address the challenge. The process is structured in phases: Discover, Ideate, Evolve, Select, Favorites and Reflect.

You will often start with your own idea,  and you will read other people's ideas, soon there are self-selecting teams forming around ideas and developing them, and you find yourself working with people who are enthusiastic and curious and creative and fun - remember, these are people you have never met! And, you are not just working on your idea - you may be working to develop several ideas.

I really enjoyed working on them with typically about seven people, sometimes more. I was surprised how much fun we had, and how committed people were to the process - remember, everyone is doing this because the want to. The discussions were amazing and rewarding. The Guild is a place that I found that the children and the learning community is center and front.

The specific question we were looking at was, "How might we create rituals and routines that establish a culture of innovation in our classrooms and schools?" and we brainstormed, we streched our minds and we worked hard as a team to answer a common question.

We started at the Discovery phase with 210 contributions, at the Ideate phase we had 121, followed by Evolve and Select with 51 then we had Favourites with 13 ideas. From this 13 ideas, 6 were from the NYC Design Team, the team I now belong to!

We don't have ownership of ideas, we have sharedship and I must tell you sharedship is AWESOME.

Check the Guild out:

Teachers Guild

There will be a new Challenge in October, and we would love to see you there! Let's collaborate, it is a safe place, your mind will be stretched, you'll meet some great people, and you'll have fun!

iCity

Great News!

If you enjoyed reading about iCity two years ago in this blog you can now download the iCity booklet at the Apple Bookstore for Free.

iCity is booklet number 2 of the Spreading JAM series. Book 3 and 4  (iCelebrate and iLive) will be available soon.

iCity

Communication - more on the newsletter

I guess people really do read these posts - I got a lot of complaints from people who don't want to wait to hear more about the newsletter!  :-)

Actually, I will say I was fairly excited myself, when I thought of it. I woke up early on Sunday morning with the thought in my head, and I couldn't get back to sleep. I held out until, oh, at least 9am before waking up my boyfriend to tell him all about it!

As I see it, there are three things to think about: What do you want the children to get out of it? What process will do that for the children and also deliver a finished newsletter? And, what do you need from the school to make it all work?

From the children's point of view, I want them to have a fun experience doing something "cool," partly on their own and partly as part of a team. Educationally, I want them to use the skills they have learned in school (reading, writing, researching, planning) while their focus is on something else, because this is how learned skills become automatic skills. They may even learn some new skills, like how to structure an interview and organize a project. I also want them to develop greater autonomy through working on their own, improve their team skills through working together, and to develop the skill of switching between solo and team work as well!

How will it work? Well, you have to understand that I haven't done this with children this age before, so the answer is, partly, "I guess I'll find out!" :-)   But, I do have a plan.

I am thinking of recruiting 15 students in total, 10 from J4 (age 10) and 5 from J3 (age 9). I plan to minimize the burden on their teachers, but I will need them to help identify the children who will participate. In our school we have an existing process for things not unlike this (for example, there is a Junior Student Council that involves the junior school in events such as Food Harvest), so I will use that process. First, I will ask the teachers to let me come in and describe the newsletter to the class. Then, the teachers will see if anyone is interested. I can take up to 2 per classroom in J4, and 1 per classroom in J3. If we have more applicants than that, the teachers will hold a class vote for who will join us, and we will keep the others' names in case anyone drops out.

I will ask the older (J4) children to act as the team reporters, with each having a "column" to write (actually more like several paragraphs) and the younger (J3) children to act as the photographers for the stories. We will meet for half an hour, one morning a week, before school, in my classroom to discuss our projects and progress, and next steps. Then, one afternoon a month we will meet for an hour so the children can type up their columns on school computers. At first, I will do the editing and formatting, but I hope that by later rounds I may be able to involve the children in that. My goal is to produce one newsletter every 2 months.

