Balancing Kiwis

Oh a happier note, here's another fun activity you can do with small groups or a pastoral care class. Also safe for young kids as it doesn't contain small parts and is made from solid wood.

This game comes from New Zealand and is called Balancing Kiwis. It's made up of kiwis carved from wood, and you have to arrange them in such as way that they balance in formation, a bit like cheerleaders.

It's great for teaching the importance of teamwork, strategy and patience. There are also suggestions if you get stuck or are looking for ideas of different formations.

The last time I used it in class, I forgot to take my camera to photograph some of the formations the students made. I'll try to remember to next time! So here's one I made earlier:

The bonus challenge at the end is the first group that gets all the pieces back in the box!

It has the potential for being even more fun if you use more than one set.

The company, Tarata, makes lots of different sets, including different balancing animals, coloured shapes, alphabets (a bit pricey), jigsaws, etc. See their online shop for prices. The jigsaw clock looks pretty cool!

How Do You Decide What Makes a "Good" Teacher?

The whole debate about performance-based pay for teachers rears its head once again.

The Sunday Herald Sun recently conducted an online poll of 5000 Australians about the quality of schooling parents want for their children (read an article about it here).

Of the 794 Victorian parents who responded, 63% felt that under-performing teachers (in terms of academic results produced) should be "expelled", while 79% believed that teachers who produced good academic results should be paid more than their colleagues.

The article isn't entirely one-sided; it does acknowledge that things like NAPLAN tests should not be relied on as an indicator of teacher success.

Of course, teachers would ask the same old questions, too, in response to this:

• what if I teach in a school in a low socioeconomic area? Is it fair to assess me against the same criteria?

• what about schools that follow the common practice of streaming classes? Why should a teacher given a gifted class be paid more than a teacher given e.g. a non-OP class? Shouldn't it be the other way around?!
• what about the part that parents play in their child's education?
• what about the part that students play in their own education?

And so the debate continues...

Lego - Ancient History?

Who said Lego was dead?

For the Ancient History teachers out there, Lego has produced a kit called Ramses' Pyramid (my punctuation!) where you get to re-create an Egyptian pyramid in Lego and then it becomes the "board" for a game. Here's the finished product:

I haven't played this, but have seen adults scratching their heads trying to follow the instructions for building the pyramid! As you can see, there are some quite intricate parts, particularly the bits and pieces (treasure, etc.) that go inside the pyramid.

This could make for a fun and interesting resource. Not being an Ancient teacher myself, I'm not sure how accurate it is!

For more info, check out the Lego site. There are also a few videos on YouTube about this game if you're interested in seeing how it works.

The adults present at the game's first playing also suggested that a set like this could be used to teach a Sunday School lesson about the tabernacle or sanctuary, etc.

Magnetic Poetry - Playing with Words

I picked up a bargain in Borders this week for $3 (on sale, of course) - the Original Magnetic Poetry. If you haven't used it before, Magnetic Poetry is a set of words printed onto magnetic sheets, which can be separated and used to form sentences.

It's a great way to encourage literacy and vocab development, teamwork, etc.

I'm planning to use it next week to teach parts of speech.

Over the years, I have given away many a set to family and friends.

I gave my cousin a Kids' Kit when she was little. She proceeded to decorate the fridge with a very long, wordy and highly descriptive story of (I think) a frog, a princess and a castle. At that stage, she was too young to grasp the concept of run-on sentences and why they are bad. But to see a kid having fun playing with words - priceless!

Another time, when my aunt was leaning Chinese, I gave her a set of Chinese Magnetic Poetry - same concept, but with the Chinese characters and (I think) pinyin one one side, and English translation on the other.

I also gave someone a Pick-Up Lines set, and the Office set is currently adorning my filing cabinet at work. This has been used to form "toilet paradigm", something about working with monkeys, and other appropriate phrases. One of my lovely colleagues has used it to make a mural.

There is also in my possession Shakespearean insults and love quotations which I picked up at Anne Hathaway's cottage in Stratford-on-Avon. Not Magnetic Poetry, but similar.

