Anne Frank: An RE class

We're learning about characteristics of heroes in RE currently, and this week discussed Anne Frank. We read a short biography about her and in between paragraphs discussed World War II, racism, and the Nazi party.

"Did Christians get killed by the Nazis?"
"Nope."
"Woo!!! Go Christians!!"
No, no, no. This is a sad story, not a football game, no one won the Holocaust.

We discussed the gas chambers.

"They dug big pits and threw them in where they were eaten by crocodiles!"
"Well, the Nazis did kill people in lots of different ways, but I don't think they did that."
"I maybe am getting them mixed up with the Egyptians."
"Maybe."

We looked at pictures of Anne Frank and the floor plan of the annex online. They wanted to hear some of the diary and one of the girls knew just where in the library it was, so she raced downstairs and back up again with the book in her hands. I read to them and they curled up on the floor listening.

"Is this a real story?"

Usually I answer that question like this: "Well, a lot of people believe it is true."

Today? "Yes."

Happy Birthday Uncle Andy!

Dear Andy,
You asked me if I had eaten any British strawberries as they are your favourite and you remember eating many of them around your birthday. Well, I am here to say that YES I have, and in fact, I made your grandmother's strawberry pie with them in honour of your birthday. I think these ones were from Norfolk.

Here's the thing though, I got the recipe from my mother's (your sister's) cookbook, and it actually is a little difficult to translate it from American into British. Things like "2 large packages of Jell-O" and "2 packets of graham crackers" are a bit difficult to find/guage volume wise in a country where Jello-O is called "jelly" and it comes already woobley. The crackers I replaced with digestive biscuits and then I guessed at all the volumes. I'm not used to working with jelly or hand whipped cream (thanks, Ella!) so this is not my most aesthetically pleasing result ever, (excuses!) but it was delicious. And enjoyed by many at the picnic today (it disappeared in minutes). We toasted you and your birthday!

Also, this morning I taught some tykes- I had them make you a little birthday card:

So happy birthday, Andy. You're the best uncle a niece could ask for! 

love,

CASEY

Odds and Ends

I taught in Harrow today and it was a bit of a mixed bag. Unsurprisingly, the lessons that I was prepared for went well! The ones that I wasn't? Not so much...Really, must learn from this.

We're on to a new term which means news songs for my two groups of singing tykes! I'm determined to start part singing with my older ones (5-8), which means I need to make sure that I'm not wandering all over the place pitch wise when I teach them the songs. (I like using teaching as a way to force myself to learn things I ought to have learned years ago.) We're working with "pease pudding hot" which I had them sing, use kodaly hand signals for, hocket (pass) between the boys and girls where one group sang only the words the rhymed with temperature words and the other group sang the rest of the song (pay attention, kiddoes! If you don't you'll get all confused!), and then tried signing with two different starting pitches.

We also had a big discussion about what, exactly, pease pudding is. A boiled pudding a la treacle pudding? A  pot pie filled with peas? Some old Victorian food that no one eats any more because it is gross? No one knew. Fortunately Wikipedia has come to the rescue: "pease pudding is a boiled vegetable product, which mainly consists of split yellow or Carlin peas, water, salt, and spices often cooked with a bacon or ham joint." So there you go. Huh.


 (Incidentally here's a conversation I had with one of my girls:
"Casey, have you heard of a man we're studying in school?"
"....Do you know his name?"
"I think, I think it's, um, William Morris?"
"Oh my gosh, yes! Have you been to his house in Walthamstow?"
"No, but he was born in Walthamstow!"
"Exactly! What is it that you are studying in school, The Aesthetics?"
"...um. No? The Victorians."
Because 7 year olds will not be studying aestheticism, you ninny.)

The younger group was meant to be singing "rain rain go away" but I got all muddled so they sang "pease pudding hot" as well...which threw off my whole mental lesson plan. Mrhg. Oh, well. I lost three or four of them to their mothers, which is my highest attrition rate ever in this school. Must actually have a lesson plan next time. Ah, well. Their version of a rhythmic rhyme called "chop chop choppity chop" took a delightful turn when one of the four year olds waxed poetic about a "nice piece of meat with a bit of fat around the edge" that we ought to throw into our stew pot. He continued talking for quite a while about this meat with the fat still on it and I grinned at him trying not to giggle at the tiny gourmand.

Speaking of delightfulness, I had a quick visit for tea and ginger cake at Peter's house yesterday. He and Gail say hello and also gave me a clipping from the Guardian of one of the Westminster vergers (who happens to be a friend of theirs) doing cartwheels down the aisle after the Royal Wedding. I've got it tacked to my bedroom wall now. Fortunately, YouTube has many, many versions for you to peruse. Here's one:

Happy American Mother's Day!

Some Ideas From Children

I'm marking the kid's Religious Education books. Okay, so I probably should have done this...before. But I'm doing it now! So that's good.

