Age Appropriate Behaviour?

We tend to judge behaviour in terms of age appropriateness. I recall my first child hitting the “terrible twos” and could not believe that my beautiful daughter had metamorphosed into a disobedient, argumentative little tantrum thrower. The Toddler Training bible, Dr Google and every other reference said that this was normal development caused by hormonal changes. When the tantrums occurred, parents were recommended to stay calm and patient, speak quietly and model to children the way that strong emotions can be dealt with. Eventually they will learn to control their feelings and modify their behaviours. The Terrible Twos pass… and then the Horrendous Threes. We are now in the Awful Eights. (Why did no-one warn us of all these?!) Each stage in the child’s life is a time of challenge and learning, for both parents and child. The child gradually learns appropriate social behaviours. I was ready for similar stages in my other two children and a little wiser in dealing with them. I still have adolescence to look forward to!

The tantrums seen in a two year old are age appropriate. The same behaviours in a five year old at school are inappropriate. Tantrums in older children are definitely inappropriate and will require intervention so that that pattern of behaviour does not become “hard wired”.

Play Is The Way has had a dramatically positive affect on our school culture which has resulted in children learning socially appropriate behaviours by reflecting on and taking responsibility for their behaviours. The Play is The Way language provides a way of opening up conversations for learning from inappropriate behaviours. At all times the adult must model calm considered “adult” behaviours. Asking questions immediately requires the child’s brain to move away from the Limbic (emotional) part of the brain to the cerebral cortex (thinking) parts. An emotional responses to an emotional outburst will trigger defensiveness and escalate the problem. The Play Is The Way language is built around 6 reflective questions:

“Is that the Right thing or wrong thing to do?”
“Are you havinga Strong moment or weak moment?”
“Are your Feelings or thinking in charge?”
“Am I trying to hurt you or help you?”
“Are you running away from the problem or dealing with it?”
“Being your own boss or asking me to be the boss?”

These questions can be modified to any opposites such as “Is that a Nice or Nasty thing to say? These questions open up a conversation between the child and the adult where the adult crafts the questions to guide the conversation for the child to do the thinking and reflecting on his or her behaviour rather than passively listening to an adult give a lecture. The latter generally makes the adult feel better but results in no learning for the child.

Community Circles are a powerful tool for children to help each other reflect on behaviour and support their colleagues in developing strategies to become more virtuous. Inappropriate behaviours are named and dealt with in a trusting and supportive manner. Children learn the language to confidently and respectfully deal with issues and seek or give advice on how to improve. It is all about learning.

We live and work in a school community. When someone does the right thing, it affects the whole community positively. When someone does the wrong thing, it has a negative effect on the community. We firmly believe in “Our School. Our Children”. Children, regardless of their age or year level can be invited into a Community Circle to be accountable to and supported by the community.

Children’s learning and wellbeing is our business. Helping children develop appropriate social skills to enable them to moderate their own behaviours has become an increasingly large part of the teacher’s role. The real challenge for a leader is how to deal with teachers who display behaviours that are socially age inappropriate. The community of teachers has as yet developed to a stage where teacher behaviour is addressed in the same way that children are being taught. We too often operate a “polite society” rather than a community of learners. When a staff member’s behaviour, attitude or speech is negative, inappropriate or contrary to our School Agreements or Values, staff will rarely speak with the person concerned. More often than not the person will be spoken about or the behaviour will be reported to leadership.

It might sound simplistic or provocative, but most of these misbehaviours are age inappropriate – a teacher refusing to speaking to colleagues for extended periods, a teacher yelling at children, continually late for duty,

late back from the staffroom after a break, etc. Behaviours that would be expected from a junior primary student but not be accepted from a primary student, let alone an adult.

The Play Is The Way questions are a perfect vehicle for addressing the above. How many staff would respond positively? Would they feel that they were being “treated like a child”? If a teacher’s behaviour was named at a “staff meeting community circle” where they were respectfully told of the impact their behaviour was having on the community and then support offered, would the teacher see this as an act of caring and a valuable learning experience or would they cry victimisation and complain to the union?

Age inappropriate behaviour requires an age appropriate response… or should that be a “behavioural age” appropriate response?

Cocooning Children

Once a boy  found a caterpillar. He carefully picked it up and took it home to show his mother. He asked his mother if he could keep it, and she said he could if he would take good care of it. The little boy got a large jar from his mother and put plants to eat, and a stick to climb on, in the jar. Every day he watched the caterpillar and brought it new plants to eat.

 One day the caterpillar climbed up the stick and started acting strangely. The boy’s mother explained that the caterpillar was creating a cocoon and was going to go through a metamorphosis and become a butterfly.

The boy watched every day, waiting for the butterfly to emerge. One day it happened, a small hole appeared in the cocoon and the butterfly started to struggle to come out.

At first the boy was excited, but soon he became concerned. The butterfly was struggling so hard to get out! It looked like it couldn’t break free! It looked desperate! It looked like it was making no progress!