So, what will the columns be about? I expect that we will have one on what's happening in each grade (e.g., a field trip) from the children's point of view; a language column (e.g., an overview of the Oxford Reading Tree reading system, by the children); math (e.g., what they think of the Investigations); humanities (e.g., UN Day); two profiles of members of the staff/administration; and 2 guest book reviews by non-regular contributors (could be from younger children, too).

I realize that the up-to-date thing to do would be a blog (like this!) but I'm going to try it as a physical newsletter first. I think that it would be nice for the children to have their work distributed around the Junior School in physical form, so they can see it and see others reading it. I hope that will be a big part of the fun; but if blogging seems to connect better for them, we can do that! The physical newsletter would have 4 pages, printed double-sided on 2 sheets of paper. With 10 columns, plus 2 book reviews, we have 12 columns total, or 3 columns per page on average.

Oh - a very important factor in getting buy-in to this: I will be volunteering my own time! Why? Because I think it will be cool for the kids, and I think it will be a lot of fun for me!

For now I plan to start next term!

Communication

Most schools are very active communicators. They send regular communication out to the parents, letting them know what's going on in the school through newsletters, classroom blogs and emails. Of course, they also communicate regularly with the teachers and staff - and that's still adult-to-adult communications. In addition, the older grades have newspapers and blogs done by the students.

It's much less common, though, for the students in the Junior Schools to produce newsletters or blogs. On the other hand, producing a newsletter would be a fun way for the Junior School students to practice the skills they are learning, outside the classroom environment, without worrying about whether it will be graded. That got me thinking: what would it take to enable the elementary school children to do their own newsletter? After all, we were able to do a book club for six-year-olds, and that worked very well - it's not just for adults!

So, I am working to design a program for a newsletter prepared by 9-and-10-year-olds.

If it is a success I will let you know how it works. If it is not, we need not speak of it again :-).

It is not about doing what you love the most; it is about loving what you do!

The late Steve Jobs' commencement speech at Stanford has been in the news lately. It's a wonderful speech; go and read it now, if you like - I'll wait.

One of the parts of the speech that has been celebrated is this:


"I'm convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle. As with all matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don't settle."

The thing is, that's a lovely idea, but it gets read as meaning something like "do what you love, and the money will follow." That's not what he said, though. Steve Jobs became fabulously wealthy doing what he loved, but Steve Jobs was Steve Jobs: he was one person out of several billion on the planet. His experience was unique. To put it simply, "You are not Steve Jobs".

I wish he had said something in the lines of:

"You might not be as lucky as I was, to be able to do what you love straight away and be successful at it. You may have to choose between things you already love, and things you could come to love, and things you know you will never love. Whatever you choose to do, try to love it because you might spend the next 40 or 50 years of your life at it. It probably won't make you rich, although it might, but you will have spent much of your life in a project you love. There's a lot of reward in that."

Mick Jagger was asked in an interview if he thought that electronic music downloads would destroy the music industry, and make it impossible for musicians to get rich as he did. Jagger said that electronic downloads were making it possible for many, many musicians to get their music out there without needing big record labels. Sure, he said, it probably would be much harder to get rich - but through history there have been very few musicians who got rich. Jagger reflected that he had been lucky to come at a special time, when a lucky few - like himself - got fabulously rich from music. Such a thing had never really been possible for musicians before and maybe, he thought, it would never happen again.

Many people love making music. Few will get rich from it. Many people love making new gadgets, but few will get rich from it. Few people naturally love dentistry, but it may be a better career choice, for some people, than making music. As you decide what to do in your life, you may have to, so to speak, learn to love dentistry. But, in our world, you don't have to - and should not think you have to - do something you could never love. So don't.

Gifted - Interested

I was out for lunch with Finbar this weekend. We went to one of our favourites restaurants in NYC, "Osteria Morini" (if you live here or are in town you should try it out). We were talking about food and I was telling him that it amazes me how much I like cooking. When I lived in London I had learnt to cook, and I liked it, but I was never all that ambitious at the time. I thought that cooking was magic, something only the gifted could do. But now, I have started cooking more ambitious dishes, and I'm having a great time.

