A week of wins and challenges

What a week it's been...

It started late last Sunday afternoon when my work phone suddenly rang and seven excited kids were screaming down the phone at me about having won the Tournament of Minds at regional level. This was a totally unexpected result since it was our first entry ever and poor Danae (our Talent Development teacher) was tearing her hair out about props that hadn't been made and lines that hadn't been learned. The result was so unexpected that much to the delight of the children and their parents she burst into tears - and is now planning on winning the State Final in two weeks! I just love aspiration and high expectations!

By now, all Year 3, 5 and 7 students will have received their NAPLAN reports for 2014. On Tuesday I received an email from the North Coast Region congratulating us on the achievement and improvement of our students. Apparently we are punching well above our weight and matching or exceeding some of the best schools in the nation. I don't know about that - I'm just happy that each and every child is learning.

Our school Athletics Team went off to Districts on Wednesday. Seven kids have qualified for the District Team to compete at Regional Trials - and overall we came third! Not bad for a young school with relatively small cohorts for each year level. Cam, our PE teacher, was beaming from ear to ear (there's a not so quiet but friendly rivalry between PE teachers at Districts). Even better was the continual comments he received about how good our kids looked in their athletics singlets (Pete Ashenden from Live Well Pharmacy in the Springs Shopping Centre bought these for us). When kids look good, they are proud, and pride often translates into great behaviour and achievement.

And then, Friday was our annual Book Week Assembly - without a doubt the best Assembly of the year. Pete's Play has become an institution and this year's theme was precious - read a book and pass it on, track your book through Facebook and see where around the world it goes. From Assembly this week six new books have gone out into the world.

The Assembly was full of colour, costumes, laughs and mishaps. I'm not sure there is any school anywhere in which a teacher would encourage 820 children to get up and dance and then expect them all to sit down on cue - not once, but seven times! But our kids can. I never cease to be amazed at how they have learned to engage and have fun - and know when its time to stop.

EVERYONE dresses up - and the costumes are fabulous - especially the handmade ones. Simon (Year 3 teacher) always writes a song. This year's version of Kermit the Frog's Rainbow Connection sung perfectly by Ellie was stuck in our heads all day.

And to top a week of wins and participation off 15 students spent their Sunday at the University of the Sunshine Coast for the Japanese Speaking Contest and it was gold medals for Year 4 and the Junior Open and a Commendation for Year 4.

The week hasn't been without its challenges - in a school community that houses nearly 1000 people every day of the week there are always things to work on - relationships to mend, procedures to fix, improvements to be made.

On the whole though, I think we are making a pretty good fist of being a school to be proud of - proud to attend it, proud to send our kids to it, proud to work in it.. and for me, proud to lead it.

August/September - it's Magic Month in Prep and Year 1

Sometimes I feel so sorry for my Prep and Year 1 teachers... sometimes I see them with their heads in their hands in the Staff Room at their wit's end. They are convinced they have done everything possible to teach little Johnnie his letters, and little Susie her numbers. They usually have done everything we can all think of - except wait...

August and September is Magic Month in Prep and Year 1 classrooms. Suddenly eight to nine months of learning seems to sink in, and Susie and Johnnie are reading and counting away like there's no tomorrow.

Children need time and some children need lots of time. Children are learning all along - even if it doesn't seem like it, and then suddenly it seems like the penny drops.

Of course, time isn't all they need. We can't just sit there waiting... and hey presto, there's some learning. 

Children also need committed dedicated, organised, innovative teachers (luckily we have an oversupply of those at Peregian Springs). And children also need someone who partners with their teacher - someone at home who listens to them read every day, who reads to them every day, who models writing by making notes and shopping lists every day, someone who demonstrates the power of regular sustained practice every day - the Preps and Year 1s who have this person at home make the greatest gains and have even a more magic month come August and September.

There's something remarkable going on...

A couple of weeks ago I posted on our school's Face Book page that some of our teachers are becoming voracious bloggers. One has been blogging a long while and the other has just discovered it as a tool for learning and collaborating and feeding his excitement. The second blog is a collaborative effort and both teachers hope to get a remarkable bunch of students writing and collaborating with them.

They both have remarkable students in their classes - in fact we have remarkable students in every class. Many of them are waiting politely to show how remarkable they are. And their chance is about to come...

While I was swanning around Europe watching the World Cup in Berlin and swimming with sharks in Scotland (I'll include a photo - I still can't believe I did this...), Chris and Pete were cooking up a storm and scribbling on whiteboards, planning and plotting for the build of a Remarkable Room and what would happen in there. I knew what they were up to - in between soccer games and deep dives I was reading their blog. So I waited, and then on Friday I was summoned to come and see what they want to do.

It's big, it's great, it's going to have an impact on all of our students as we start to turn the learning process upside down and concentrate on imagination, innovation and investigation, and less on rote learning small units of content and skills.

Their planning looked like this...

Yes, I tried hard not to look horrified...

There was some writing in recognisable text which I was very happy with - these two are clever enough to recognise the parameters I would put around their project. But there's not too many. You can't put parameters around learning that is this exciting and extensive.

Our kids are in for a remarkable treat. I can't wait...

A Scottish basking shark 8m long

Big, messy, noisy learning - the very best kind

I wandered into 6S yesterday to say hi to Pete - he was the only teacher I hadn't had a chance to catch up with after being on leave. The activity going on with 55 kids and two teachers just washed over me like a forceful wave. Kids were constructing houses and aircraft hangars, testing buzzers and bells, researching their ideas on the net, and there were electrical wires, complex diagrams and Internet enabled devices everywhere. Every child was excitedly working on their project, chattering about it, studying it with frowning eyebrows, testing solutions and improving their product. Pete and Chris (6S's teachers) sat amid cardboard, aluminium foil, paint, textas and paper challenging their learners, raising new questions, and smiling.

This is big, messy, noisy learning at its best - this is real inquiry, real life learning; the type of learning that spawns truly long lasting, sustainable and impressive learning outcomes across a range of areas. Students are researching, reading, writing and calculating in a meaningful context with few restraints.

I love it.