The boy was so concerned he decided to help. He got a pair of scissors, and snipped the cocoon to make the hole bigger and the butterfly quickly emerged!

As the butterfly came out the boy was surprised. It had a swollen body and small, shrivelled wings. He continued to watch the butterfly expecting that, at any moment, the wings would dry out, enlarge and expand to support the swollen body. He thought that in time the body would shrink and the butterfly’s wings would expand.

But neither happened!

The butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shrivelled wings.

It never was able to fly…

The boy tried to figure out what had gone wrong and learned that the butterfly was SUPPOSED to struggle. In fact, the butterfly’s struggle to push its way through the tiny opening of the cocoon pushes the fluid out of its body and into its wings. Without the struggle, the butterfly would never, ever fly. The boy’s good intentions hurt the butterfly.

Struggling is an important part of any growth experience. Muscles don’t grow without be stretched. Our school values include resilience and persistence. TfEL (Teaching for Effective Learning) 2.4 is about Challenge and (appropriate) support. How difficult this becomes when (some/many) parents continually “rescue” their children. As the boy in the story, the parents might be well meaning but the result is children who cannot “fly”.

As part of the school’s Virtues program, we work with parents to enable children to develop resilience and persistence through struggling and embracing challenge. The following message to parents that I observed at Tapping Primary School WA (A Play Is The Way Lighthouse School) will soon be on posters around our school:

No False Rescues

Falsely rescuing children from emotional discomfort and difficulty weakens their resiliency and lessens their ability to persevere.

 We rescue when a someone is struggling to breathe, not when one is struggling to swim in a swimming lesson.Cocooning children will never allow them to fly.

The Mouldy Mug

I am not writing this post to take the opportunity of having a cheap shot at Port Adelaide Football Club supports despite the caption on the mug clearly showing Port Adelaide Football Club which strongly implies that the mug was owned by Magpies or Power supporter. I say “owned” because after taking the photo I disposed the mug in the bin. What is not as obvious is that the coffee residue in this mug had dried thickly and a caffeine addicted spider had created a web above the foul, pungent stain. This mug had been sitting on a bench for months partly hidden from view by other jetsam which someone had discarded.

This mouldy mug illustrates a deeper issue that is the elephant in this case, our staffroom. What does it say when a mug is left for months in a public place and no-one deals with it? What does it say when after any break there are teaspoons or mugs left in the sink? What does it say when coffee rings are left on a table or bench, burnt cheese on the sandwich toaster or food and crumbs left on the staffroom table on a Friday evening? I could go on about papers left on staffroom tables, benches and floors, dirty trays in the oven and the stove top filthy… but I won’t.

In an institution which has a role in teaching values to children, why do we have such difficulty in modelling basic values such as respect and care to our colleagues? Dropping a spoon into the sink is actually saying that I expect someone else to do this for me. I do not respect my colleagues enough to wash, dry and put away a spoon. I am happy for you to clean up my mess left in the sandwich maker because my time is more important than yours. I will ignore the mess on the staffroom table and bench because I know that someone else will do it. Those wonderful staffroom fairies will magically make everything right.

My dear mum would always say to me, “Honest in a little, Honest in a lot.” Any value here can be substituted here.

I did not set out to Crow about the since departed Port Adelaide Mug. I simply want to state that for a school culture to be truly values driven, collaborative and supportive we need to get the little things right to enable the big things to happen.

Reflections on Maths with Ann Baker

Ann Baker presented a full day’s thought provoking training at Hackham East Primary.

The following things resonated:

There should be three parts to a Maths Block.

  1. Mental Routines
  2. Problematise Situation
  3. Reflection

Mental Routines – 10 minutes daily

The traditional mental routines have an adverse effect on student self esteem, learning and attitude to maths.

Ann demonstrated many activities using the 100 grid for mental. Children share multiple strategies for solving problems.

Present the same mental routine for a fortnight. Kids need to be speaking the maths language and meta language. Teach the vocabulary or terminology (factors, multiples…) explicitly for those routines. Display on the board.

Terminology requires 200 repetitions to embed.

Ask Guy Claxton type open ended questions:

What if…?

What might…?

What could…?

Reflective learners need time to process therefore think that they’re dumb if they don’t get it as quickly as others.

Similarities with Dylan Wiliam – Wait Time or Processing time is essential for thinking – ask and wait. Let kids think. Then flip the asking of the questions over to the kids. Ask reflective thinkers if they’ll ask the first question. Cue them in at the beginning of the lesson. Tell the more able students to wait until after the 4th question before they can ask.

Problematised Situation (Problem Solving)

ACARA Mathematics Proficiency Strands: Understanding, Fluency, Reasoning, Problem Solving

Higher order thinking and reasoning should be built into everything to develop adaptive reasoning.

As over 60% of all children are Visual Learners, provide visual support. (Just as oral comprehension precedes written comprehension.)

Echoes of TfEL 2.4 Challenge and Support. Let kids struggle. With best of intentions we too often over praise, over provide and over protect.