At one point we were illustrating the metaphor of good= light and bad= dark. I've just got to a page where one of the children has drawn a giant warning sign that says "DANG" with exclamation point above it. I think it's adorable! (even though the next page makes it clear that what he was *trying* to write was "danger," which isn't nearly as funny as Dang!)

One child has suggested that on the sabbath Jewish people could go to the opera or go swimming. Those are his only two suggestions. I kind of love it. This same kid's explanation for why David fought Goliath was the reward of £10,000. (I don't remember that part of the story...?)

Possibly my new favourite: under Things I Wouldn't Do If My Parents Were Watching I found the suggestion that perhaps it would not be the best idea to smuggle a mummy from Egypt into the house under your folk's noses.

I heartily agree.

Also, "don't wobble with your silly faces." I mean, who could disagree with that?

And don't make the BT tower break. Very important to remember not to do that in front of your parents.

Conundrum

This blog is brought to you via Sir Ken Robinson. If you don't yet know about RSA animates, well, then, you're in for a treat. Go watch that (it's just under 12 minutes long) then come back here and we'll get this discussion started.

I watched that this afternoon. Sir Ken has long been an...idol? of mine. I don't tend to have massive work crushes on people all that often, but MAN I think his mind is amazing. And kind of genius, super interesting, and ooh, do you think he'd let me work with him??

Part of why I get so excited by his ideas is his sense that collaboration is both how people learn best and also what our workforce and economy are looking for now (and in the forseeable future). Collaborative environments excite me tremendously and I do my best to create a classroom environment that encourages and promotes that.

Today was my first class back with the French kids. We've been on half term holiday and so I've not seen them in two weeks. It's always been an awkward time for a class- an hour long music lesson after this bunch of four year olds have already spent all day in school. It's not a recipe for focus and alert attention. So I tolerate a fair bit of scurrying around and try to work with the energy and ideas that they've got.

We started in with our usual hello song to which one of the children started snorting like a pig. "Ah, I see B's turned into a pig over the holiday! Shall we all sing like a pig?" So we oinked through the hello song. I asked some of the other children what they had turned into over the break and we snapped like crocodiles, snorted like pigs (again), and barked like puppies. B. then curled up into my lap. I took that as an opportunity to see if I could remember the words to "rock a bye baby" or not. Part of me was wanting to take cues from the children and use whatever they offered. To "yes, and..." what they brought to class. Another part of me was hoping that lullabies would, well, lull them if not to sleep, then at least to a calmer frame of mind.

The thing that *really* gets me about the second half of this story is that we were songwriting today. It was meant to be a collaborative creative process (and largely was) and even with that intent, with that idea in my head and having watched this video this morning, I still ended up trying to get them to fit into a box.

B. doesn't speak a whole lot of English. He clearly enjoys class, and he clearly has a lot of energy. Does he have ADHD? I would be surprised, which doesn't mean that he focuses all that easily or that he doesn't spend a large portion of the class spinning around in a circle on his bottom.

Today we worked with drums and a set of chime bars to reinforce 'Sol' and 'Mi' as well as to continue working on rhythmic solfege and writing music up on the board. I. has totally got it, she's on the ball, she pays attention, and she only spins around on the floor sometimes. (She is also four after all.) She's the only girl in our class.

B. kept playing on the drums when he'd been asked not to; I took his drum away four times or so over the course of our lesson. Yet he was the first one to come up with lyrics "sit, watch, sit and watch" Great! Really good! On pitches that we'd been using and the rhythm we'd been practicing! Fantastic!! Then came "No, no, no piano" Also, correct pitches, sung in tune, a variation on the rhythm we'd been focusing on, really really good work. Slightly concerning lyrics that you kids just came up with there, but we can definitely work with that.

But he kept rushing off over to the chairs and climbing on to the stack of them, something I never allow them to do. He would drape himself on top of the other children, take my drum, go and grab a pile of sparkles that had been left on the floor that I was holding onto until after class because of their distraction. Clearly he wanted to be doing other things, who am I to be telling him not to? (You know, besides his teacher...) B. sets off the other boys and at one point all of them were screaming and wrestling. I was frustrated, I was annoyed, I slammed my hand down on to the floor to get their attention. To scare them.

I intentionally frightened a classroom of four year olds today.

What??!?

What is the ultimate goal of my class? Is it to encourage a love of music and an interest in exploring sound? Yeah. I would say so. But it is also to prepare them and give them concrete musical skills to take to their next level of lessons. I'd like them to have fun, and I would also like the kids to feel like they have ownership of their own music making. I don't want to stifle creativity, but I would also like to have the kids listen to me. And I really don't want to go around frightening small children.

There is so much more to think about here; this entry alone has about 5 threads running through it that I need to unpack more fully: my philosophy of classroom management, the nurturing of creativity and collaboration in children, rambunctious little boys versus teacher pleasing and focused little girls, entertaining versus educating (surely surely that can be the same thing??), and learning to make lessons that are engaging and fun and interesting even after a long day at school.

So much to learn.