The Ultimate Teacher's Gift

Looking for a gift to give a hardworking teacher? Look no further than kikki.K:

This cute stamp set will look lovely on any teacher's desk. Plus, it's a gift that keeps on giving - an apple a day for the teacher to give to their students.

The King's Speech

A big congratulations to Colin Firth for winning the Golden Globe for Best Actor recently for The King's Speech. If you haven't seen it yet, I command you to go. Now!

The King's Speech will make an excellent resource for teaching about public speaking, and why good oral skills are important for persuading and positioning an audience. You may, though, have to skip the bits with the swearing!

While we wait for the DVD to come out, here are some resources to use in the meantime:

• The King's Speech trailer
• The King's Speech film official website (some nice pics)
• A recording of the original speech by King George VI (may put students to sleep)

As many a keen-eyed person has noted, the film reunites Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle. Firth and Ehle  enjoyed sparks both on and off screen during the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice, and are now possibly the most loved Lizzy and Darcy of all time. If you're interested in how the reunion went, this article contains some comments from Colin Firth.

Speaking about Speaking

This arrived in the mail the other day, courtesy of The Book Depository:

Hopefully, it will be a useful resource for teaching about the importance of good oral skills and how to use language to greater effect (persuasive techniques, emotive language, etc.). It's the new edition, which includes Kevin Rudd's "Sorry" speech and Obama's "Yes We Can". The book has a nice, clear layout, and each entry has biographical information, historical background and speech excerpts:

Jesus, JFK, Gandhi, Churchill, etc. also feature.

This new edition also provides a DVD:

The DVD contains videos about some of the speakers featured in the book. Each video gives background info/historical context, and either footage or audio of speeches.

Unfortunately, while the background info in the videos makes good visuals for students, the footage/audio of speeches are only excerpts, so if you were using this in class, you would probably still need to supplement this DVD with the full speech from YouTube or another DVD/CD of speeches (of which there are many around).

Nevertheless, this makes for a handsome addition to the teacher's bookshelf or coffee table. Don't you just love the smell of new books?

Welcome to Teaching!

A quick shout out to all the new graduate teachers for 2011.

Welcome to one of the hardest and most rewarding professions.

This year, you'll probably laugh and cry more than you ever have before, but hang in there! The statistics on teachers leaving the profession after five years or less are dreadful - don't become a statistic!

Anyone like to offer advice to first year teachers?

The Best Teachers on Celluloid

This is what one of my brothers gave me for Christmas:

I'm not a big fan of the show or Chris Lilley, but it does seem like a lot of teachers do like both him and it. I'm more of a Gleek myself.

It got me thinking, though - what makes TV shows and films about school and teachers so popular?

Whenever I show The Triumph: The Ron Clark Story to a class, regardless of their age, they watch it in fascinated absorption, even though they know it is a feelgood story with a happy ending. They can't really identify with the Harlem students in the movie {btw, you can find out more about Ron Clark and his academy here}, and yet something about the story of the persevering and triumphant teacher strikes a chord.

What do you think are the best depictions on celluloid of teachers and/or teaching?

These are the ones in my collection:

• The Triumph: The Ron Clark Story
• Dangerous Minds
• Freedom Writers

And some I wish I had:

• Dead Poet's Society
• To Sir, With Love 
• Anne of Green Gables: The Sequel

You could probably name many more!

365 New Words a Year

And now for a welcome distraction from the terrible news on TV:

I know it's probably a bit late now, but I found the perfect present for English teachers at The Book Depository (best online bookstore; free delivery to pretty much anywhere in the world):

The words come from the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary. Expand your vocab while keeping track of what day it is (which is useful for busy teachers)!

Every day, there is a new word for you to learn, complete with the type of word (noun, verb, etc.) and an example of how to use it in a sentence.

Did you know, for example, that there is a verb "flack", meaning to promote or publicise someone or something? Not to be confused with the noun "flak", meaning criticism, as in "the cricket selectors copped flak over their decisions in the Ashes series".


The best bit is, if you turn the page over, it gives you the origin(s) of the word:

You could also use the calendar in the classroom for expanding the students' vocab.

