Running Out of Steam

 Merry Christmas to those who celebrate! 

The last time Christmas Day fell on a Monday was in 2017. (Answers was able to tell me that since my birth in 1972, Christmas has been on a Monday eight times. Only two of those times have been while my blog was up and running, including today. I composed this blog on Saturday so I could focus on the holiday with my family.) 

I'm tired. I could definitely use the break.

One hint that my energy level was not up to its usual standard was our student council's door decoration contest. I wasn't too concerned because I thought only the classroom teachers would participate. Then I saw our ESL/music teacher and our French teacher with décor on the door and I started to sweat. What was I going to produce in a very short period of time? The student council declared that the theme was "Winter Wonderland" and even had judging criteria posted. 

This was my entry. Excuse the blurry first photo. The second photo gives you a better idea of the way I addressed the theme.

Thankfully, this effort was enough to put a smile on the faces of some of the adults and looks of puzzlement and intense concentration as some of the students tried to find the listed items on the door. I didn't win any of the prizes but the other doors were amazing. I was going to post the photos I took, but I realized that many of them have student faces as part of the decorations, so I can't.

This past week was filled with holiday singalongs, our staff social, a jazz quartet concert, games day, and PJ day. I was brave enough to try a Audience Reception Theory lesson involving the Grinch (see www.aml.ca for the synopsis) and foolish enough to attempt to give a social studies test to five classes on the last day of school. (Don't judge me - I needed the marks!) 

There are always extra duties and activities on top of the usual required tasks during these holidays. Even though I'm not a cook, a week or so ago, I prepared garlic pork, a traditional Christmas dish in my family of origin. 

Hubby and I also continued going to the gym three times a week. Last Saturday (December 16), we had a team challenge where we had to build a snowperson using equipment in the gym; we could only add a piece after complete 100 sets of a particular exercise. Here's a picture of our team's snowperson, plus some of the others from the 9:00 am and 10:00 am classes. (Our snowperson is completing a handstand push up, in case you wondered why he/she/they was upside-down.)

This week (December 23), we had a "12 Days of Christmas" themed workout, where, just like in the song, you had to return/revisit previously done exercises. For instance, in round 7, we completed

• 7 wall balls
• 6 push up
• 5 ab-mat sit-ups
• 4 toes-to-bar
• 3 burpees
• 2 ring dips
• 1 rope climb

In round 8, we did 8 alternating hand dumbbell snatches, plus everything listed above. I only made it to 10 rounds before the time cut-off. I was relieved! These workouts tucker me out.

I'll leave it here for now. I have lots to do over the break (like preparing presentations, reading Forest of Reading books, and getting ready for report cards as well as the winter session of the York University TL AQs), but I will try to get some R&R in there as well.

Concert Completed - Post-Show Thoughts

 Wednesday, December 13, 2023 was our school concert. The afternoon and evening performances were the culmination of months of rehearsals and preparation. We continued some of the procedures we experimented with at our March 2023 concert and it went well.

I wish I could share more photos from the actual event, but there are too many faces to block out to make it suitable for sharing online. I hope this single shot that I've edited, originally taken by our wonderful French teacher, Mme Tran, gives you an idea of the energy emanating from the stage.

This photo is a scene from the 4-class mega-skit based on the improvisational game they love so much, Toy Store. This number had the potential to be a disaster because of all the moving parts, but it actually went quite well, thanks to the teachers helping to supervise backstage and the focus that most of the students had when performing. This was especially important during our matinee, because in the middle of their act, there was a medical emergency. It happened while the "toys" were frozen on stage, just before music started to indicate their dance. Thankfully, there was a paramedic in the audience and the situation was dealt with quickly. Still, our students stayed unmoving, waiting for their cue, for a lot longer than I thought they were capable of remaining still. We carried on with the show ("the show must go on") with most of the children unaware that something unexpected had occurred.

A lot of planning goes into a concert, but we weren't planned for something like this. We are so grateful that everyone was okay and no one seemed traumatized by the unforeseen event.

There are some reflections that are meant just for the concert committee (or even smaller subgroups). We had to make a last-minute alteration to one of the acts, which made sense but did induce some extra stress. Big thanks to those who were brave enough to notice and mention the potential issue, as well as to those who shifted their schedules and used their crafty construction skills to pull off the switch. 