He asked, what is different now? I said that now I cook because I am interested in cooking, and not because I need to eat. Because I am interested, I have started to try new things. And, I have learned that it's not magic, it's not limited to people with special gifts. With practice, I can cook too!

Sometimes people are gifted in an area, and it comes naturally to them. It's easy to think they're the only people who can be good at what they do. But it's not true! Someone who is interested in something can practice, and become good at it or even master it. There is research that shows that expertise in a skill depends mostly on practice. Talent helps, but practice is far more important. People with talents tend to practice because it's fun to be good at something. But, people who are interested can practice something because it's fun - and that way they become good at it! The key in education is to try to tap into that effect, to help the children discover new interests wherever possible. Wherever we can find the fun, we can practice without it being work. Of course, for each child there may be things that aren't fun; but what a gift  it is when we find new things that are!

I Wonder & iTravel

I have been teaching kindergarten for quite a while now. Let's say that when I started teaching, telephones were not cordless, we had televisions where you had to stand up to change the channel, portable music meant a "Walkman," and hi-fi music was on vinyl.

The world is in constant change, and so are the children. Some people believe that if you teach the same year over and over you can simply fall into a routine... and that is so not true. The curriculum may continue to be the same, but the children are not.

The presentation of the curriculum must be adapted from year to year according to the needs and preferences of the children. 

Last year my classroom was mainly populated by firstborn children: this year I have lots of siblings. Last year, "Percy the Park Keeper" was the preferred book; this year they prefer the "Large Family" collection. Last year they wanted to "Wonder" about things, while this year they want to experience them.

So instead of "I Wonder," we will have "iTravel" on Fridays. Every other Friday the children will find the classroom chairs lined up in rows, like seats in an airplane. We will take the children, in their imaginations, to another country. We will have preflight briefings, and suitcases, and passports, to make it more vivid (the suitcases and passports are made out of cornflake boxes). Up on the board they will see where they are going, on a map, and we'll talk about how far away it is.

When landing, they will get their suitcases and passports and line up to go through passport control and get stamps on their passports, and they will be greeted by someone in the language of that country. After that the country guide will be waiting for them, to take them to see something representative of the country. (As you can imagine, I will play multiple roles during all this!) 

The children will mail a postcard from "the country" (actually from the school, of course!) to their parents, telling them where they have been. 

iTravel is based on an awesome book, which has all sorts of great ideas for us to use:

iTravel's launch generated enthusiasm from the children that exceeded anything we had expected. They LOVED being on the airplane, and lining up with their passports, and doing Flamenco dancing and saying "ole!"

During all this fun, we do have some sneaky ulterior motives. You see, we can slip many of the learning objectives for the year into the iTravel theme. For example, one of the things we talk about early in the year is "All About Me," where each child can talk about themselves, including where they are from, where their parents are from, what they eat there, what holidays their families celebrate, and what their country's flag looks like. We talk about "friendship" and "citizenship," and we talk about "processes" (such as getting on the plane, flying, getting off the plane, going through immigration...). 

Toward the end of the year, we will pull it all back in again to ask, "Where Are We?" We will zoom in, from looking at the whole world, to look at the United States, and then New York, and then to our own neighborhoods. We will talk about what makes a neighborhood, how they are similar and different, what all neighborhoods need, and the people in our neighborhoods and what they do.

We must reinvent ourselves every year and make learning interesting and above all FUN!

Happy travels!

Peace Table

Once, someone told me a story. Maybe it was true, maybe not! According to the story, a woman asked Ghandi to talk to her husband, because he (the husband) had committed to fast for a week, but never seemed to get around to actually doing it. Ghandi agreed to talk to the husband and ask him to fulfill his commitment, but told her he would only do it in a week's time, and to come back with her husband then.
The woman did as Ghandi asked, but of course she began to wonder why he had made her wait a week, so on the return visit she asked him. He answered, "I would never ask someone to do something I wouldn't do myself!"