This year, I am planning to do a Word of the Week:

• at the beginning of each week, take the word from the calendar for that day, and write it on the board, together with the type, definition and example. 
• read the "Did You Know?" bit out to the students if you have time. Some of them are quite amusing.
• the prize at the end of the week goes to the student who has managed to use the word correctly and creatively in either classwork or homework.

NAPLAN 2011

With all that's going on at the moment, it's hard to think about school, which starts again in a week and a bit.

This means...it's time to plan for NAPLAN 2011! This year, the big change is that the writing task will require students to write a persuasive text, rather than a narrative as in previous years.

The sample task provided on the NAPLAN website looks more specifically like an argumentative-type task, and chooses the topic for the students. Whether this will be case in the real thing is not confirmed.

I'm off to read the marking guide!

Queensland Floods 2011

We are still in the midst of the historic and devastating 2011 Queensland floods. Unfortunately for some people, it is a twice-in-a-lifetime event (and hopefully not more than twice). The clean-up has began, and there are calls for donations of clothing, and for people to volunteer with cooking meals and cleaning. You can check out www.volunteeringqld.org.au/home/ for more details (although increased traffic to the sight seems to have slowed it down).

Citipointe Church and Hillsong Church have also got suggestions of ways in which you can help.

Queensland Flood Relief Appeal

Please give to help those who have lost everything. The aftershocks of the floods will be felt for a long time - the loss of homes, businesses, schools, livestock, etc.

You can donate online at http://www.qld.gov.au/floods/donate.html, in person at banks and Coles, or by phone, net banking or mail.

Let's put the Ashes behind us and give generously!

Excellent Exhibitions in Sydney

Sydney seems to be the place to go at the moment for excellent, highly educational exhibitions. I spent a week there recently. Here are my picks of exhibitions worth visiting:

"The First Emperor: China's Entombed Warriors", Art Gallery of NSW, December 2, 2010 - March 13, 2011

Lots of wonderful and intriguing artefacts from the time of the First Emperor of China, Qin Shihuang, who died in 210BC.

There is plenty of pottery and gold jewellery to ooh and aah over, but by far the most popular aspect of the exhibition is the examples of the ten types of terracotta army statues - eight different kinds of warriors and two kinds of horses. They stand under spotlights in an almost completely darkened room, giving them a mysterious and quite creepy aura.

What surprised me was how big they were - pretty much life-size when you get up close. It's amazing to think that of the 1900 warriors they have uncovered so far, no two are identical. Were the modelled on real-life soldiers? And, as the popular myth suggests, were these soldiers then encased alive in the clay?

At the end of the exhibition, you get some freebies to take home with you:

terracotta warrior paper doll, which you can dress up in different outfits, and his horse:

and your very own General's breastplate, to pop out and wear if the fancy takes you:

Additional comments:

• could be used to supplement teaching in ancient history or Chinese
• great exhibition if you think you may never make it to China and/or the tomb warriors
• the exhibition seems a little short for what you pay for, so take your time when browsing
• book your tickets online before you go. We went on a public holiday and had to queue for tickets for an hour, and then had to queue again to get into the exhibition.

 "Annie Leibovitz: A Photographer's Life, 1990-2005", Museum of Contemporary Art, 140 George St, The Rocks, November 19, 2010 - March 27, 2011

Celebrating the life and works of photographer Annie Leibovitz.

The exhibition includes Leibovitz's fascinating portraits of celebrities, such as Nicole Kidman (my personal favourite - the one featured on the poster), Brad Pitt, the Trumps and Demi Moore (including the controversial Vanity Fair cover of Moore when pregnant), as well as landscapes from some of her travel assignments. You can see some of her pictures on the MCA's website (click on the link above).

The exhibition also documents Leibovitz's close relationship with the writer Susan Sontag, and her family, including the 3 children that she had when in her 50s.

Additional comments:

• the educational applications are not immediately apparent, though I felt strongly when I was there that older students in particular would benefit, even just to see what good photography looks like
• probably not recommended for young children, although I did see some there. There is some nudity and sexual references. The teenage boys seemed very interested in the shot of Melania Trump wearing a gold bikini while standing in a jet!