The finale of our show was an incredible feat of organization and a powerful visual and sound experience for those who got to witness it in person. The entire school learned a song called "Let Love Light the Way" and they sang it all together in the gym as the last performance of the evening. Imagine seeing rows and rows of students, from ones that have only recently left their toddler years to ones entering their teen era, all singing in union the chorus:

So come walk with me / Sing along, and you'll see

On this holiday / Let love light the way

You'll need nothing more / Than those you adore

On this holiday / Let love light the way

This wasn't really a holiday concert, or even a winter concert. The focus was on the many ways that people show love. The families enjoyed the show and the students are still singing and humming the songs they learned.

I saw this image on Facebook and had to copy it as the "finale" to this blog post. I don't think we realize how exhausting concert prep can be. Our show was on Wednesday and I was still dragging my behind on Friday. (I came home after 5:00 pm, ate dinner, went to bed at 6:00 pm and didn't arise completely until 9:00 am on Saturday. That's how tired I was.) Multiply this tenfold for the leader of our concert, Connie Chan. She (and her husband, a fellow music teacher) was actually sick the weekend before the concert and missed school on Monday, but was back running the dress rehearsal and shows. She deserves a lot of credit for the success of the concert. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Playing Hi-Tech Pretend and Union Understanding

 This is another "I have two things to say and can't choose which to focus on" post.

Playing Hi-Tech Pretend

Even though a lot of our focus in school these days is on our upcoming concert, learning is still going on. For the kindergarten students I see, we've taken a fun turn that incorporates music and drama and media. Our term theme is all about imagination. I brought in a mysterious package and the students guessed what was in it. 

It was a trumpet. With a lot of mouthpiece washing, we allowed students to try playing the trumpet. I loved seeing the look of surprise and delight on the students' faces when they were able to produce a sound. There was some direct teaching involved on the difference between buzzing their lips and merely blowing air. They loved it!

They discovered that playing a trumpet is not that easy. We talked a bit about where they hear trumpet music and tried to recognize trumpets in music pieces. I set up a booth in the class and library with a green screen and invited students one at a time to select a background and pose with the trumpet.

It was a great opportunity to look at how media create versions of reality, to be playful, to make noise, and to pretend. Here is one of the photos (with student faces blocked). 

Union Understanding

Friday, December 8 was Federation Day. I attended virtually this year. There were a lot of lengthy and powerful talks by people. Instead of my usual "summary / 3 key points / so what and now what" format, I'll just make a few sentences about each section. Please excuse the quality of my photos. I took them of my computer screen while listening.

Helen

Our ETT president, Helen Victoros, made her opening remarks. She reviewed some of the terms of the recent central tentative deal. I appreciated her honesty that the ETT Executive is not unanimous in their opinions of the deal. 

Randy

What is the state of Ontario's finances? It's not as dire as the provincial government would have you believe. Randy Robinson is the director of the Ontario office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. He gave a detailed overview of the numbers that matter and how they are spun. (Thank you Karen Jutzi for the image and post below, from Facebook.)

Jesse

Jesse Wente is an author, broadcaster, and to quote the ETT website, "Indigenous advocate and pop culture philosopher". Some of the important ideas he shared were: We need to focus on being (a more Anishinaabe concept) than Western notions of doing. Are we ready to sit in circle with Jesse's children? The soft stuff (empathy, media literacy [yes, he said media literacy]), the "hall stuff" is important. Be future builders.  

Me (and Chelsea)

Chelsea Attwell and I ran a session called "Magnifying Media in the New Language Curriculum". We had a very large group of people log on. I kept taking photos to actually note the number of participants. (If you can't see, those numbers go from 58, to 281, to 308 to 315.) Now, I'm not going to fool myself into thinking that everyone was hanging on our every word. Attendance was mandatory and I'm sure a lot of folks had the computer on while doing something else. Another worrisome moment was when we didn't have host privileges and people forgot to mute their microphones and we could hear people ordering food and playing music. Thankfully, a last minute email Chelsea sent rectified the situation. Big thanks to James and Daniel and Mila for the conversations afterwards. 

It was lovely to see familiar names at the opening plenary. I hope everyone got something out of the day. Big appreciations go to all those people who organized a workshop, as well as the ETT Federation Day organization committee. 

Printing and Handwriting Adventures

 

Note: This image was created using Dall-E with the prompt "A child riding an oversized pencil in the style of surreal, digital art" on December 2, 2023. I know Andrea Sykes showed us how to do proper citation for AI generated texts, but I'll get better at it in 2024, I promise.