The story haunts me at times. I teach the children some very basic life skills - but I realize I don't always do the very things I ask them to do!

One of the very important skill sets I try to work on with the children is to deal with conflict - and how not to let differences of opinion become unecessarily emotional or personal. I talk to them about how to recognize their own emotions, and to think about how their friends may be feeling. I talk to them about differences of opinion, and about how their friends may disagree with them for good reasons, and that it doesn't mean they don't like them anymore.  Another important insight, for them, is to realize that sometimes things happen by accident, and sometimes things are done on purpose.

How do we teach the children to deal with these situations? First, they have to learn to recognize their own feelings about what is happening. Second, they have to learn that attacking - whether physically or verbally - is not an appropriate response. Third, they learn that talking always helps: talking about why they feel upset, or about why they are having a difference of opinion, or about why the accident happened.

We have a Peace Table in the classroom, exactly for the talking part of the exercise. Whenever any of the children wants to, (s)he can invite a friend to come to the Peace Table to talk about whatever is on their mind. Early in the year we introduce this concept to the children, and they are amazingly open to it and simply start using it. I hope this will help them to grow up as adults who don't bottle things up inside - and who also don't explode in reaction to things people do (like I sometimes do!).

synthetic phonics X analytic phonics

At our school we teach reading by teaching the sounds and then teaching the children to build up the words from the sounds.  It may seem like the obvious way to teach reading, but actually there has been some controversy about it. There is another school of thought, that says it's better to teach the children to recognize whole words, right from the beginning. 


There's actually been serious research into which approach is more effective. 


The biggest study of this was done in the UK. Researchers there concluded that synthetic phonics (building up words from their constituent sounds) is more effective than analytic phonics (the “whole word” approach) after finding that: 
- After 1 year, students taught with synthetic phonics had reading ability approx. 1 year ahead of their chronological age (i.e., ahead of the reading ability of students taught with analytic phonics), and also had spelling ability that was at least 1 year ahead of the spelling ability of students taught with analytic phonics.
- The advantage demonstrated by students taught with synthetic phonics is persistent, rather than temporary. In subsequent years, the synthetic phonics students continue to have a lead of at least 1 year, in both reading and spelling, over students taught with analytic phonics.
- Groups of disadvantaged children, who have historically underachieved when taught with analytic phonics, did not underachieve when taught with synthetic phonics. This was consistent with the observation made by some researchers that, although there tends to be a “tail” group of students who significantly underperform with analytic phonics instruction (whether they belong to a “disadvantaged” group or not), the use of synthetic phonics almost entirely eliminates this “tail.”

Researchers believe that the reasons why synthetic phonics is more effective are:
- Knowledge of letter sounds (or phonemes), or even just letter names, has been found to be the strongest predictor of reading achievement. Synthetic phonics teaches letter sounds early in the instruction process. 
- Blending together individual sounds has been found to be a strong predictor of reading achievement (when measured before the beginning of formal instruction). Synthetic phonics explicitly teaches blending skills.
- Segmenting words into sounds has been found to be a strong predictor of spelling ability. Synthetic phonics explicitly teaches word segmentation.
- The synthetic phonics approach engages the left brain (as shown by MRI studies), rather than the right brain, which is engaged by the analytic phonics approach. The left brain is more efficient at processing language.
- There is a theory for why synthetic phonics should work better: the use of letter sounds, blending and segmenting reduces the cognitive load on the student. Here's what this means, as I understand it. When trying to identify short words, there are relatively few possible solutions to consider, but the number of possible long words is enormous. The number of possible solutions grows exponentially with the length of the word, so that the analytic phonics student, in trying to identify the whole word directly, quickly faces a problem of tremendous complexity. In contrast, identification of the individual sounds in the word, followed by blending them together, presents the student with a problem that grows only in proportion to the length of the word. Beyond short words, this gives a huge advantage to the synthetic phonics student.

