It's a long way to the top...

When I was fourteen my friends and I went along to Memorial Drive in Adelaide to see the biggest concert ever to hit this little city - five headlining bands, starting at 5.00pm and finishing whenever. 10 000 screaming people crammed into Adelaide's open air tennis courts to see ACDC, The Angels, Daddy Cool, Skyhooks, Sherbet. I can say unreservedly that my father was less than impressed with most of this line up!

To this day, I can clearly remember ACDC belting out the most exciting music I had ever heard - let alone seen in real life! Bon Scott and Angus Young rampaged around the stage making more noise than you would believe possible, while the lights and cold ice machines flashed and sizzled. In those days, security at the front hauled girls over the barricades and onto the stage, people threw bottles (glass, not today's plastic), everyone was smoking (goodness knows what), and someone somewhere was constantly hosing the crowd down. (No wonder Dad was worried!) Rock and roll performances these days are a lot more controlled and the only thing audiences get away with is waving their arms around a bit and yelling.

Yesterday I was invited to the Performing Arts room to listen to our Year 7 Rock Band. They played - you guessed it - It's a long way to the top, if you want to rock and roll - complete with BAGPIPES!! What a treat! I can't believe that one of our kids can play the bagpipes!

They did a great job, ably supported by our own rock and roll star, Mr David Foxover. They managed to get over their nerves and even did an encore performance. And those bagpipes took me all the way back to Memorial Drive.

Well done, kids! ACDC probably started out jamming in primary school - keep doing what you love - you never know where it will take you.

Number sense - what is it and how do we get it?

I've blogged about number sense before ( see The times they are changing - your times tables, that is.).  It's an area we have put a lot of emphasis on over the last 18 months. And we've seen that students with number sense approach maths with a 'can do' attitude (no political pun intended here), they enjoy maths more, they start problem solving tasks with purpose, and most simply, they just know what to do. (Hands up everyone who felt like this in a maths class at school!)

Last week a parent asked Kathleen Gordon, one of our Year 4 teachers, for some assistance in helping his child with maths. As luck would have it, Kathleen had spent the Friday before with some of our other teachers at the uni learning some new techniques and understandings for parent education in maths, and more specifically number sense.  Kathleen's reply is a 'must read' for every parent (edited below).

'There is a tension between wanting to reach year level benchmarks and making sure students have established a strong foundation in the basics first. For example, pushing students to memorise multiplication and division number facts before they have a sound understanding of addition and subtraction number facts will result in poor quality understanding of both concepts.

Research shows that rushing on leads to poor performance and anxiety about maths. In the words of a highly regarded maths educator - it's like building the roof of a house before the foundations are complete. You can do it but chances are it will fall over before too long.

This may not be what parents want to hear. There is no quick fix for any child. 

Research shows that both using timed practise drills and using strategies to learn number facts are effective. However, when students know and use the strategies, they can recall facts long after tests and use this information to work out extended facts (3 x 2 = 6 so 3 x 20 = 60) and approximation tasks, and hence problem solve effectively.

Our school program supports the learning of number facts in multiple ways including teaching strategies for learning particular number facts and doing regular timed practise drills. The strategies are taught at school and form part of the take home package to practise with as homework.

If students regularly use these strategies and repetitive drills at home and school (rather than just trying to rote learn and memorise the facts) they should in time develop the required fluency.

Some students prefer to learn with visual aids and others with auditory ones. We teach students to find their preferred approach and use it repeatedly. Repetitive activities will help students learn. The kind of repetitive activities you can try include:
- saying the strategy (when appropriate) when writing down the number fact e.g. 'I know that 5 + 5 is 10 so 5 + 6 is one more which is 11' and doing this repeatedly
- recording the strategies for particular number facts (see number 1) on a mobile device such as an iPod and listening to it repeatedly
- make a poster of the tricky facts and put them up where they will be seen (bedroom, on the back of the toilet door etc)
- playing with flash cards (you can make your own, download them from the Internet or buy them from the supermarket for about $10) or fact family cards (available from class teachers)
- playing ‘beat the timer’ games with a set of number facts (allow four seconds for each – ten number facts in forty seconds) play these on paper, on the Internet, CD Rom or iPod (or similar) device
- learning rhyming chants or listening to and signing along to multiplication songs (these can be purchased on the Internet)
 

Fact family cards which we use in the classroom are available from class teachers. You may like to use them too. They help students see the relationships between addition and subtraction and between multiplication and division. They are also useful because they appear to reduce the amount of number facts to learn - (learn one and get three more for free – i.e.. If I know 2 x 6 = 12, I also know 6 x 2 = 12 and 12 ÷ 6 = 2 and 12 ÷ 6 = 2 ).'
 
