boracay, philippines

We've just spent a great week in Boracay. With water so turquoise and sands so white, it's no wonder this is a premier tourist destination! I definitely recommend this boutique hotel and this delicious restaurant (BEST chorizo burger).

Our beach bum had a lot of first on this trip: first plane ride, boat ride, bus ride, and swim in the ocean! 

It was also her first bug bite and tiny sun burn (despite slathering on the sun screen!)

deconstructing/reconstructing a rubric

For our performance task in our Physical Well-being unit, I simply printed the standards and indicators being addressed on half sheets of paper, had the kids describe each in their own words, and add a picture for understanding. It was pretty cool listening in on conversations that were had as cards were finished and students began organizing them for Emerging, Developing, and Proficient learners! I highly recommend this as an end-of-unit learning experience:

visible thinking: think puzzle explore

This week in Math class I introduced a new Visible Thinking routine, the Think Puzzle Explore. 
It was perfect and I felt SO energized afterward!

When we first starting talking, the kids, knowing that "Math" was on the schedule and hearing that "visible thinking" was a big part of the day's plan (like that's any different from any of the learning we show in class?), asked plainly, "How are we going to do Visible Thinking in Math?!" 
To which I could only reply, "Don't we do that everyday in Math? Isn't a big part of what we do in addressing problems and tasks to explain our thinking, put the processes our brains go through on the page for others to see and understand?"
A resounding: Ah. Yes, Mrs. Phillips.

Our big topic right now is multiplication, and we're really just starting out, with kids at very different levels. 
The routine looks like this:
Think: What do you think you know about the topic/idea?
Puzzle: What are you confused about? What are your puzzles, wonderings, or questions about [multiplication]?
Explore: How can you explore this further?

The kids got cozy around the room and spent a good 30 minutes (after the settling in that comes with the week-before-a-much-needed-holiday) just thinking on the Think and writing down their prior knowledge and understandings.

We gathered then, to discuss what the kids think they know. I typed out their responses as we went to make the thinking actually visible.

Next, the kids got cozy again to address their puzzles. 
Again, gathering to discuss with documentation. 
So now, on our "math board," we have a class set of thoughts and a class set of puzzles. 

In our room this was the perfect way to get kids interested in a personal math inquiry - particularly in a topic with which they are beginning to feel comfortable (thank you, grade 2 teachers!), but are still scared to delve totally in to (I need to know all the facts fluently up to 10?!).
We are exploring everything from the different strategies we can use to solve multiplication equations to the invention of multiplication to the various ways to practice personal facts fluency.
After our October break (off to Boracay with baby and in-laws!) we'll do some exploring and sharing of our new learning.

visible thinking: zoom in

Today we started a new Visible Thinking routine, Zoom In, that I'm hoping to keep up with in the class.
[Side note, I'm attending a weekend workshop with Ron Ritchhart in November at our school and I'm really looking forward to it!]

I've started with this image of a Story Rollercoaster, which is just another way of representing the plot structure. As you can see, only one small part is revealed:

We started discussing the piece a class, focusing on the first two parts below. As more parts are revealed, we'll move onto the other two parts.

This kids had some really interesting ideas! Everything from it looks like kids are in bathtubs to I see one person of each gender so maybe it's about being fair [one of our dispositions] to I think there are people from all over the world. Of course there were a lot of connections to personal experiences, too.

The best part was the way the kids started building on the ideas they were hearing, which they quickly told me is called piggybacking. Love that they know this term! Also, going from obvious observations to more thoughtful conclusions was eye-opening for a lot of them.

Next week I'll reveal more and we'll continue, but the level of engagement involved with this was so so great! It's the perfect way to start tuning into narrative writing.

lately

My niece, above, started Kindergarten in September and she was so resistant... but she's loving it! The teacher in me is so happy for her.

This is such an interesting read about the power of daydreaming for our learning. Pretty sure we'll be taking daydream breaks every now and again moving forward.

I love throw pillows but how do you keep them fluffed? Ours always look so sad.

Is it weird that I'm a thirty-year-old woman (a mother no less) and still, when Mean Girls (do I really need to link that?) is on tv, I definitely watch it and make my husband watch it with me?

We watched the first season of Silicon Valley in like three or four days. So then we watched Kumail Nanjiani's stand-up, Beta Male. The part about the mongoose is really funny. And then the part about the hobo in the attic is really funny. I may have had a glass of wine while watching, though, and a glass of wine after a pregnancy and five months of breastfeeding, well, ends up being sort of a lot of wine!

And in case you're wondering, here is the correct response to the question "Which of the seven dwarfs best describes your wife in bed?"

girl problems

We be havin' 'em.
Plenty of 'em, too.
Aside from enlisting the help of our guidance counselor, Information Literacy teacher, specialist teachers, and our principal, we've been working really hard in class on learning to understand one another.
Communication.
Empathy.
Problem-solving.

As frustrating as it has all been, now that we're knee-deep in our social learning, it's been pretty interesting!