Screwing with their little heads/accents

In year 2 singing we are doing songs about monsters. To my delight the song that we started today was “flying purple people eater” which would have gone a lot better if I’d actually known the tune before we started... but hey, one can’t have everything.

In any case because I was winging it like mad- when one of the kids called out “It sounds American!” I ran with that. I had them all cock their hips to one side like a cowboy while singing “It was a one eyed, one horned, flying purple people eater” and then  TWANGING it up as much as possible (and maybe growling a bit) to sing “sure looked strange to me.”

A group of girls were singing the last line like that on the way down the stairs to lunch and I chortled to myself.

My work here is done. (The original picture can be found here )

 

Laying Down The LAW

My year 3 kids. They're squirrelly. They're kind of rude. They're cheeky, man.

So I'm trying something new. I'm being STERN. I'm cracking down hard on this dilly dallying and this out of turn talking and this moving seats all the time and this cheeky-ness.

Darn tootin'.

I'm giving warnings left and right. And two of those warnings means a MINUS HOUSE POINT, no lie. (Don't really understand why that's a big deal, but hey. It works.) No warnings for the whole class period and they get a HOUSE POINT (again, not sure why this works- but boy howdy does it *ever.*)

My year 3 kids. They're doing their work, they're not talking to their friends constantly while I'm trying to make a point, they're raising their hands.

Sweet, man. I didn't even have to yell, just be fierce. 

New Tykes!

There's always space for more tykes, right? Well, now on some Sundays each month I trek all the way out to Harrow to be a Kodaly/singing teacher and theory teacher for a studio of 3-8 year old Suzuki violin students. The 1.5 hour schlep each way? Totally worth it. Goodness, that was fun.

There are two groups of children, the beginner and generally younger A group; and the older and more advanced B group. The teacher whose studio this is is also Dalcroze trained, so she's taking care of that with half the group while I've got the other half for singing. It's meant to be Kodaly based, but I know very little of that- so we're just doing a lot of singing instead. (Close enough.)

I started with the older B group where I began teaching a song I learned in an Orff workshop (bringing all sorts of music education strands together!), it's a Japanese dancing game that is excellent for working on both a sense of pitch and sense of rhythm. Actually I didn't start with that, first we talked about how all of the notes have names (Do Re Mi, etc.) and that we would use two of those to learn each other's names. So we sang this "hello" taunt (it's really just a chant on two pitches, but since it uses only Sol and Mi it ends up sounding like playground teasing: "nyah nyah nyah nyah" You know.) We even used Kodaly hand positions! (Though that is really the extent of my knowledge right there.)

Then we moved into the Orff dancing song and I had them bounce tennis balls around the circle (though passing is a skill they don't have yet, so really just a group of them bouncing the tennis balls while everyone else sings) which is a Dalcroze thing to do. All this for a Suzuki studio! Music education theories ALL OVER THE PLACE! 

Suddenly my 40 minutes with them were done and in trooped a group of 3-5 year olds. Well, hello there age group I have two years of experience with! Not gonna lie, I kind of made up my lesson plan as I went along. I figured to get started I'd do my favourite vocal warm up- The *MAGICAL* Stew Pot (I just made up that name. Right there.) which is a miming game that works on phonics sounds as well as warming up the voice and the jaw. Children choose what to throw into the soup pot (this group was the most reasonable I'd ever had- all were thoughtful soup ingredients; no Christmas trees or chairs or dragons to be found. That being said the soup did contain noodles, pasta, AND spaghetti. If I remember correctly, all three of which were offered by the same girl at different points.)

We then did the same hello business with Sol and Mi and, because I had the picture cards with me, we did the same fairy tale based Do You Know The Story song that I've been doing at school. I love the Drunken Sailor tune, and the the picture cards! They're so brightly coloured! 

Suddenly those 40 minutes were over as well! 

One of the mothers came over to where I had been sitting on the floor with the children and bent down so that her face was inches from mine, "You're a very good teacher," she said, in such a stern voice that for a second I didn't understand that she wasn't cross with me. "You have them..." and here she gestured to her hand. I was honoured. And belatedly realized that I hadn't even had to tell any of the children to settle down or to stop poking their neighbor. I think I want to work with Suzuki trained children all the time. They were brilliant. 

A ten minute break later and the older, group B were back in my room for theory. I went ahead and asked them as many questions as I could think of, drawing on a laminated, blank piece of paper I was grateful I'd taken with me. (Portable white boards are useful things to have...) Yes to clefs, no to key signatures, yes to note names, no to time signatures. Guys, I have be dying to teach theory for ages now. I'm so excited about this class. I ended up dividing the class into two, setting up a tic-tac-toe/naughts and crosses board made up of various note values and letting each team choose where they wanted to go. If they could answer some questions I thought up on the spot about those notes- then they could put their marker down. 

In practice, they always got it right because if they didn't I would pause the game and make sure everyone understood (either through another diagram or through walking it out (yay Dalcroze!) or through verbal/aural explanation). They were clever enough in playing the game that it was a draw (as all good tic-tac-toe games are) and then those 40 minutes were done as well. 