This is fantastic advice for any parent wanting to help their child 'know what to do' when faced with a mathematics problem - and these problems present themselves everywhere in life, too - at the supermarket (or anywhere money is used in a transaction), when calculating quantities of an item required for a project, when estimating time for bus timetables or the number of days until the holidays.  Maths is everywhere - and fluent number sense kids can navigate these situations with ease.

Personal histories creating connection

Yesterday we went to the Dr Martens shop in the Valley to get Rick a new pair of shoes - he has worn Docs to work for more than 20 years, and his last pair suddenly split down the sides. While he was trying on a new pair, a young girl was obviously getting her first pair and I told the retail assistant serving us about Maddie's first Docs - they were pale blue with flowers and she looked as cute as a button in them. I then went on to tell her that my Dad used to drive trucks for Dr Martens from Northampton to London in the early '60s. In fact, I used to go with him on occasion - I'd be tied into the seat with string (no seat belts in those days) and off we'd go delivering boxes of Docs all over the city. I used to love it because the men in the factory would give me a few shillings and I would go home RICH! I remember once we ate lunch outside London Prison.

'THAT'S SO COOL', exclaimed the retail assistant.
'Is it?' I was thinking blankly.
'Thanks for sharing that story - I've got goose bumps up my arms,' she said. 'Can I have a photo with you? And we will put it on our history wall - up there.' She looked a bit embarrassed - 'Sorry, it's a bit random.' By this stage, we were all laughing.  I told her I'd ask my Mum to see if she had a photo of Dad in his truck and if so, I'd send it to her.

And herein, is such a beautiful example of personal histories that make connections between people. Here is this young woman, so into her job, surrounded by cool leather boots and shoes all day, completely besotted with the history of the company she works for and keen to record the connections she makes with that history on the wall of the shop. People look at that wall all day every day and wonder about the people and events posted there, and a result, they make connections with their own lives.

And this is what our new History Curriculum is all about - it's what makes it such a rewarding area to teach. Gone are the dry and dusty facts and relics - well, actually they are not gone; we are using these artefacts a lot - but now we teach children to look for the people in the photos and behind the relics and to discover the personal stories and to wonder what it was like to live in those times. The purpose of this wondering is to consider these stories in the light of how we live today.

I mean, can you imagine a Dad these days stringing up his three year old in the front seat of a truck and hurtling down the highway to the city and eating lunch outside the prison? Workplace Health and Safety and the Department of Child Safety (commonly known as DoCS, funnily enough) would have a field day.

Freddo Frogs going begging here... my thoughts on Halloween

On Thursday after school I raced into Coles and bought bags of Freddo Frogs in preparation for the onslaught of kids at my door for the evening. Halloween - it happens once a year, and while I'm not a big fan of the event, there's no denying its popularity!

Halloween or Hallowe'en, also known as All Hallows' Eve, is an annual celebration observed in a number of countries on 31 October, the eve of the Western Christian feast of All Hallows' Day. It has its origins in an ancient Celtic festival at which communities in Scotland and Ireland took stock of their supplies and prepared for winter.  The custom was taken to America during the mass Irish and Scottish immigration during the nineteenth century and by the twentieth century was celebrated by people of all social, racial and religious backgrounds. The customs have spread to other countries as a result of increased American cultural influence through American television and other media.

And don't our kids love it! The dressing up, the wandering around the streets at dusk and in the dark, the knocking on doors and yelling 'trick or treat', the collection of lollies, fruit, nuts and toys - it's enough to whip any child, large or small, into a frenzy! 

I watched all the children passing down our street from our kitchen as I was preparing dinner and wondered if they had any clue what it all means.  Our teachers are reluctant to teach about Halloween - it's one of those topics that's a bit 'politically incorrect'. Some years ago a school was hung out to dry in the media because a few teachers decorated their rooms and explained the story behind the custom. Parents didn't want any learning about witches and ghouls going on in that school. And even in our school we have been taken to task about using such topics in lessons. And so, unless parents are telling their children the narrative behind Halloween, all it really is in Australia is an excuse to have a sugar high!! I mean, we can't possibly argue that we are storing up for winter!

We have quite a high wall and a gate around our house and as the evening trawled by it became obvious I would be eating the Freddo Frogs.  It was wonderful that parents wandering the streets with their kids concentrated on doorways they could see and people they knew. I could hear kids laughing and every so often someone yelling 'trick or treat'! 

So really, at the end of the day, who cares if Halloween in Australia is only a chance for parents to spend time with their kids, dressing up and collecting goodies from the neighbours. It has to beat an evening in front of the TV.

Next year I shall make sure our gate is wide open so all the little witches, ghouls, mummies and pumpkin heads know they can staunch their chocolate fix at our door! Happy Halloween!