We started with this essential question, a part of our year-long Learning to Learn unit:

How can I contribute to a learning community?

The kids did some personal reflection, and we shared what it should look like, sound like, and feel like in our grade 3 classroom.
Of course, they gave all the traditional answers, all the ones that we, as teachers, want to hear.
These are now our "Guidelines to Happiness" and are posted in the room.
Naturally, that wasn't enough.

We followed up with this:

The kids got themselves together in small groups and brainstormed problems that they have. (The pictures of their work beside are to make their responses visible). 

This was great, because there was a range of them!

So we discussed.

Next, groups chose one problem to dramatize (but with no solution).

As a class, we discussed potential solutions, and kept a running list:

During those discussions, the kids kept talking about how they would feel if it happened to them, or similar experiences they've had, which lead to a mini-inquiry into the word empathy.

They paired up to figure out what it means, thought up some examples, and presented their findings informally with other pairs.

It was a tangent, but a good one, and we'll revisit it next week with some scenarios.

(Isn't that what inquiry learning is about?)

Then, more personal reflection...

Kids wrote in their notebooks to complete this sentence frame: 

I can help others solve their problems because I

Now this was awesome because they were really able to dig a bit deeper, having spent so much time focused on potential problems.

We put on calm.com to set the tone in the room.

Students shared if they were feeling brave.

Then, we made a list together of the skills and qualities that problem-solvers have as they came up during sharing. 

I printed them quickly and the kids signed up as experts in those areas:

Now, if someone is having a problem in our class, they now go to the expert sign-up list and see who might be able to help them.

They actually do this, yes. It's brilliant.

So far this has been a focus in our classroom for the last month.

With the support of my so-fantastic colleagues, girl problems are definitely less!

integrated inquiry: health + math

I was inspired one weekend when my husband set out money for our helper's weekly trip to the grocery store. She has off-the-charts mental math skills, and from the 2000 pesos (about $50), she spends almost every last cent to buy the food she needs to cook our lunches for Tuesday - Friday. (How seriously lucky are we that this something we have in our lives?!) Then I thought: this must go into the classroom. It's the perfect link with our Physical Wellbeing commonality.

So I set it up with the kids, telling them about Angie, and we figured out together how much she probably spends each day. The kids used very intelligent reasoning, saying that some days, when she makes us soup, it probably costs her less than when she makes us chicken with a salad. I mean, come on...! Well done, grade three.

Then we talked about how difficult it is to eat healthy everyday. We talked about advertising and how it's literally all around us, trying to persuade us to buy every sugar-filled and "low fat" and cartoon-laden product out there. From here, we inquired into what makes a balanced meal?

The kids hit the Chromebooks, iPads, and our library, searching for information. After about an hour, we came together and discussed our findings. We even qualified the terms "good" and "bad" with reference to food.

Someone hit on "the five food groups" and we were off...

The next day I shared with them a Google Doc called "The Legends Supermarket," modeled after our class name, that was blank. The kids organized themselves into food group companies, browsed Compfight and CC Search for images of foods, and began adding them to the Doc to create a grocery flyer.

You can see some groups have even started adding in prices...that I've spent some time adjusting today! 10 pesos for a whole chicken? Okay.

After pricing is made more appropriate (!), the kids will use the shared folder to build their own healthy meal for one lunch, with 250 (fake) pesos in their pockets. We've discussed the goal, which is to practice our 2- and 3-digit addition skills. 

I'm really looking forward to getting back to this next week! Real life, meaningful, and integrated.

critique & feedback

Such an inspiring video:

And aside from critique and feedback, so many other themes:
perseverance
goal-setting
revision
personal best
power of positive language
being specific
building excellence
beginning with the end in mind
...
...
...!

we can teach so much

number lines + rounding

To kick off our Math classes, I show this awesomely hilarious video (of course - it's a beginning of the year staple): 

The kids then talked together to help them figure out why I would show it to introduce math. It was a pretty great conversation and they hit on a lot of the major messages: there are many different ways to learn in math class; you can't just give up if you don't get it; instructions really matter to help our understanding; etc. Then as their first journal entry, I simply ask them to answer the question What is math? Their responses can be very telling!
(There are a number of these and they're great and simple little brain breaks!)

The next day, I stood in front of the class with a long strip of butcher paper with a 0 and 100 at opposite ends and asked them to simply work in teams to create a math tool. That's it. They worked freely together for about an hour (I was surprised it took this long and was happy I'd reserved two blocks for this very open-ended task!) as I rotated to listen in on conversations. Some of their responses:

They got pretty creative and used a number of strategies to make number lines. Afterward, I asked each group to casually present their work to the class. We were able to focus a lot on their work as a team, with two big topics of conversation being What went really well for your group? and What was challenging about this task? I definitely have a reflective bunch this year!

The next day I used more of the workshop model with a very mini mini-lesson (which wasn't really me actually teaching but more guiding the kid's conversations to help them understand rounding to the nearest ten and hundred). I handed out a page of numbers to each team and asked them to show me in some way how they could be rounded appropriately.