Assessment

There's a question that has always seemed, to me, to lie at the heart of a lot of the disagreements about assessments: who are we assessing - the children, or ourselves?

I myself grew up very much afraid of assessments, and my stress over them has meant that I have not been the best performer on tests. 

I realized, however, that stressing over tests is a learned response, not a natural one. My students don't know that they "should" stress over assessments, and they don't even know they're being assessed, especially as the assessments can take so many different forms at this age and stage in life.

From my point of view, what's useful about assessment is that it allows me to learn what lessons I have taught effectively to each child. The assessments help me to identify what I need to do differently for the remainder of the year, not just in general, but with each individual child. 

So, I see the assessment as being an assessment of what I have done, not an assessment of the children as students. I am the grownup, and it is up to me to communicate to the child - it is not the child's job to figure me out. And, for the child, where is the benefit in having them think of themselves as "not a good student"? 

I'm not Pollyanna: I realize that the children are different, and I realize that as they get older they will have to learn techniques that will allow them to assess well. However, I believe that all the children should - and can - learn all the material I teach; whatever their level of ability and maturity, it is up to me to find a way to make the material accessible to them - and this is why I find differentiation so valuable and important. 

Still, at some point the kids are going to figure out that they're being assessed, and how they react to it will depend on how they think about the answer to that question I asked: am I assessing their performance, or mine?

So, in my classroom, once in a while I tell the children, "today, please don't talk among yourselves (I usually encourage collaboration) as you do this activity, because I want to know if I have been able to teach you properly. If I didn't, I will try to find a better way to teach it to you." No surprise, the children are very eager to help me out! I've even had children tell me things like, "Miss Marra, I am not so sure about the hexagon - I think you will have to teach me about that again!" 

I Wonder ...... Earth

When our "I Wonder" session began this week, we all sat down in a circle and the kids did some "wondering," and I reminded them that we had planned to talk about one of the "wonders" from last week: how the Earth came to be the Earth! 

I had my story ready:

A long, long, long, long, long time ago(!) there wasn't any Earth. All there was, was just a lot of dust and rocks, floating in space.

Then, this one fairly big rock came along, and other rocks and dust started to stick to it. As they did, it got bigger and bigger, and the bigger it became, the more the other rocks and dust wanted to stick to it, so it kept getting bigger and bigger until eventually it was HUGE! And that HUGE rock is what we now call Earth.

Now, I said that the other little rocks and dust started to stick to the bigger rock. But how do we know that happened? We know because it still happens! We can even make that happen here in the classroom, RIGHT NOW!

(Have the children pick up small objects - pencils and so forth.)

Okay, now let's pretend that the pencils and the rulers are just like rocks and dust in space. (If anyone is really dubious, you can always get them some rocks.) What happens if you let them go?

(The children let them go. They fall.)

See? Everything wants to stick to the Earth! In fact, WE even want to stick to the Earth! (Jump up, fall back down!) Does anyone know a name for that? It's called Gravity.

Now, does anyone know anything else that things like to stick to? (Discussion - and introduce the magnet.)


Magnets don't have gravity, they have magnetism. It's different because only metal wants to stick to a magnet, but EVERYTHING wants to stick to the Earth. But we can use a little magnet to let you imagine what it looked like when the Earth was just starting to grow.  (Show the magnet. Put it under the paper. Explain that the iron filings are dust, but they're made of metal so that they want to stick to the magnet. Sprinkle filings over the paper, very slowly, explaining that these are the pieces of dust passing by. As you do so, filings landing near the spot where the magnet is below the paper, will start to gather in a clump over the magnet. The area nearby will have very few filings on the paper, although filings landing farther away will stay where they are. The clump of filings represents the rocks gathering to form the early Earth, and the clear space around the clump shows why the Earth isn’t growing much today – all the rocks that could have fallen down have already fallen down.) 