I caught the wrong bus, took it to the end of the line and back again while trying to get to the first of the trains that would get me home. It is a mission to get there, but THIS. THESE are the kids I want to teach. These are the kids I've been waiting to teach. 

I had a freaking wonderful first day. 

Light and Darkness: The Tykes Have RE

I was having anxiety dreams last night about going back to school. Essentially first day of school jitters, again. It took me ages to actually get out of bed this morning as well for the same reason, but this afternoon? After having finished a full day of teaching? Good gracious I love my job!

This is my 3rd round of Spring term. I've now completed two full years of this job, so the same topics are coming round again. The reception tykes are doing Traditional Stories, which I love because it means I get to whip out Do You Know The Story? sung to the tune of What Do You Do With A Drunken Sailor? I started my morning with some cutting and sticking, making A4 sized cards illustrating each of the verses. This meant that I got to harass the librarian (one of my favourite people at school) in order to locate fairy tale picture books with nice illustrations for my cards. The kids did great, the song is fun, and I love singing it because it fits in a portion of my voice that requires me to sing big in order to actually hit the notes.

Interestingly 2 out of the 3 classes said the name of the stories rhythmically, while the 3rd class just shouted out willy nilly. Of the two that did it rhythmically one class sings regularly as a matter of course, and the other had been singing for 10 minutes before I arrived due to a combination of confusion about when I would show up and my running over time with the first class. I've been wondering ever since how I could prep the 3rd class so that they also speak the titles rhythmically....

Music classes being over for the day it was then on to RE! A class that continues to amuse me by virtue of the fact that the school has me teaching it. (I feel distinctly unqualified.) Whatever; this week we were talking about anticipation! Particularly as it refers to Christmas and even more particularly as it refers to Jesus's birth. Also about the concept of the light/dark - good/bad metaphor. (I spent most of the class desperately hoping none of the kids would link it to race because I don't feel qualified to tackle that one either. They didn't, but they did immediately link it to Star Wars! ....of course.)

We had a class discussion where I drew a giant light bulb on the interactive white board. Good things about their holidays were written inside the bulb, and outside we wrote the bad things that had happened. (One child's grandfather had died. That was sad and we had an impromptu and completely spontaneous moment of silence for him.) We then read Isaiah 9:2 and 6 (Miss Casey? What's an extract?) where Jesus is described as a great light. They got to respond to that however they wanted- writing about light/good, dark/bad or drawing a picture or whatever.

They worked quietly! (mostly) And raised their hands when they needed help! And my most difficult kid did his work! And the results were varied and interesting!

When most of the class was finished we had about 10 minutes left and I had already gathered them at the front of the room where we were sitting in the dark,


Kid A: "Miss Casey? Um. Why are we sitting in the dark?" 
Me: "I think it's a metaphor. I'm not really sure what point it's supposed to be making...I'm supposed to have a candle but instead we've just got the glow of the board lighting your faces."
Kid A: "So my face is lightness but my body is darkness?"
Me: "Sure."
Kid B, sitting off to the side: "Hey! I'm entirely in the darkness...I'm on the dark side!" 

Cue mad scramble by about 50% of the kids to join Kid B on the dark side. So I invented a quick game- the dark side had a minute to come up with something evil, then the light side had to counter with something at least as good at the evil thing was bad. I, as the arbitrary arbiter got to choose which was more extreme and therefore won. Then we switched who got to go first. (The obvious flaw in this game mechanic being that whoever goes second necessarily wins.)

The first evil suggestion by the Dark Side was killing the Queen. I don't remember what exactly the Light Side came up with, but as it pertained to the whole world: they won. Then the Light Side came up with "being nice to everyone in the whole world"  to which the Dark Side countered "The Devil eating the Universe!" 

At which point I sent them all down to lunch.

Tykes To Catch Up On! (Again)

The tykes are still tyking along. But this time it isn't just random tyking around, this time we have direction. Namely towards our Christmas show on Thursday!

Here, let me tell you about it:
1. The Nursery Tykes are singing songs about Stars.

For some reason this year for both halves of the show (Nursery and Reception) I managed to decide that there should be PROPS. A LOT OF PROPS. Not really sure why it turned out that way. (No, I know why. It was because between props and actions or learning lines, I decided props and actions would be easier. Not sure if that is accurate or not yet.) Right. STARS. Prop-wise for Nursery we've got four fishing poles (bamboo garden stakes) with stars hanging off the end for Fishing For Stars, and five giant stars (think 2.5' wide) for Five Little Stars. Oh, and every class is making festive hats and wands with stars and practically silent jingle bells.

All of these props have been decorated by the tykes, so what that means is that they are all covered in not particularly well glued on glitter. Which means that now the entire school is also covered in glitter. Anywhere I walk while carrying the props is now covered in glitter. All of my work clothes are covered in glitter. My hair is covered in glitter. My trousers are covered in glitter. The glitter is covered in glitter.

Glitter, glitter, glitter.

