Take Each Day By Day

Super excited to be off to the city today for a school PD. I'm going to be participating in a workshop on creative writing which I think will be awesome!  I have started a program at my school called Word Vomit where we are encouraging the students to write down whatever they think and then concentrate on making it better.  The biggest challenge for kids today is the art of drafting and not getting it perfect the first time. I have so many students who are afraid to write as they can't get started because they don't have the perfect opening line. This concept of having to be perfect I think comes from the use of technology. I think we have always felt that the 'typed' version is the final version. As such students don't edit or rewrite what they have already typed.  I have tried to implement the rule that nobody gets an iPad until they have written a draft. Most of the time it works- some of the time I end up with an argument!! Students will maintain ...

I have really been struggling over the last few days as I have become overwhelmed by mundane and simple tasks. My anxiety has crept up on me like a dentist appointment you make and then wish you hadn't and I haven't been in a good frame of mind.  Everyone suffers when I get like this,  most of all my little ASDer who has no idea his endless questions are driving me to the brink. If I hear him comment one more time he wants something else to eat (after consuming half the pantry) I might just walk out. Especially as the yelling and losing it doesn't make me feel any better.  So I'm human at the end of the day and need to remind myself of a few things:  1) My child will love me even if I yell. 2) It is essential to learn to ask for help- I can't do it all myself and nobody expects me too!  3)You can break a few rules when you need to- take away, letting them have their toys, not brushing teeth. Sometimes it's not about the fight but showing compromise ...

After a few weeks of  the hectic chaos surrounding Easter and assessment tasks, the incredibly scary notion that my only child is starting school next year seemingly sprung it's self upon me.  NOTE: not really I did have serval reminder messages and discussions with friends about our school of choice - but my inability to look at the calendar made it seem like it sprung upon me!  So off to orientation night my husband and I go! I have been fairly confident in my choice of "BIG" school for my son and am hopping that this confidence is not misplaced - especially as a mother of a charming ASDer, I am potentially worried about the disaster school could be for the next 13 years. As a teacher I had a small idea of what I wanted to achieve on the night and was successful in cornering (!) the Learning Support Unit to have a chat about what was needed in order to ensure the best outcome at transitioning my...

True to my word- teachers are on their feet all day so you should look after them! Any for any gents out there I have just spent the last 40 minutes talking to a lovely elderly gentleman who has beautiful feet because he looks after them! 

A quick explanation for the succession of blogs and slightly outdated information. I did have another blog/ website with wix.com but for over three days I could not edit or add anything new. It was probably me doing something wrong, but it was frustrating and I couldn’t find anything useful to help. So I jumped ship so to speak – but I was really happy with what I started with so I transferred it over. Happy to be here and hope that this works better that my last venture! xo

Fellow teachers will agree with me that this is a term that is going to be used very regularly in the near future by all educational departments. It is however in my opinion a teaching practice that is not thoroughly understood by all teachers. I tutor a student and his assessment outlines indicate differentiation approaches for the task and they are not really alternate strategies the students can use. For example he had to do a speech and was told that if they needed to they could sit down. This was kind of ok, except that the marking criteria determined that to get an A band you had to use “performance” techniques in presenting your speech. Another example is that I have hear other teachers not at my school say  "I’ll give the lower class 3 questions and the top class 6 questions." How does this help if the lower class is not able to access the same amount of information through questioning? I was lucky enough to attend a course outlining the idea of differentiation a...