 "An Edwardian Summer", Museum of Sydney, Cnr Phillip and Bridge Streets, December 11, 2010 - April 26, 2011

Immerse yourself in the Edwardian era in Australia, thanks to the photographs of Sydney lawyer and socialite Arthur Wigram Allen.

His photos are a wonderful glimpse into the era, including the development of the motorcar and the fun of going on picnics to the bush, the ridiculous rules on swimsuits for bathing at beaches, and more sombre events, such as the death of Queen Victoria and the troops leaving for World War I.


You can even try on some Edwardian hats for size!

The Art of Conversation

In order to encourage caring and sharing in my pastoral care group, I made little conversation cards. Each card had a question on it, e.g. "What's the weirdest dream you've ever had?", "What fruit would you say best describes you and why?", "If you were Prime Minister for a day, what's the first thing you would do?".

Every lesson, one student would choose a card and had a maximum of 2 minutes to answer the question on it. The rest of the students then each awarded the speaker a score out of 5 for "interestingness".

As is always the case in teaching, I have since realised that in making and laminating these cards I was just reinventing a wheel that already exists. It's called "The Art of Conversation" or TAOC - the children's version. This is a set of cards I bought from a local bookstore on sale for $5 which, as the packaging says, "includes 200 brilliant conversation builders for young people and above":

Each card has 2 questions of varying difficulty. According to the rulebook, you can allow children to choose which question to answer. Questions include: "What is something fun to do that doesn't cost any money?", "How can you help make another person's life happier?" and "What would be a useful invention for the future?".

The rulebook also provides useful tips for e.g. "What to do if someone talks for a very long time", and a list of manners, such as not correcting another player's answer or taking over the conversation.

Looks like a great resource for encouraging caring and sharing, and working on public speaking skills. Or maybe you could use it to entertain yourself and your friends on a rainy day!

Check out the TAOC website - they have many more interesting resources.

Smiley Face Biscuits

On a lighter note, if you're ever stuck for a fun activity with children/students, try making Smiley Face Biscuits. We know kids love to get messy and to eat, so why not combine the two? I have done this in secondary as part of pastoral care, and encouraged the students to give their finished biscuit(s) to a friend or a teacher to brighten their day.

You will need:

• a packet of plain biscuits (e.g. milk arrowroot) - enough for at least one per child
• food colouring
• small bowls - one for each colour
• spoons, knives (plastic, of course!)
• icing sugar
• various small sweets for decoration (snakes, M&Ms, etc.) - get the students to bring these if possible
• water
• newspaper or something to cover the table with

Process:

1. Mix up small quantities of coloured icing. I would recommend you do this yourself, preferably beforehand. I let the students do this once, with the result being an entire bottle of food colouring poured into a small bowl of icing sugar. Very difficult to rectify, unless you have a lot of icing sugar!
2. Students can spread icing over the biscuit to form foundation, and then create smiley faces using the sweets.
3. Eat or give away!

Unfortunately, I haven't got any pictures of the students' lovely creations to show you, so here's one I made:

RIP Pete Postlethwaite, 1946-2011

As you may have heard, the acting world has lost one of its great character actors, Pete Postlethwaite. He was instantly recognisable by his wonderfully expressive face, which The Guardian's Peter Bradshaw reflects on in a lovely tribute.

Postlethwaite will be remembered for immortal roles in such films as The Usual Suspects, In the Name of the Father, Brassed Off and Baz Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet (especially his Hawaiian shirt!), but also for his passion for helping people understand and enjoy Shakespeare.

I wanted very much to go to the UK's National Association for the Teaching of English (NATE) Annual Conference in 2010. Postlethwaite was scheduled to teach teachers about the art of adapting Shakespeare for the screen and to encourage students' engagement with Shakespearean texts. Whether he made it to the conference or not, I don't know.

The NATE quoted Postlethwaite as saying: "Shakespeare is an important part of our literary heritage, but I think it's fair to say the text can be quite intimidating if examined in isolation. That's why it's important that young people studying the work are given the opportunity to engage with the performance rather than just the text. It's only when the script is performed that you can have a true appreciation of the work and all its nuances."