You may want to re-do the "things falling" demonstration. It's pretty cool because they can see for themselves how the rocks stick to the Earth - and to see that they do, too.

---

Questions you might be asked:

Q: Where did the dust come from?
A: We don't really know! We know that some of it came from stars, like the sun, very far away. And scientists think that, originally, everything began in a giant explosion called the Big Bang, but how that happened is still a mystery. Maybe one of you will eventually figure it out!

Q: Why does everything want to stick to the Earth?
A: Gravity means that when something is really, really big, small things want to stick to it. Things want to stick to the Earth, but things near the Moon want to stick to the Moon. And, in fact, things near the Sun want to stick to the Sun (which is really hot, so I'm glad I'm not standing on it)!

Q: But if the Earth started off as a small rock, why did things want to stick to it then, when it was small?
A: Well, back then only very very tiny things stuck to it. But every time they did, it got a little bigger. And as it got bigger, slightly bigger things stuck to it. It was a bit like making a snowman, when you start off with a snowball and roll it on the ground (not all the children may know this, but some will). At first you roll it and roll it but only a little snow sticks to it, and it stays small for a long time. But then, as it gets bigger, it grows faster and faster, and soon it gets really big.

Q: Is the Earth still getting bigger?
A: Not much anymore, but yes. Almost everything in the area, small enough to fall down onto it, has already fallen down! But sometimes a passing rock, floating past in space on its way from somewhere else, will get pulled down. At night, if it's really dark out (like when you're in the countryside), you sometimes see a falling star. That's a rock, falling down onto the Earth, and making it a little bit bigger!

57 flavours?

Last summer I attended two courses* in London. One thing that struck me quite forcibly, while there, was how teachers’confidence seems to reach a low point after a certain number of years on the job: even though they want to, they feel they can no longer grow because they feel the system they work within - no matter what it is - limits them.

On both courses we were told we would be asked to share "nuggets" of knowledge with each other at the end. I quickly identified the "nugget" I wanted to share, but as the course went on and I saw myself and my colleagues as students, I realized I was going to change it!

The original "nugget" came from an experience I had last year, when my good friend Adriana and I took an online course on Differentiation. One of the assignments we had to do was based on a Malcolm Gladwell essay on spaghetti sauce (seriously!).

Gladwell told how, for many years, makers of spaghetti sauce had tried to find the "perfect" sauce. They did surveys, they compared which sauces people preferred, and they gradually arrived at a point where they were all selling almost exactly the same sauce, which they thought of as the "best".

But then a marketer had a new idea. What if, he thought, there was a group of people who would prefer a different type of sauce? Then he could prepare a sauce to suit their taste and, even though most people would prefer the usual sauce, he would have the best sauce for those people! He tried it, and he was right - and successful. With each new sauce he could "pick off" the customers who were "odd" enough to think this new sauce was better than the "best" sauce. As the big sauce companies saw what he was doing, they all did the same. By designing different sauces, they could satisfy their customers’ tastes even better than they could with one sauce. Even though a relatively small number of people preferred any particular one of the new sauces, for those people it was better than the "best". Today, of course, there are tens of different spaghetti sauces, and each of us can select the one we prefer.

When I got to the course in London and was told I would have to share a "nugget"' I thought I would share that one. Now, most teachers (including Adriana and I), when they read that essay, think of the students as the product, the spaghetti sauces. Each one is different, and that’s what is so special about them, and as a teacher you have to be able to cater to all of them. But as I sat in a classroom in London, a student instead of a teacher for the week, I saw the story a little differently, and it changed the way I presented it at the end.

I now proposed this interpretation: the children are the customers, and the school is a brand (like, say, Barilla), and we, the teachers, are the spaghetti sauces, the products. The school wants to add each of us to its collection because each of us has something they cannot find in any product (teacher!) they already have. When they hired us, it was because we were the best complement, among all the teachers they interviewed, to the portfolio of teachers they already had. We were the perfect new product, the missing flavor! Each of us brings something unique, something that no other teacher in the school already has, something that adds a little "zing!" to the brand and rounds it out.

