Guest Post: A Dad’s Poem

BeFunky_IMG_1087.jpg

i

The sun swings like a golf ball

High into the sky; and drops light down

Over the school.

 ii

The grown ups and little ones scurry

About as if powered by the ESB

Meals crinkled into tuck boxes

Breakfast rammed down. Milk spilled.

iii

The little ones power ahead

Parents shouting ‘stop’ near edge

The black tar!!

iv

Round the corner like

Something familiar on a dark night

School looms large

The little ones have reached their quest

The teacher leads like the

hunts woman.

v

Bugle sounds; tally ho; hey go

And the stair is charged.

They arrive; bags down

Lessons learnt; play yard

Done.

vi

Food found. Chat swirls

Around. Byes complete

The day; the little ones

Unwind themselves to

Home, like a spool of string

Ending in stop; now relax

Into a ball!!

by A.K

If you enjoyed this poem you may enjoy

A student’s poem about Teacher from 1993.

#BlogAwardsIE: Nominated in the Blog Awards Ireland 2014

Mirabellen
Photo Credit: *Light Painting* via Compfight

Blog Awards Ireland works to celebrate

the very best in Irish blogging’. 

 

We were excited and delighted to hear

that our blog ‘If Only The Best Birds Sang’

appears on the ‘long list’ of nominations for 

Best Education Blog. We are there among

some very distinguished company.

 

Blog awards are encouraging for those who blog.

Our blog benefits from participating in this award,

just like in the past when we were involved in the

Eircom Junior Spiders Awards 

and Edublogs Awards 2013  

 

These competition encourage us to look at our blog

and think about how it could be improved.

For example we have worked hard on navigation

to make our blog more visitor friendly.  

 

What we like best about these awards is

that it helps us to connect more with others

beyond our own class and the school.

 

We hope that it may bring us more visitors.

We like visitors and we also like visiting other blogs.

We get great ideas from them about features,

designs and blogging tools we could use.

 

We look forward to checking out the other blogs

in the Blog Awards Ireland competition. If you are

a visitor to our blog, we would love to hear from you.

‘Self Esteem: A Classroom Affair, 101* Ways to Help Children Like Themselves’ by Michele&Craig Borba

During two months of the summer

my students are on holidays,

so I am without

my many talented writers and artists

and their contributions to this blog

until September.

For this reason I have to

think of other kinds of posts.

On other blogs I have seen

teachers writing about books

that they have found useful in school.

This is a book that has influenced

my teaching:

IMG_0987

This is my well worn copy!

 

I bought ‘Self Esteem: A Classroom Affair,

101* Ways to Help Children Like Themselves’

by Michele and Craig Borba

in 1980, as a student teacher.

It was an unusual book for its time 

full of ideas for developing

a child’s self esteem.

At the time, it seems to me school

was much more about developing

a child academically;

their cognitive rather than

their ‘affective’ learning.

 

It was to be 1983 for example

before Howard Gardner published 

his theory of ‘multiple intelligences’. 

(Gardner, Howard (1983), 

Frames of Mind:

The Theory of Multiple Intelligences,

Basic Books, NY)

 

Gardner proposed that people do not

have just a intellectual ability, but have

many different intelligences

including intrapersonal

which would exist within the mind

and thus relate to the ‘affective’, 

to moods, feelings, and attitudes.

 

I feel this book

‘Self Esteem: A Classroom Affair’

was before its time, with contents like:

‘Teach Children to Praise Themselves’ and

‘Helping Children to See Their Progress.

 

I have used many

of the activities in this book

repeatedly over the course

of my teaching career.

Just in case I ever ran out of ideas

there was always Volume 2:

IMG_0988

It was in this book that I first learnt about

‘bibliotherapy’ i.e. the judicious use of books

as therapy for children.

 

In this modern age Dr. Michele Borba

is still dispensing ‘words of wisdom’.

You can read more of these here.

Learning to Code using ‘Scratch’ – A Progress Report

Scratch Cat
Photo Credit: andresmh via Compfight

Earlier this month I started to learn how to code.