And that's not even taking into account Reception's props. (Really only the Silver fish which are, of course, decorated with glitter...)

2. Last Thursday we had our first full rehearsal with the Nursery and the Reception tykes all together in one place. It turned out that due to some miscommunication between me, the head of Early Years, and the kitchen staff that instead of an hour in the hall, we had 20 minutes. But that's okay! We'd make it work! Because the tables were also already set up for lunch, we also had a lot less space than I was expecting which meant that when we actually got around to starting I was completely encircled by roughly 100 tykes.

On Thursdays I work as a nursery assistant, which is nice because I get to spend more time with that class of tykes, but is also kind of frustrating because I don't always know what is going on and because it is not *my* class, if things are dragging I don't feel like I can say "Right, we're doing this now" because that would be stepping on the head teacher's toes. Basically I am still adjusting to working for someone else, so it was with great relief and joy that I was able to be in charge of that rehearsal.

Everyone rocked their songs. We ploughed through them and they kept quiet when it wasn't their turn to sing and they sang loudly when it was their turn to sing and they all followed me when I got their attention by patting my knees and I had all of them doing the vocal warm up together and applauding and oh! I felt like I was being lifted up on a cloud made of endorphins and awesome.

3. I feel a bit bad about how many props and bits and bobs I've been handing off to the teachers to figure out how to make, but may I just say that they have come through with flying colours?! The nursery tykes all have different seasonally related hats- one class has gold reindeer antlers made from cut out hand prints, one class has felt Santa and elf hats, and the last class has 3D Christmas trees held together with sparkly pipe cleaners. The whole effect is adorable and awesome. The reception tykes all have their animal hats, and while people have been thinking that the polar bears are mice (I would object by asking what on *Earth* mice have to do with Christmas and winter except that the other two classes are fish and ducklings respectively so I suspect that I wouldn't have a leg to stand on with that argument) they all look fantastic.

London is a Snow Globe

We've been having a bunch of snow fall this week. Each morning I've been checking to see whether transport is running and wondering if we were going to have a snow day. Frankly, I've been hoping against a snow day because A) we need the rehearsal time and B) I, um, really like my job? Anyhow- London has been pulling through with very little delay in transport (particularly for tubes and buses. The trains out to the suburbs have been hit a bit harder, but even with serious delays- the trains have still been running.)

This Thursday, during my incarnation as a nursery assistant, we started out the day with our annual Pantomime show for the early years in the hall. (See previous post.) The tykes *loved* it, screaming their heads off and standing up in order to point out the bad guy and give as much information to the characters about what was happening as they could possibly muster. The show was Jack and the Beanstalk and in the first act when Jack and his mother were talking about being poor and oh, so very broke- one of the front row tykes kept saying "I could give you the money!"

D'Awww.

In the afternoon we usually have games all together with the other nursery classes and I wasn't sure if we were going to or not because the hall was full of people and outside was covered in snow.

Silly me, I shouldn't have worried. We had an EPIC 40 minute long snowball fight and sledding session.

Highlights included
1. Dropping snowballs on to tyke's heads
2. Ganging up on the teachers who took longer to get out of the classroom. And by "ganging up" let's please be clear that I mean "ambushing."
3. Squealing tykes
4. Squealing teachers
5. Sliding tykes down a small hill while using plastic building blocks as sleds
6. Our PE teaching marvelling aloud that we get paid to do this...Sometimes I'm amazed at how lucky I am. (All the time. All the time I'm amazed at how lucky I am.)

Tuesday Tykes

I was thinking Tuesday morning as I was coming in to work that I just really didn't want to be there. You know, waking up early in the morning when I'd prefer to be sleeping, not *entirely* sure what the state of the songs are this week and sort of dreading needing to figure out how to put this Christmas show on. (I made a mistake with the nursery tykes in that I am not excited about the songs that they are singing, but it's too late to change them now and it's important to make sure that they're still having fun and learning the songs. It's a bit of a slog like that.) So...feeling a bit down and cranky.

But then?

Then I got to work and had my performance review meeting where we made a list of things I'm going to be working on this year, all three of which I'm excited about because they're things I actually want to do and that will actually be helpful. (Learning to use solfege through Kodaly training and working with the reception classes on it, making a resource bank of rhythm and instrumental games or exercises for teachers to do when it isn't music specialist time, and creating a progress grid based on national guidelines for tracking how well individual children are doing with music.) I was given a drawing made by one of my nursery tykes for me yesterday (tyke love! Yay!), and spent half an hour making up prototype hats/costumes for the Christmas play. The duck hat is covered in feathers and googly eyes and everyone that I've asked (including some of the most literal people around: nursery tykes) have correctly identified it as a duck! I spent the afternoon working with one of the nursery teachers to organize the stage set up for the show, the running order of the songs, and and figuring out what props we need.

So we're set, and I got to spend my morning doing arts and crafts and singing. So clearly, I'm back to feeling like the luckiest person ever that I get to do what I do.

