We all need to take care of ourselves! I can’t think of any issue on a personal level more important than our own mental well-being. For too many it’s something that we come to realise mostly when it’s way too late, when our mental health has taken a hit and we are left with the stressful and debilitating consequences. The problem is that we tend to take good mental health for granted, a bit like a well running car; why tinker with it if it’s all fine? However, to keep running smoothly we need to maintain ourselves, especially during the good times, or one day we may just find ourselves in a big mess.

One way of staying mentally healthy is to make sure we give ourselves time for something we enjoy. My stunning little MG F isn’t only my car, it’s my hobby, my interest and a thing that I thoroughly enjoy. I suppose part of it may lie with the fact I used to be a car body repairer, dismantling smashed vehicles and fixing them up like brand new. I’ve still maintained a great interest in cars and I’m always looking to tinker with my MG and improve it (although it does drain my bank account a little). Doing this ensures I make time just for me, to do something I like and that takes my mind off the pressures of everyday life. This new blogging task is to take a photo of your pastime or hobby and post it as a new header with an explanation of what it means to you. How does your hobby make you feel? Does it give you space and time alone? How long have you been doing it? If you don’t have a hobby, how do you find time for yourself to relax?

 

Dragging a class, kicking and screaming, through a full novel study can be as much fun as teaching a duck to herd cats. It can be a very tricky balancing act to find a novel that is not only interesting to both boys and girls, but also contains the necessary topics and depth of literary content to be of educational value. Well, in my humble opinion, I found just the perfect novel for the job – Fish in a Tree by Lynda Mullaly Hunt. The novel tells the story of a year 6 student who faces difficulties and challenges, particularly at school. However, her journey becomes an inspiration to readers and, just as important to me, the literary content provides so much material to help move the students forward with their reading and comprehension skills. It’s too difficult to list all the work we’re about to do with this novel, but if you’re a parent please discuss this post with your child. Below is an image of one of our fabulous girls who brought in something from home that’s mentioned in our novel. If you know what it is, or if you had one (parents?), drop a comment.

As a teacher, we’ve really got to get imaginative with the content we provide to the students. I’ve been using the TV show My Place in the classroom for a few years now, but mostly with my year 6 students. This year, with me having a mixed year 5/6 class, it becomes a touch trickier, but I’m still using this excellent, valuable resource. While it’s an essential teaching resource for my year 6 students and their studies of 20th Century history, I’m also showing the same episodes to my year 5 students. However, the year 5s aren’t using it for History, they (along with the year 6s) are using it as a visual novel study, looking at topics such as characterisation, symbolism, director’s intentions, and so much more. The series has also stimulated ideas for Health, Maths and technology. It’s such a great Australian resource that I just may do it all over again next year.

It’s only day one of this week and the students already feel like they’ve run a marathon. To be fair, they sort of have. This week we had our annual school cross country race, where the whole school runs around a course specifically set for their year level. It was about a 2 kilometre track in our local park for our year 5s and 6s, and they did a tremendous job. It was an exhausting but great day and all the students who took part can be proud of themselves for completing the whole course. In the end, one of our own boys, Oliver, took Champion Boy honours for the year 6s – a fabulous achievement. A special mention also for Kenzie and Jazmin who were runners up in their groups. Check out the images below of the students being put through their horrific torture!

Well, okay, the title of this post is a little deceptive. Things aren’t really going swimmingly, we are actually going swimming! Last week and this week have all been about swimming lessons and the students have been having a great time at the local pool. It’s been fascinating to see them develop their skills as they learn the techniques needed to swim with ease, grace and power. Some of them have made amazing progress. However, the drawback to this is that the classroom work has taken a bit of a hit, with some days being reduced to between one and two hours contact time between myself and the students. Not that I’ve heard anyone complaining! Anyway, even with swimming, we’ve learned about negative numbers, the Cartesian plane, how to write engaging sentences, how to use personification… It just proves that even with distractions sometimes you’ve just got to dive in and make the best of it.

“If only we could include creativity in the way we do Maths.” Don’t listen to the nay-sayers, Maths can be creative and fun. We’ve been doing heaps in LA14, right across the whole curriculum and across all topics. It’s been a tricky year, so we’re working our socks off to catch up and yet forge ahead at the same time. However, this doesn’t mean we’re not having fun and using creativity at the same time. While learning about rotational symmetry, we had a mini excursion to the car park and took photos of the different wheels on the cars. We then uploaded the images, manipulated them and produce a digital piece which explained our understanding. While learning about integers, we created Catesian coordinates and drew colourful representations of our names with related plots. All in all, our classroom not only has examples of our learning but it’s also looking much more colourful at the same time.

“Get yourself sorted out!” Your blog, that is, get your blog sorted out. This week we need to start getting serious with our blogs. What I want to see this week is a new page added, an “About Me” page which explains all the information people may need about you and stays in place permanently. The difference between a page and a post is that a page stays as it is, whereas the posts change each time a new one is added. Next, make sure you’ve deleted any widgets you aren’t going to use and that you’ve added the Class Blogs widget. You’ll also need to delete the “Hello World” post and replace it with one of your own. Finally, I’d like everyone to post a comment on any of my posts from this year. We’re quite late starting our blogs but we’ll soon have them all flying.

Sometimes things just don’t go as planned. Initially, the year started off great with myself and the students all settling in well together. Unfortunately, following a family emergency in the UK, I had to make a sudden and unexpected trip which brought our great start to the year to a sudden stop. Considering the year is still quite young, we have every chance of picking up where we left off and pushing on to make this year the success I always thought it would be. Now we begin again and, as they say in the movies, we “take two”.

Five days done (yes, only 5) and you wouldn’t believe what the students in LA14 have already achieved. They’ve learnt to take a breath when they work, take time, look carefully and make sure their work isn’t just “finished”, but it’s also the best possible and it’s also better than their last effort. They’ve learnt about events in history (The Stolen Generation) and looked critically at characters in a video. They’ve tried to get their heads around analogy, and the symbolism that authors use to make meaning. The students have even developed their skills with factors and place value. This is all on top of attending Art, Music, Phys. Ed. and Science. I’m exhausted just writing all this!

Check out some of our early work below.

Another year and another class. Also, another change of classrooms; last year I was booted out of LA1 and sent back to LA14. There was a good reason for this, though, as I’ve changed year groups. This year, LA14 will be a split class made up of year 5 and year 6 students. A split class is quite a common thing in all schools and we do try to avoid it as much as possible, but it’s just the way things fell this year and, as usual, we’ll be giving it our best shot. I reckon everything will be just fine; the admin are up for it, I’m up for it and (most importantly) the students are up for it. So, as usual, watch this space, 2024 is going to be yet another cracking year for all of us!