But as soon as this new product arrives, it encounters other products and sees that it is different to them, that it doesn’t really "fit in". We need to remember that the new product is there because it is different. We don’t need to be the same as the other products. We cannot forget that the brand does not need us to be the same as each other; it needs us to be a little different, so that we can satisfy the customers' different needs - whether for content, or teaching style, or personality. And, of course, we must never forget that each of us is an amazing product, one the school has selected for our uniqueness.

* The courses were,“Inquiry-Based Learning in the International Classroom,“ and “Classroom Assessment Strategies,“ at the Teacher Training Centre in Each ran for 5 days, from July 1-5 and from July 7-11.

RSA Animate - Changing Education Paradigms

Sir Ken Robinson is one of the five people I would like to sit and have tea with, (Michael Caine, Greg Mortenson, Steve Wozniak, Mihály Csíkszentmihályi are the others, just in case you were wondering) and it would probably be the first time in my life that I would have my mouth shut! ;-)


Thoughts?


(non animated version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCbdS4hSa0s&feature=relmfu)

President's Day

As of the upcoming President's Day, we decided to explore some basic citizenship ideas, through the process of electing a President in the classroom. The children learned that, in an election, several candidates will present ideas; that all of the candidates do so with good intentions; and that they have the right to choose the candidate whose ideas they prefer - or not to choose any of them.

In our classroom election, all the children were candidates, and I was impressed by the quality of their platforms: almost all of their ideas were relevant and most of them were even practical!

To kick off the lesson, I described the idea of a leadership team. For example, in the classroom, the teacher and the teacher assistant and I are the leadership team, and of course in the school we have Director and the Principal. Most of them are also familiar with President Obama, and many of them knew that he has a Vice President, Joe Biden. Of course, today they are a leadership team, but I explained that at one time they had to run for election, and the other candidate for President was John McCain. If Mr. McCain had become President, his Vice President would have been Sarah Palin.

To illustrate how the election process worked, my TA and I each chose an issue and gave an opinion on how we could improve it. We then held a short debate, and the children voted. I explained that the children had to consider our position on the issue, and that they should think about our idea and not just which person they might like more. It was a tight election!

Now, I asked the children to each write down an idea to improve the classroom, and idea they would try to persuade us to put in practice if they were elected President of the class by the others. The children came up with their ideas and wrote them down. The ideas included "no more homework," and "start at a later time so we can sleep later," on the more practical level, to "build a JAM tennis court (or swimming pool)" at the more imaginative level.

With the ideas all written down, I read out each one and allowed the children to vote. They could vote as often as they liked by raising their hands. We ended up with 5 leading ideas, and we then held a run-off between them, but now they could each vote only once. This narrowed it down to 2. At this point, in the second run-off, we issued ballots and each child could circle their preferred idea. It was interesting that, in the course of the discussions about the ideas, the children realized that they should vote for the more practical ideas, rather than the more wishful/fanciful ones.

Once again, the election results were very tight, with only 2 votes separating the two candidates (and one "spoiled vote" by someone who just couldn't decide between the ideas!). I declared a winner, and because the vote was so close - and because we had talked about leadership teams that included both a President and a Vice President, I declared the winner to be Class President, and the runner-up to be Class Vice President.

If the children have an idea they would like to put in practice in the classroom, we agreed they could bring the idea to the Vice President. Therefore, he will be their liaison, as it were. The Vice President will then advise the President on the children's views, and the team will discuss whether they should make a formal proposal to the teachers. If they decide to move ahead, the President will be the one to present the proposal to us. (Of course, the children are always free to come to us directly - but they thought it very cool to have their own elected representatives!)

Shortly after the election, the President approached me with a proposal, and I am studying it.

as Julia Child would say, you never have enough butter...