(Yeah, that's bragging again...sorry)

Religious Education

On Tuesday we had every one's favourite class! RE! I'm beginning to understand that the class that I teach for two hours on Wednesday is, in fact, a handful. And it's not just that I have no clue what I'm doing. (Not "just")

Last week we were learning "right" and "wrong" (For real? Really? That's the lesson plan?) The plan involved brainstorming things that you got complimented or rewarded for (Right) and things that you got in trouble for or shouldn't have done (Wrong) and then writing poems with the examples we brainstormed.

Writing down 'Right' went well enough, but in the same way that I forgot to tell the masters in the slave/masters exercise not to hit their slaves, this time I forgot to tell the class to tell me the things they got in trouble for- not show me. (Smack, whine, interrupt, etc. We actually had someone yanking on a new pupil's pig tails...classic.) (And also Wrong! Stop that!) They were kind of a mess there for a bit.

One of the girls had been particularly annoying. Getting in people's faces and personal space, talking while other's were trying to give answers and whatnot. I ended up giving her a negative house point and crouching down frequently so that I could look her in the eye when she was sitting on the floor. I told her that I thought she was a wonderful girl, but that her behaviour today was not appropriate. As I sent everyone else off to lunch I went back over to where she was still sitting and asked her if she was okay and if she wanted to go down to lunch with the rest of the class. She burst into tears and told me her head hurt. Figuring that something else was going on I asked her if she was sad? Angry? Disappointed? As many different emotion words as I could think of. It turned out that she and her sister had been having a big fight that morning and had been hitting each other. Eventually she was willing to be coaxed down to lunch and arrived in time for seconds of the pasta.

I can sometimes forget how complex an internal life these children have. One of the things that I really enjoy is reading their stories from English class- they're incredibly revealing. And probably I'm looking at this through the lens of having been a lonely and unhappy child, but it sure seems to me like there is a lot of pain at that age.

The Tykes are BACK!

Or rather, I am back with the tykes. In any case half term is over and we're together again at school. Christmas preparations are in full swing! The tiniest of the tykes are doing a medley of songs focusing on the theme of Stars! Because...that's Christmassy. Right?

Did you guys all know that in the UK jumping jacks are called star jumps? I totally called on that knowledge to create an impromptu bit of choreography for the tiniest tykes when they were getting super restless during my class. We had two other songs to learn, but they clearly needed to move, so I ended up standing them all up and then doing star jumps through the first two lines of Twinkle Twinkle. Then, emboldened by that, made the little hand actions into full body actions and called it a dance. Which we're now totally going to do during the show. (I love being in charge!)

On Tuesday I woke up at 5, decided I had another hour to sleep before my alarm went off, and then woke up again at 8. Since I'm meant to be *at* work by a quarter after 8, that was kind of a problem. After scurrying through some of the fastest day preparations I've ever done I managed to make it to school only an hour late. At which point I used 5 minutes to craft the wonkiest star puppets ever. (I love that I have to get to work on time in order to cut paper and stick things on to Popsicle sticks.) We used the puppets in "Five Little Stars," another one of our star themed songs for the show.

Today there was a tube strike (again) so I was late (again). It took over two hours to get from my house to school. Not to worry, I hit the ground running and started the bigger tykes off on their Christmas show tunes! All was going well through the first class- the songs have a super peppy backing track that meant that the tykes were like "Again! Again! Miss Casey, we want to sing it again!!!" Which, really, is all you could ever dare to dream of for a tyke's music class. So I was feeling nicely set up for the other two classes. However, when I sat down to start the second class I found that somewhere between the bottom of the stairs and the top of the stairs- the CD had broken in half.

Er...

I have no clue how that possibly could have happened given the fact that it was in. a. case. But oh well. I winged it. (To less acclaim than I was hoping for, but you do what you can.) So we're puttering along. The show is the first week of December (or maybe it works out to the second week of December...single digits anyway.) So we have our work cut out for us.

Kids are Gross. Seriously.

I'm about to share two graphic, gross stories. I think they're funny, but if you're easily grossed out and have never been around children before ever: they may offend your sensibilities.

1. In English class this week one student ripped out his tooth. His front tooth had clearly been loose for a while and it was bleeding a bit so I sent him to the bathroom to get some water and some paper towels. When he came back I took a look to see how loose it was, and while half of it was clearly off, the other half of it was still hanging in there. It was clearly going to pop out that day, but wasn't quite ready yet. I thought about offering to yank it out for him but figured that if there wasn't already an official school policy about tearing children's teeth out of their mouths, that if I did help him out with it- there soon would be. I sent him off to the bathroom again to get more paper towels and when he eventually came back it was with with a distinct air of triumph, a bloody stump, and a front tooth in the palm of his hand.

This, of course, derailed the next five minutes of the lesson.

2. On Thursday during my incarnation as a nursery assistant I heard rather a lot of chattering coming from the tyke's toilets and so went to investigate what the party was all about. I couldn't get past the door because the stench was so strong that I had to turn around and gag. Two of them had simultaneously done the foulest poos ever and were then just sort of hanging out there for a while.