The kids looked at the work of other teams in a sort of gallery walk, which gave them a chance to revise some of their incorrect numbers. This was definitely a great start-up to our cooperative math and workshop model format!

on becoming a working mom

In thinking about heading back into the classroom during the summer months, I knew going back to work with a three-month old baby would be a challenge.
Challenge was right.
I feel run off my feet between the hours of 7am and 4pm.
I feel weighed down with responsibilities.
I feel majorly disorganized as I juggle lesson planning, meetings, and classroom activities.
But I also feel truly blessed (if blessed is the right word) to be back to work with a healthy baby who is right down the hall from my room in the faculty nursery, where I can continue to breastfeed and get all the best baby cuddles I need. Mara is also developing beautifully, right alongside her term friends, which is so amazing for a six-week preemie. My admin are thoughtful, kind, and so supportive, and have even made me exempt from yard duty. Living in a country with such a short maternity leave, our school has made all the difference in fostering a smooth transition.

Holy cow! I'm over eleven pounds!

(I started out at 5...)

When I afford myself the time to stop and think - getting better at this - I recognize that many many mommies go back to work and all their babies fare just fine. My students are smart, motivated inquirers, and with the right focused guidance will learn all our curriculum sets out for them to learn and then some. Plus Mara's got the very best daddy. I'm one lucky lady. (If busy.)

At any rate, here are just a few (rather poor) photos from our first 1.5 weeks back in the classroom:

working with number lines - an upcoming post

the famous sticky note questions

our Multiple Intelligences

sharing work while learning about Mathematical Practice 1

student definitions of happiness

our wall of happiness

Now if only we could get repair guys in to fix our broken washing machine and air conditioners. It's been almost two weeks and it's mighty hot in here and we're running out of clothes!

inspiring creativity

We start back to school on Monday.

After being off for the past three months with our baby, I'm a mix of excited and nervous.

Reflecting on the last year in the classroom, I knew there was one thing I definitely wanted to add:

Time fillers!

Then I decided these should help foster creativity and build a great classroom culture.

So I've just put these simple prompts together:

click the picture to download for free

The file itself is not all that fantastically pretty or creative on my part, but hey.

pros & cons: manila

A short list, but you've got to start somewhere so let's just jump right in.

pro: the weather!
It's beautiful. This may be because I hate winter, but the warm, sunny days are perfect!

con: the weather.
It's rainy season right now, and the Philippines sees about 20 typhoons a year. These can mean some pretty nasty weather and are a huge danger for those that live in settlement housing, causing displacement, damage to infrastructure, loss of property and even loss of life.

pro: so many western things
As I learn to navigate the rings of malls and specialty shops, and get to know the big expat community, it's easier and easier to find all the things I love from home. Maybe the brands won't be what I'm used to, but that's not usually a problem.

con: so many western things often sell out and are restocked way later in the season
You want it? Buy it now. Actually, buy two. One time I found stroopwafels and that was amazing.

pro: easy transfer of driver's licence
Even though mine will forever say I weigh in at 63 kg because I was pregnant, all I had to do was pick up a form and fill it out, walk to another building for a "medical", wait for awhile ma'am, step on a scale, wait for awhile ma'am, read letters on the wall wearing my glasses, walk back to the main building, hand in the paperwork, sign some things, sit and wait, sign some more things beside that first place, sit and wait, sign yet more things beside that place, sit and wait, pay, sit and wait even more, pick up my fancy new plastic licence! So yes, maybe it sounds like a long process, but I don't even think they actually looked at my Ontario licence - so I get the feeling that anyone can be licensed here. And I get that feeling because... 

con: traffic
There's so much of it and it is not pretty. We've got:

• maniacal drivers
• jeepneys
• lack of signage
• lanes that end or do not connect past an intersection
• lanes that don't really matter. If your vehicle can fit, you get in every last small space you can see.
• so many cars
• optional turn signals
• motorcycles that sneak in everywhere
• sloooow and erratic three-wheeled vehicles in some parts of the city

Although I have my licence, I still have yet to drive here. Jeff drives, and he's done a great job navigating the "rules" of the road here. I suppose if you don't like it you could hire someone to do your driving for you.

pro: household helpers
You can hire people to do all the things you don't want to do and it's affordable. Gardeners, drivers, helpers or all-arounders (to clean the house, pay your bills, shop, run errands, water your plants, take care of your cat or even your kids... whatever you need), yayas (nannys), pool guys, you name it. You can even hire people to come to your home and give you a manicure or pedicure, a massage, even take your blood if needed.

That said, a big con is major income inequality.
I live in a neighbourhood that's private property, which is right beside a gated community, which is right beside an informal settlement. To say there is a major divide between the rich and the poor in this city is an understatement. I know I am very fortunate.

In the same breath, they say the Filipino spirit is unbreakable, and most people we meet are incredibly friendly, welcoming, and so helpful. It's an adventure living here and I can't wait to explore more of the over 7000 islands the Philippines has to offer!