Fortunately for us, Postlethwaite's turn as the Friar in Luhrmann's Romeo and Juliet has been recorded for posterity, and so that many more young people can benefit from his passion and wisdom through his performance.

Word.Nut

I've found the solution to the problem I identified with Bananagrams and Scrabble (the lack of punctuation). It's called Word.Nut.

Word.Nut is like Bananagrams, but it has punctuation marks and also the option of using upper or lower case letters - you flip them over depending on which you want. It's made by a New Zealand company called Logical Toys. I came across it in a games shop and bought it as a Christmas present for my cousin's kids.

They duly cracked it open on Christmas day (pardon the pun) and gave it a go. One of the drawbacks appears to be the vagaries of the instruction booklet which seemed to suggest that you could actually make up your own rules for the game. This could be good or bad depending on how you look at it.

After the Christmas festivities it was too much brainwork to figure out the actual rules, so we made our own simplified version - you have 12 letters at any one time and try to make as many words as you can (they don't necessarily need to join). You may not swap letters with other players, but you may replenish your supply.

Here is an example of what one player did:

Another example, showing what the case of the game looks like (punctuation added by George!):

 

It would be even better if they had retained the points scoring system from Scrabble! But that would probably have been a patent infringement, or something. According to the official rules, you score one point (I think) for each word, which doesn't really account for levels of difficulty of vocab.

I do think the game has potential for a class activity, but it would have to be thought through carefully or refined through several playings!

Check out your local games store, or IQ Toys if you're in Australia.

SMH's 15 Books Every Australian Should Read

Speaking of Ruth Park, she made it on to the SMH's list of "15 {Australian} books every Australian should read" ("Words to the wise", Sydney Morning Herald Summer, 29/12/10, pp. 4-5).

(I put the first "Australian" in squiggly brackets because they seemed to omit that when referring to the article elsewhere in the paper, something I found irritatingly misleading but which you might find pedantry on my part.)

So to carry on (hence why I added "ramblings" to the subheading of my blog!), the selection was made by SMH's literary editor, Susan Wyndham. As with all lists, the criteria used to justify the selections is open to debate. As Wyndham herself states, "This is a list to use and argue with and perhaps to inspire your own".

Why 15? She doesn't really say why her editor chose this number. She does, however, mention that one of the works she drew on for inspiration was Jane Gleeson-White's Australian Classics, a book I heartily recommend as an English teaching resource. In particular, it has a quite pithy analysis of Oodgeroo of the Tribe Noonuccal's "No More Boomerang".

To summarise, this was her selection (it doesn't appear to be ranked):

• For the Term of His Natural Life - Marcus Clarke
• My Brilliant Career - Miles Franklin
• The Man Who Loved Children - Christina Stead
• The Harp in the South - Ruth Park
• Voss - Patrick White
• The Tyranny of Distance - Geoffrey Blainey
• A Boy's Life - David Malouf
• A Fortunate Life - A.B. Facey
• The Children's Bach - Helen Garner
• Cloudstreet - Tim Winton
• Night Letters  - Robert Dessaix
• Eucalyptus - Murray Bail
• True History of the Kelly Gang - Peter Carey
• Carpentaria  - Alexis Wright
• The Slap - Christos Tsiolkas

An interesting selection of past and present, fiction and non-fiction. As expected, Wyndham's article has sparked lively debate. So far, the online version of the article has received 41 comments, including many more suggestions that people felt Wyndham had overlooked.

I particularly like this comment:
"They forced us to watch the film, 'My Brilliant Career' at school. That was a couple of hours I'll never get back." Mojo

From an English teacher's point of view, it does make one consider how our selections of texts may positively or negatively influence our students' regard or disregard for literature. There are many more out there like Mojo who bemoan the texts they were "force fed" while at school. 

But the problem remains - so many books, so little time!

The Future of Teaching?

I clipped a little article from  The Sydney Morning Herald ("Robot teachers", 29/12/10, p. 9) about a new pilot program which has just started in South Korea. In this program, children are taught English by robots. Is this a sign of things to come?