"Miss Casey? Will you wipe me?"

No.

No I will not.

If you're old enough to pour your own water, put your own shoes on, and dress yourself- you are old enough to wipe your own butt.

So I gave a little tutorial from the door (turning my head to breathe and gag again) and congratulated them as sincerely as I could when they held up their used toilet paper for me to inspect. "Well done girls. Now, for the love of god, will you please put those in the toilet and flush?"

The next tutorial I gave was how to properly and thoroughly wash your hands.

Gender roles at Garden Time

In the playground my floaty, thin scarf was liberated by one of the tykes. She ran around with it over her face (it was see through) haunting people as a ghost. A little boy lifted up the side of it to poke his head under as well. She yanked the scarf away and ran off to haunt some others, and since neither child seemed put out I didn't say anything about sharing.

 

I kept an eye on her to make sure my scarf didn't end up in one of the mud puddles and eventually the scarf morphed (as all good dress up items do) from being protoplasm to being a princess skirt. She pranced around with it held tightly around her waist, dancing about the garden. The same little boy came over and lifted up the side of it to poke his head under...and this time? Was it okay? It's still a scarf. But since it was representing a skirt,and since he was a boy, and since she clearly didn't want him to put his head under her skirt...do I put a stop to it? Or is that just me projecting adult thoughts and motivations onto a pair of three year olds? (I suspect the latter) At the same time, at what point do we start teaching boys that when a girl says no, she means no. At what point do you go beyond saying "be nice to everyone and respect every one's space" and into "but particularly girls' because there is a massive history there that you don't yet understand."

 

I wouldn't have been that bothered by it, only giving that encounter a passing thought, except that I kept watching her the whole garden time (I really didn't want my scarf getting muddy) ("why didn't you take it back?" you may ask. I don't know. I just didn't.) And later on when the reception tykes rushed onto the field one of the bigger boys came over and grabbed her, wrestled her and kissed her. Is that still okay? Is that still rough housing? Or is that something where I should step in and say not okay. She fended him off just fine, and maybe I wasn't paying attention to other combinations of children where one is fending off another, maybe it is fine and this is just part of what happens. But should it be? She can take care of herself, but should she already have to?

EAL English as an Additional Language

There are tons of EAL students at school. Last Thursday I was practicing my nearly non-existent Russian with a tyke who doesn't have any English. Even just saying "good" or admonishing her to say "please" and "thank you" in her own language allowed us to make more of a connection.

We recently had an in-set (teacher training doo-dad) about working with EAL students. I was fascinated. What I really took away from the training is that their home language is incredibly important. The workshop leader used a graphic of an iceberg to illustrate that what you see of their newer language is supported by everything they know and understand about how language works from their first language. Also that you need to be careful about what you are testing, if you're working in a maths class- does the student understand the concept in their own language? Is the language creating a barrier rather than the material being presented?

In my Year 3 class we have on boy whose English is nearly non-existent. Fortunately there are many many French speaking students in the classroom so mostly we can get by, but it is clearly frustrating for him to never understand what is going on and frequently he is off doing his own (disruptive/destructive) thing, like poking holes into all of the erasers with his pencil. I feel bad because it becomes necessary for me to pull him away or  discipline him in order to get the rest of the class to focus on their work instead of his antics, and I really really don't want his only interactions with me to be negative.

So it was with great relief that I realized that in our English lessons, I could have him write in French. Yeah, okay, they are English lessons, but really we're learning about how to build sentences and paragraphs and write stories and such like, so it doesn't matter what language you learn how to do that in. That week we were writing a story about a Seagull named Sydney ('cause why not, right?) and they were meant to get Sydney in some sort of trouble and then get him out again (fascinating to read their solutions, it's amazing how much of themselves they put into their writing. "Ah, so that's what you're thinking about!"). I had our French boy describe the seagull, and write a paragraph in French about what the character of Sydney was like. He did such a good job! And because he actually had a task to do that he understood he didn't distract other people and destroy school supplies! It was pretty much the best thing ever. I just kept grinning at him when he brought me his workbook to show off what he had done.

Tykes Odds and Ends

Last week during a lesson in one of the nursery rooms I managed to use a hula hoop to knock over a bunch of test tubes containing coloured water. (Isn't that a wonderful set up for something? It seems like all of those things together would be the beginning of a fabulous surreal story, but really it was just a watery mess.) I felt bad that I had just spilled water everywhere including all over the Montessori materials on the shelves- but all of the tykes kept saying "It's okay, Miss Casey!" in that particular voice that you use to console a three year old when they've made a mess in a clearly accidental way. Like wetting themselves or something like that.

Good to know they've been listening and taking it in.

I know it's only October, but we're already moving in to working on the Christmas show. This year we're getting ambitious and having the show on a proper stage at an away venue instead of just in the hall/cafeteria at school. Also, (because I think they can do it) both the Reception Tykes AND the Nursery Tykes will be doing their own Nativity plays. I use the term "nativity" very loosely: one is about a kind scarecrow and his animal friends and involves Mr and Mrs. Claus; while the other does mention baby Jesus but is mostly about a bunch of stars.