I posted some links then I thought might be useful.

I took advice and decided it would be better

to start with learning ‘Scratch’

as my objective is to be able to

teach coding to my students.

Scratch seems to have excellent possibilities

for the primary classroom.

 

On Education Posts Message Board,

I got some very useful recommendations

and so started with the Lesson Plans on Scratch.ie

 

A kind young relative took pity on me

and gave me her copy of ‘Scratch2Scratch’

I supplemented this learning

with a variety of videos here and here.

 

I also spent some time doing

‘An Hour of Code’ on Code.org

This first hour is straightforward enough

but it revises some of the basics.

I could also see that students would

enjoy the puzzles presented during the ‘hour’.

 

I am very taken with the potential

of ‘Scratch’ in the classroom.

However, though I would feel confident

enough now to introduce ‘Scratch’

to class and to stay perhaps

just a step ahead of my students,

for me as a learner, it is early days yet.

 

UPDATE: Finding Code Club World.org excellent:

both systematic and interesting. 

 

Update: Our Local Hero: Simon Fitzmaurice

My Name is Emily

Simon is a Dad in our school.

He wrote a wonderful script

for our Christmas pageant.

 

Five years ago Simon started

to write a movie.

It is called ‘My Name is Emily’.

 

He began writing it with a pen

or typing on a keyboard.

 

Because he has motor neuron disease

he finished it using

a special “eye gaze” computer

that allows him to type

by looking at letters on a screen.

 

In November 2013

we wrote about how he was

fundraising to make a movie.

You can read more

of his inspiring story here.

 

Since then Simon has written

a book called:

‘It’s Not Yet Dark’.

He has been on TV and on

the radio and in the newspapers.

 

All going according to plan

he begins making his movie

‘My Name Is Emily’

in August 2014.

 

Here in Greystones

he is our Local Hero.

IMG_0751

Cnuasach Dánta

Sunscreen
Photo Credit: mozzercork via Compfight

For quite some time now we have been

collecting Irish poems in class.

We have been illustrating what they mean

with photographs

 

Click on this link to find about three dozen ‘dánta as Gaeilge’ .

 

We hope that our choice of photos

explain what the poems are about.

We had fun choosing them.

 

We used the Edublogs plug-in 

Compfight.com.

By checking the license for each photo we use

we can make sure that we are observing copyright laws.

This is important to us. 

How to help your child over the summer… and beyond

All My Reasons
Creative Commons License Photo Credit: Thomas Hawk via Compfight

Dear Parent,

This time last year, I put up three posts

which were very popular:

1. Helping your child with Reading

2. Helping your child with Maths

 and

3. How to help your child’s

‘higher order learning’

using Bloom’s Taxonomy

 

4. To these I am adding a recent post about coding

if your child is interested in learning how to code.

‘I would like to learn to code’ – Some useful websites

15 on this grid

Creative Commons License Photo Credit: the55 via Compfight

This summer I would like to learn to code

with a view to teaching it in class next year.

I know many students are interested

in coding too.

 

Here are four websites I think may be useful.

1. Code Monster gives children an introduction to

Javascript programming:

Code Monster from Crunchzilla.com

 

2. Scratch is a programming language 

created specially for 8-to-16-year-olds.

I like the look of Scratch as it is very visual

and so may suit visual learners.

It made up of bricks that you drag

to the workspace in order to animate sprites.

 

3. Scratch was built to program, however

you might like to try Tynker 

which was designed to teach programming

through a series of lessons.

Edited to add: you would have to pay

to use Tynker.

 

4. Then there is Codeacademy.

It offers free coding classes in Javascript

and a number of other programming languages.

It is a friendly website

which has sent me encouraging emails

ever since I joined.

 

I hope you find this list useful.

If you have any advice for those

of us setting out to learn how to code,

please leave a comment.

 

Update: How did I get on?

Well you can see how far

I had got in a fortnight here. 

More updates to follow 🙂