lizzzyyy051

Today is Day 7 of the giftEDnz October blogging challenge and the theme for today is finding your tribe. The inspiration was this beautiful post https://spark.adobe.com/page/ABPCjywrC2gRO/. For me, finding your tribe is all about belonging and as a teacher it is my job (and privilege) to create an environment that engenders this. So I thought I would share some of the ways we work in Room 5 to build a learning community that embraces belonging. A couple of years ago I was at a Teachers Matter conference (please check here for information about the Jan 2019 conference) and I heard Adrian Rennie speaking about his classroom practice, I got a lot from his work including the use of a class chant. I created the chant below a couple of years ago for the class and it is handed down from one class to the next now... it is part of a Room 5 tradition. This poem/chant covers our expectations, or qualities of Room 5 learners (including myself), rather than use rules. We spend time unpacking w...

A couple of years ago I wrote a post entitled ' Do you think you are better than everyone else'   where I recounted a story from my childhood that does haunt me even now (over 30 years later)... it was a tiny moment really but the words cut deep and created a loop that pops up from time to time. At the moment I am participating (a little!) in a blog challenge with giftEDnz and I am also in the midst of school holidays so a LOT of personal reflection is going on. I have also started reading Brene Brown's book 'Rising Strong' as resilience is a topic I am interested in and I love her work, it has got me thinking about vulnerability again and facing my own demons. I am not gifted but I think that the moment I had as a child could be one some of our gifted and talented tamariki experience, the words (and the venom they are delivered with) might be different but the damage done could be similar. This is the moment (click on the link above for more):  'I was one of th...

I have been particularly lax with my blogging this year (and possibly last year too) so I have decided to take on the giftEDnz October blogging challenge to get me back on track and consolidating some thoughts... who knows there could be some gems that arise in it all as well!  Today's topic:  The late Rita Pierson said that “Every child needs a champion.”  How can    we be champions for our gifted and talented students in particular? For me a champion is the person that is prepared to stand tall for others when they haven't the resources at the time to do it for themselves. If we are to be a champion for our tamariki, particularly our gifted and talented tamariki, then we have to be prepared to stand tall for them especially when they are marginalised or lack the resources to do it for themselves. In order to do this we need to know our tamariki- know what switches them on and off, know their social and support networks, we need to observe (with our heart...

I am a full time teacher and last weekend I attended the Professional Speakers Association Convention in Brisbane, Australia. I went as I was invited by my friend (thanks Karen!) and was offered the opportunity to present a small piece in a workshop during the weekend (thanks Glenn!). As I was heading into the convention I was feeling like a fish in the desert (that's how far out of the water I was feeling), I was thinking "I am a teacher at a professional speakers convention... what on earth am I doing here???" However to say that the weekend was inspirational feels like an understatement really. It was huge and I am still trying to get my head around it all to be honest but for now I hope to convey some of what I learned as a teacher in this post. We started with a session for newbies to the convention, what a relief to be around others who were feeling a bit out of their comfort zone. As it turned out there were people from all walks of life and the more people I spoke...

I am planning for the coming year and as I am doing so the impact of my learning about the brain is evident in the choices I am making… The brain grows and develops from the bottom up, the brain stem first, followed by the limbic system and then the cerebral cortex, with the prefrontal cortex doing it’s major work during puberty. It occurred to me today that my planning reflects this process using Glenn Capelli's Magic Brain model, along with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.   ( For more about the Magic Brain model check out this link )  I start with addressing the basic needs first. Belonging: It is said that belonging is an innate human need and so it is the first thing that we work on together. Learning chant: Room 5 has a name, it is called The Place to Stretch and Grow. We start with a class learning chant which encapsulates how we will work as a class together and our school values. This is now a tradition in Room 5, so the poem is passed to each new group of students that j...

Now I am no great gardener, but as I was pruning back my grapes earlier this afternoon (I can now feel some of you are nodding ‘yes, you are no great gardener, way too late!’) I was struck with a small epiphany that I needed to put into words. And now I am sharing this with you… but first I need to give a little more context… You see I didn’t just wantonly run out to the glasshouse with my clippers and start hacking willy-nilly, not at all. I know enough to check (and already had an inkling that the best time to give the vine a good hacking was in the middle of winter dormancy) so I did what I often do in these circumstances, search the net until I find someone else who has done things not quite at the right time and got away with it. Invariably, I always find some obscure chatroom that provides me with the green light, and often a little sage advice to go with it. Today, I found my green light (obviously, although I was fairly committed to the course of action anyway) and also a possi...