I know I'm talking about religion a bunch on this blog- but it comes up fairly often at school. It's a religiously diverse school and I'm still not used to the fact that there isn't a separation of church and state in this country. Fine lines to tread and all that.

I wanted to make sure that all of the classroom teachers were on board with the Christmas show plans and I wanted to make sure that if there were any concerns that I heard them now, in October, rather than learning about them in December or, even worse, not hearing about them at all and just frustrating/angering some of them. So I've been running the scripts and songs by the teachers and getting feedback. Most of the teachers are keen to try something a bit more challenging, but it is interesting what sort of traditions people hold on to in a school where the longest serving teacher amongst the Early Years staff has only been here for 5 years. (I guess that is plenty long to make a tradition.) Fortunately at this point we've still got enough time to change the plans pretty drastically if we need to.

Halloween? Pssht. Thanksgiving? Whatever. It's jingle bells on rotate here! (Side note: I have, legitimately, had Good King Wenceslas stuck in my head for the better part of this past month. I have no idea why.)

Religious Education, or "well, this is fun"

Two weeks of Year 3 Religious Education (and English) in, and I'm having a ball. The first week RE went great and English was a disaster. The second week RE was a mess and English was spectacular. So we're doing what we can.

In RE the curriculum currently has us talking about Judaism and specifically Moses. (Can I just say how much I love following lesson plans that I haven't written? It takes out 99.9% of the stress of teaching for me.) We covered The Exodus first and so I grouped them into pairs. Partner one became the slave while partner two became the master for a couple of minutes.

Foolishly, I failed to put in a clause saying "DON'T HIT YOUR SLAVE!"

I know better now.

We then had a group discussion about what it felt like to be a slave (using the interactive white board! Those things are fun.) and what it felt like to be the master. We then talked about how the Hebrews were slaves in Egypt and how even today there are slaves around the world and how sometimes it can be because of totally arbitrary things like religion or race or whatever. I don't remember what we did next but I do know that I enjoy working with 8 and 9 year olds. They're just old enough to have their own opinions and actually have something interesting to say with fascinating links and ties to other subjects.

The first week they let me get away with answering "It's a Bible Story" when they asked "is this TRUE?" The second week they wised up, "Yes, but is the Bible true??"

Um.

Um.

....

"Yes, it's true! It really happened." 
"Nu-uh! It didn't! It's just a story!" 


Um.

Well. Look, guys. Here's the thing about religion; some things that some religions believe to be true and factually correct other don't believe to be true. So, yes, for many people in the world they believe that this is true. Many others don't.


"Yes, but did it really happen?" 


Right. So these are the 10 commandments, everyone look at the board please? 


Here's where RE completely fell apart the second week: I made groups of 4 to collaboratively write 5 commandments for living life well and then make a poster. A few of the groups worked just fine, but the group I had working in French was alternating between giggling maniacally and crying and the group across from them decided that *all* of their commandments would be about who not to fart on. There was so much hooting and hollering going on that I tried 4 different ways of simmering them down and getting their attention: clapping a pattern to clap back, turning the lights off, shouting over them (oops), and quietly saying "if you're listening and paying attention you'll put your finger on your nose" which worked just fine for the groups who were working well already but failed massively with the two groups that were already out of control.

I talked with their teacher afterwards and we mutually decided that the way in which I'd built the groups was...not ideal. So I now have a much better plan for which kids to combine with which kids. Learning, it's all about learning.

Here's the other place it went wrong with the Ten Commandments

Thou Shalt Not Kill


But Miss Casey? What about all the Egyptians that got drownded? 
No, no, it's okay to kill Egyptians.

Work Hours and Whatnot

Here's what I started writing last week:

"My hours are all up in the air currently which makes me feel anxious, but I've done what I can about it and at this point all I can do is sit and wait- secure in the knowledge that my direct superiors are crossing their fingers to have me around for two days and at this point it is up to...um...other people. (Not really sure who to be perfectly honest.) I continue to have a lot of faith in the new Head Mistress, she's got her head on straight and I feel like we're on pretty much the same page about what sort of hours I'm hoping for. (And on the same page about how that probably isn't going to happen.)"

This week our new headmistress has worked genius miracles and it looks like I will be getting a day and a half. In order to fill out some of those hours what I will be doing is taking two hours of lessons away from one of the year 3 teachers who is also the head of Key Stage 2 (years 3 through 6) so that she has time to do the administrative portion of her job.

Since I don't have any formal education training this will be a provisional arrangement until everyone is satisfied that I can do the work effectively (or, you know, not.) I'm quite pleased with how this is working out and though none of it is set in stone, I'm feeling cautiously excited.

Want to know what I will be teaching this group of 8 and 9 year olds? (The lesson plans and curriculum are written, all I have to do is follow them.)

Religious Education.

(and English.)