D2.2 - this is the expectation code that caused the most commotion when the updated Ontario Language curriculum was released in June. For Grade 2s, it says:

print legibly and fluently, with appropriate formation patterns, size, placement, and spacing

For the Grade 4s, this same expectation says:

write in cursive, forming letters of appropriate shape, size, proportion, and slant to improve the legibility of texts, and begin to develop fluent keyboarding skills using touch-typing techniques

How do you fit in this type of instruction, along with all the other requirements of the curriculum? Last week, I decided to conduct a "one-off" lesson on printing and handwriting techniques in conjunction with my drama focus. We are preparing for the big concert in December and I wanted to communicate with the families about what outfits the students would need for the show. To "kill two birds with one stone", I elected to create a fill-in-the-blank letter that would allow students to practice printing or writing while paying attention to all those criteria listed in the new expectation.

 A very long time ago, I purchased a CD-ROM (!) that provided several kinds of printing and handwriting fonts with lined backgrounds. This made generating my letter template easy.

I drew the equivalent lines on the board and did some direct, explicit teaching on how to form letters.

I took photos of every student as they wrote their letters. One reason was to note their pencil grip. Another reason was to capture evidence of their printing or handwriting results. The third reason was to eventually add some of these photos to their BrightSpace portfolios, with a short audio reflection by them on their thoughts about learning to write in cursive or print.

I know that there are certain printing methods or techniques. I did not religiously follow any of those. I reviewed "ground", "grass" and "sky" letters so students would know where on the lines to place the letters.

The challenging part about this "one-off" lesson, especially for the students learning cursive, was that there wasn't a lot of opportunity to practice certain new letter shapes over and over. Capital letters in particular are extra-hard, because there are a lot of loops and curves (and the formation depends on what method you adopt - I found this article on cursive writing styles and this overview article with visuals of how the types differ). I know my own handwritten capital letter F doesn't look like the "traditional" capital letter F. Is my way "wrong"? Or just different? When do we move from saying a letter formation is different to being wrong?

I have to give huge credit to the Grade 3 teachers in my school. Both of them have conducted specific lessons with their students teaching them how to form letters. Honestly, I pushed the students a bit too hard and fast with this task. I asked them to sign their names at the bottom of their letters in cursive and many of them explained that they didn't know how because they hadn't covered those letters yet in their homeroom class instruction! Not quite fair, was it? I modelled a lot of signatures on the board and they all gamely tried to mimic.

To try and comfort my students, I told them the true story of when I was in Grade 5 or 6. Back then, you weren't allowed to write using a pen unless your handwriting was deemed "up to snuff". You had to use a pencil until you were "good enough". Despite the fact that I have excellent penmanship now, it took me all the way up until the third term before I was permitted to use a pen to do my school work. One of the students asked a brilliant question in response: "So what if the teacher had bad handwriting? Did that mean the principal took away their pens?" I've heard of older teachers remembering their time in teacher's college being scolded or reprimanded by their host teachers for not having model handwriting skills. Neat printing, along with playing the piano, used to be two requirements for kindergarten or early primary teachers. How times have changed!

I still have a few weeks left in my Media Part 2 Additional Qualification course, and I promised that I would reflect on the media literacy implications from this lesson. 

• Key Concept #3 is that audiences negotiate meaning. Who determines what the "best" way is to form a capital letter F? How many people need to be able to decipher someone's handwriting for it to be considered "legible"?
• Key Concept #4 is about economic implications. How many cursive writing primers have educators purchased (or illegally downloaded) in order to teach their students how to "do" handwriting?
• Key Concept #5 centers on value messages. What does neat handwriting "say" about a person? Did this value judgement get lost when educators stopped teaching handwriting? Will this connection between student and print quality return? Why do students have to learn about printing and writing in cursive when keyboarding skills are also required starting in Grade 4? Which skill set (typing using touch-typing methods or printing) is more important? 
• Key Concept #6 focuses on political and social messages. What cultures or languages might have an advantage when learning to print or write in English? How does the technology of ink influence the attention to handwriting? How does it connect to calligraphy? When do we switch from all being able to print the same to the evolution of our own individual, unique signature? How important is it nowadays to have your own signature? What occupations are known for their terrible handwriting vs excellent handwriting, and why? When will the Ontario Ministry of Education finally release the examples for teaching these various expectations, including D2.2?
• Key Concept #8 looks at aesthetics. What is it about cursive writing that appeals to some. How does a nicely printed letter compare to a well handwritten letter? 

I hope that this authentic use of handwriting and printing was useful. (I learned that only 1/3 of the Grade 1 classes have explicit printing lessons, at least based on what the students shared.) I'll try and sprinkle in more opportunities to practice so that the classroom teachers aren't overwhelmed with all the responsibility of instructing.