One of my favourite lessons - the Crazy Cookies lesson!

I want to introduce the idea of measurement and its importance, and - as always :-)  - I want the lesson to be sufficiently memorable to make the concepts stick.

I start off by having the children try on various coats and shoes, and then identify which ones fit and which ones don't, and we ask questions that lead them to discover the importance of size and measurement (and that the numbers on their clothing tags have a meaning).

I move on to discussing the idea of measurements in cooking recipes. The children already know that recipes contain ingredients and usually have some idea that the quantities of each ingredient may be important.

So, to help make all of this clearer and more memorable, we bake some cookies! In fact, we bake two sets of cookies, with the same ingredients in both - but one set follows the measurements in the recipe, and the other... doesn't!

So, I start off by having a circle with the kids and describing the lesson plan, then I ask the children which group they'd prefer to be in - the one that follows the recipe measurement, or the one that doesn't.

Since we have two groups mixing ingredients, I read out the ingredients and quantities. I then show the measured group how to measure out the ingredients. The other group discusses how much they want to use of each ingredient before measuring it out.

As you can imagine, the kids have a lot of fun mixing the ingredients!

Soon enough, it's time to bake the cookies. One set - the measured set - already looks like normal cookies, while the non-measured ones look more like... something else.

We take the cookie trays to the school cafeteria, where we put the measured tray in the oven for the right amount of time (10 minutes), and of course the non-measured cookies get a little more (we wouldn't want to risk having them be under-done).

And so we have two sets of cookies, with the same ingredients, but with one following the measurements in the recipe and the other... not.

Each child gets one of each, to sample the result. There is always much discussion! Each child also gets a set of cookies to take home, so some of the parents get to see the result of our experiment (not all of them, because the cookies don't always make it home!)


Of course, we write about the cookies, and each child writes about which recipe they prefer, and why.

That's as far as we take the cookery-based lesson. We continue to talk about other aspects of measurement - temperature, furniture sizes and dimensions, height and weight - using the story of Goldilocks. 

Friends, Camera, Action

"Friendly Situations"


This is an activity where the kids are divided into groups, and each group (3 or 4 kids) gets a (still) camera. They have to discuss among themselves what a friend is, how to keep friends, and how can you show you are someone’s friend. They then plan an acting scene around the theme of “A Friendly Situation.” Once that has been planned, one directs and the others act out the situation, while the Director takes pictures of their acting. We rotate the job of Director/photographer so that everyone on each team gets to do it. 

After that, we upload the pictures to an App called SonicPics. Each child, as Director for a set of pictures, selects pictures to show and narrates what the others were doing, to create a short presentation showing a way to be someone’s friend.


The children truly enjoy taking the photographs and narrating their presentations.

Things have certainly changed since my day - iPads?

The introduction of the iPads at JAM has allowed us to make a even greater use of Collaboration learning. This is where the kids work as a team, sharing what they know and explaining it to each other. As we all know, the best way to learn something is often to try to explain it to someone else. As we have seen, however, there often needs to be someone to decide which child’s opinion is the right one (in a dispute over whether to spell the word as “and" or "adn", for example). This is where the iPad comes in.

Picture the scene: Two JAM kids were sitting around an iPad, shortly after I had introduced the devices in the classroom in September. They were looking at an activity where a word is shown with a blank space for the first letter. The app speaks the word, and shows a picture of the object in question (the words are all nouns). The app presents several options for what the first letter might be. By tapping on the right letter, the kids get a cheer from the iPad and can move forward in their game.

In this case, the game presented “b” and “d” as options. The exchange was something like this:

• It’s with a “ba”
• Yes, it is! You’re right. Like for “boat!”
• But, is that the one that goes around this way, or that way?
• Well, there’s “da” too. I remember that... We could get the picture dictionary!

I overheard the conversation, and the problem-solving exercise.  Not long after, the voice of the iPad called out their success.