All problems should have Easy Peasy, Middly Puddly and Sting in the Tail.

Encourage collaboration and discussion. What you do with the help of a friend you’ll do tomorrow by yourself.

Do not rehearse inappropriate strategies. Practice makes permanent.

The Secret Code

Subitize from subito meaning to “suddenly know”. The importance of being able to subitize cannot be over stated. All success in mathematics is built upon this.

Subitize and Count on. (Take the largest number and count on) If Receptions cannot count on they will never catch up with others.

Tell children that we are all born with a Lazy Brain – it tries to chunk things together.

Subitizing games:

  • Magic Cloak – throw a large die, and immediately cover it with the Magic Cloak (tee- towel). Children draw what they saw.
  • Children throw 2 dice repeatedly. Teacher calls doubles, one less then, one more than etc. Children put their hands up when this combination is thrown. Teacher acknowledges as the hands go up.

Explicitly teach children the Secret Code:

Count on (co)

Double (d)

Rainbow facts (rf)

Near double (nd)

Friendly number (fn) (is any number that ends in 0)

Bridge through 10

Round and adjust (year 4+)

Landmark numbers – 25, 50, 75, 100 (base 10) 15, 30, 45 (base 60)

If kids come up with their own strategies, the strategy is named after that child ie SS Sally’s Strategy.

Encourage children to play with the numbers, pull them apart, experiment and discover patterns, relationships etc.

Problem Solving Strategy

All problems must have a real purpose or context. The children must be able to see or image the problem. It has to be real to the child. Puppets can be used to assist this.

Let kids work out what is happening. Productive failure – learning from reflecting on mistakes.

Always teach kids to work from what they know.

Give 1 problem (eg M&Ms on Muffins) and get the group to find as many ways of solving the problem. Group then decides which strategy is best and why.

If you can’t do something in 6 ways you can’t do it.

Respond to children who have asked good questions or come up with good strategies (the “right answer” is secondary to the thinking): “Thank you for the learning opportunity …”

Formative Assessment Strategy

Interview a child

Gather 2 pieces of documentary evidence per child per term (on work on students’ work if given permission or on a Post It note stuck to the work and placed in a plastic sleeve):

  • child said…,
  • child did…
  • With suggestion/prompting child said…
  • Which strategy did you like?
  • Which is more reliable?
  • Are any similar?
  • How?

Do not rescue. If a child cannot get started, ask them to walk around the room to look at other children’s work and see if there is a strategy that they like.

 

If you do not do a reflection, you did nothing.

Multiplication: Begin with Tally of 5 to learn 5 x tables. 6 x is tally of 5 count on 1 etc.

 

How and where to create and find problems:

  1. Use existing problems from Ann’s books
  2. Copy: Use Ann’s problems but change numbers and context
  3. Devise own, but consider that the numbers used provide the best opportunity to get the desired learning.
  4. Share problematised situations with staff.

 

Structure of a typical week

Monday

Tuesday

Wednesday

Thursday

Friday

Mental Routines Mental Routines Mental Routines Mental Routines Mental Routines
Problem

  • · Gaps
  • · Misconceptions
  • · Error patterns
  • · Strengths
Strategy lesson Problem Strategy lesson Problem
Reflection Reflection Reflection Reflection Reflection

 

Ann recommended the following apps.

Guessem

Clock Master

Natural Maths

Finger Tips

Blog

Natural Maths Strategies

Thoughts on follow up:

  • Teachers video their mental routines – capture their questioning, the students’ language and reflections etc to share with others in their PC.
  • Share Commitment to Action in PLCs
  • Get Ann Baker back to do demonstration lessons in classes and release teachers to observe
  • Maths Committee to reflect and develop plan to support implementation of the Maths block across the school.

“All Wretch and No Vomit”

What if money was no object? (Youtube)

The day after I watched this inspiring Youtube movie, I had two troubling conversations. I spoke with a group of student teachers about my first year at teachers college when we all went out prac teaching in the first term. After the week of being in classes full time and even taking a few lessons, 3 of the group of 9 student teachers changed course because they realised that teaching was not their passion.

The second conversation was with the daughter of a close friend who was also studying to become a teacher. She said that she was not sure if she wanted to be a teacher. She said that she went into teaching because her father, relatives and friends were teachers or studying to become teachers. I asked her what her passion was and what she would do if money was no concern and she immediately responded that she would be musician, sound engineer and song writer.

My question to the student teachers was about their passion for teaching. Do we as a society want teachers who are not truly passionate about children and their learning? How many of us would remain teaching if we won the lottery – if money was no concern? Those who would remain are the passionate ones. They are the ones making the biggest difference. They are the ones making a positive difference to our futures child by child.

The role of a teacher is so demanding, complex, emotionally taxing and challenging. The rewards are intrinsic and may not be realised for weeks, months or years. For those who do not have teaching as their vocation, who are not passionate about what they do, then each day could be “all wretch and no vomit”!