The robots can also sing and play games with students. Here is an excerpt from an expanded online version of the article:

"The 29 robots, about one metre high with a TV display panel for a face, wheeled around the classroom while speaking to the students, reading books to them and dancing to music by moving their head and arms.

"The robots, which display an avatar face of a Caucasian woman, are controlled remotely by teachers of English in the Philippines - who can see and hear the children via a remote control system.

"Cameras detect the Filipino teachers' facial expressions and instantly reflect them on the avatar's face, said Sagong Seong-Dae, a senior scientist at KIST."

I was relieved to read that the robots will have varying facial expressions, as this is something I sometimes say to students is lacking in their oral presentations. Somehow, it seems harder to trust someone who doesn't display a range of facial expressions, including some politicians.

Anyways, back to the point. Should teachers be alarmed by such developments? Can a robot be an effective replacement for a living human teacher?

Later in the article, Sagong states that during this trial phase the robots will complement the current teachers, but he sees them taking on a bigger teaching load in the future.

He goes on to say that one of the great things about these teacher robots is that they don't complain about working conditions! They merely require "a repair and upgrade every once in a while". If only life were so simple!


Read the full article at: http://m.smh.com.au/technology/sci-tech/schools-plug-in-robot-english-teachers-20101228-19975.html.

How Important is Ethnicity to a Student's Success?

Sorry to harp on about The Sydney Morning Herald, but they do have some excellent and thought-provoking articles which have relevance or application to education.

One entitled "Chinese students top the tests out of habit, not ethnicity, study shows" (SMH, 29/12/10, p. 3), seems to uncover reasons behind what many teachers and parents have often wondered about - why Asian children tend to perform better at school than those of other ethnic backgrounds. Why, for example, can an Asian student who has only been in an English-speaking country for less than 5 years, outperform native English speakers who have been through that school system, maybe even to the point of being crowned dux in year 12?

People who grew up in Asian families will probably chuckle wryly and say that it was because they were "forced" from a young age to work hard at studies - school, music, Chinese, etc. This article, however, seems to suggest that it is more to do with habits formed early on.

The article details the findings of Megan Watkins from the University of Western Sydney, who studied children from Chinese, Pacific Islander and Anglo-Australian backgrounds to determine the importance of study habits on success later in educational life. Unfortunately, the article doesn't mention how many children she surveyed, though it does say that she consulted and observed "pupils, parents and staff from primary schools across Sydney".

Some of Watkins findings will no doubt bring smiles to the faces of the many teachers who are currently enjoying a well-deserved summer holiday! Other findings are Quite Interesting and could potentially be of value to teachers, parents and students alike:

• the importance of where you study in your home: "children of Anglo-Australian backgrounds were more likely to do their homework at a kitchen bench or in the loungeroom. Children with a Chinese background tended to sit at a desk in their bedroom. Just under half the children of Pacific Islander backgrounds tended to do their homework in their bedroom, but while sitting on a bed or in a communal setting" 

• the importance of how long you study for: "The children of Chinese background spent about an hour every night of the week, compared with children of Pacific Islander background - 10 minutes for two to three nights a week - and Anglo Australian children - about 20 minutes on only some nights during the week"

• the importance of when you begin to form study good study habits: "many Anglo-Australian parents in the study seemed to place little emphasis on homework before high school. Children of Chinese backgrounds had formed homework habits in primary school."

• And a telling quote from Watkins which will have secondary teachers nodding emphatically: ''If they hit high school and haven't developed a habit of learning it is not automatically going to happen. These are habits acquired over time.''

Nature or nurture? You decide.

RIP Ruth Park, 1917-2010

The great Australian novelist, Ruth Park, passed away recently. Park wrote such acclaimed works as the once shocking The Harp in the South and Playing Beatie Bow, a long-time staple text of English curriculums.

Read The Courier-Mail's obituary here: http://www.couriermail.com.au/ipad/a-writer-for-the-nations-poor/story-fn6ck8la-1225974019448.

Or The Sydney Morning Herald's: http://www.smh.com.au/national/obituaries/novelist-shone-a-light-on-slums-20101216-18zid.html.