Be inclusive. When you bring more heads together, you get more answers.

Wednesday this week was, for me, all about inclusion.  And while on the surface, it may merely have seemed inclusion of those with additional needs, it got me thinking about inclusion as a whole.  On our course, in our classrooms and in our daily lives.

Wednesday started with PE and we worked with instructors learning to ensure that all members of a class are able to participate in PE sessions.  Our usual instructor has been drumming into us the idea that sport is for all from the very beginning of the course and it was great to see how sports that I have used in school before can be adapted in the smallest of ways so that children with a physical disability can enjoy the activities with the rest of their class without any fear of embarrassment.

The first game we played in my group was a child-friendly version of Boules known as Boccia, which uses bean-stuffed balls rather than metal ones for use indoors. 

Boccia was originally designed for athletes with cerebral palsy and is one of the fastest growing international and Paralympic sports. Over 50 countries have local or national competitive programs.  The slight adjustment as far as we were concerned to the regular rules of Boules that made this game inclusive was merely that all players had to be sat down to take their go.  It could almost seem crazy that the slightest of changes suddenly makes this game available to players with mobility issues, but if we are honest, how many of us would have thought of making that adjustment without prompting?  The game became incredibly competitive and I don't think anyone objected to sitting down to take their go, so it would not have caused any embarrassment for a player that had to sit down.

I originally learned about Boccia first hand from an athlete that represents Great Britain in the sport internationally.  A friend from university, he was studying sport management to my event management and we had a number of lectures that overlapped.  If you would like to read about his story, you can find out more here: Ali Lalani.

After Boccia, we then tried a game that I have played with children on many occasions and continue to love: New Age Kurling!  I already know that this game allows children that perhaps might usually struggle in PE to shine (with one girl in my year six class becoming school champ, much to the entire teaching staff's delight!), but again, by adding a rule that all players had to be sat down, the game suddenly became inclusive.  The instructors also explained how players with quite severe mobility issues have previously been able to enjoy the game by using noses, adapted caps and all sorts of other methods to send their Kurling stones.

The next activity that we got to try, an opportunity that we were very privilaged to experience, was wheelchair basketball.  Not only was this tremendously good fun, but it opened a dialogue regarding how we could potentially include wheelchair users into PE activities rather than restricting them to measuring/marking/judging roles.  We discussed how during athletics, you can do challenges involving wheelchairs, like how far can the children go on one push of the wheels.  If you have access to another wheelchair, there is nothing to stop the whole class taking part in this activity.  It is likely that the wheelchair user would excel against their classmates, so not only would they be included, they would be empowered by their success too.  Something interesting to think about definitely...

Then we had Art and a session on sculpture.  The great thing about sculpture is that it is all inclusive.  Yes it can be about an accurate representation of something, but more commonly, it is about expression, exploration and interpretation.  Take the work of Antony Gormley:

Antony Gormley is arguably most commonly known for his Angel of the North.

In a career spanning nearly 40 years, Antony Gormley has made sculpture that explores the relation of the human body to space at large, explicitly in large-scale installations like Another Place, Domain Field and Inside Australia and implicitly in works such as Clearing, Breathing Room and Blind Light, where the work becomes a frame through which the viewer becomes the viewed. By using his own existence as a test ground, Gormley's work transforms a site of subjective experience into one of collective projection. Increasingly, the artist has taken his practice beyond the gallery, engaging the public in active participation, as in Clay and the Collective Body in Helsinki and the acclaimed One & Other in London's Trafalgar Square.

While some of Gormley's work is clearly inspired by people and the human form, not one of the pictures I have posted are an accurate representation of a person.  They are Gormley's interpretation of the human form - his expression.

Like I discussed in my post regarding colour in art, children need to feel to use art for a time for expression and this includes all children.  Within art, it is perhaps children with degrees of sight impairment that could perhaps find themselves excluded from mainstream activities and if one allows oneself to think realistically about things, should this be the case?  Monet went blind during a cataract operation whilst painting his Waterlilies and still managed to finish them!

Blind children can and should participate in art activities. Adapting the material and focus to highlight their abilities is key for their enjoyment. Teachers should offer material that stimulates their other senses such as touch, smell and hearing to create collages, sculptures and portraits. Some children like to explain their thoughts on their projects; others simply want to play with the supplies. Either way, giving blind children an equal opportunity to express themselves is important for their development.

And finally, my sculpture: Our brief was a gargoyle and what can I say, I am a classicist... ;)

“You alone are enough. You have nothing to prove to anybody.” - Maya Angelou

Clearly, I am in a quote-y mood today.  I have to say that I do love a good quote.  I think most of you have noticed now that I have one of my absolute favourites tattooed on my arm and for those of you that have been too shy to ask, it says:

"The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where

everyone is trying to make you be somebody else."

- E. E. Cummings

So we have reached the end of week two, which confusingly was our third week.  Keeping up?  I have to say that this week was a particularly tough week for me and I know that some of you also found it pretty hard going.  Trying to combine a full-time postgrad course, with planning a wedding, moving house and trying to manage a happy homelife is proving to be a bigger challenge than I had expected and things did get fairly fraught for a while.

I am constantly paranoid that I am irritating my colleagues by talking too much in lectures, seminars and workshops, not mention the fact that I am really struggling to make sure that I am reading everything that we have to read.  Am I alone in this?  I also find having around 37 folders on the go means that I never seem to have the one I want at any given time and I have just spent the last three hours printing off the backlog of lecture slides, handbooks, SE prep and guidance notes, additional reading and goodness knows what else that I had let slide.

It is obvious that the experience of doing this course could become overwhelming if we let it, but I think that we all need to remember that we are all going through this same experience.  So let's talk to each other - cry on each other - whine to each other - hell, even get drunk together.  The people best placed to support us through this experience are right with us in the thick of it.  Luckily, somebody very wise pulled me aside on Friday afternoon and gave me a much-needed pep talk: we all need to remember that we are here because somebody saw a spark in us - they know that we CAN do this and the only person that we need to convince of that fact is ourself.  We certainly shouldn't be afraid to be struggling, to feel like we need to ask for help, to feel like we are a bit out of our depths, because once we are stood in that classroom next September, it all becomes real and now is the time to seek whatever help guidance and support that we need. 

I would like to take this opportunity to thank those coursemates that joined me for a medicinal Pinot Grigio or four on Friday afternoon helping draw a line under what will henceforth be known as my first meltdown week and would suggest that if anyone else out there is feeling a bit freaked, talk to your PDT, your coursemates and anyone else that will listen. It really does help!

And so to end, another favourite quote:

"No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

- Eleanor Roosevelt

"A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it." - Samuel Johnson

As part of our course, we are expected to expand our knowledge of children's literature by reading lots and lots of children's books.  This is quite possibly the part of the course that I am most excited about.  I love reading and am still regularly known (even at the ripe old age of 27 and-three-quarters) to revisit the books that I loved during my childhood.

I will never forget the amazing experiences I had camping with the Famous Five, following Roald Dahl through his childhood in 'Boy', sailing the world with the Adventurous Four, following the exploits of Super Gran, laughing along with the Rentaghost team and many more. And that was before I discovered the joy of reading my parents' books. I discovered Dick Francis at the age of twelve and he remains to this day one of my favourite authors of all time.

Already both in school and in my own time, I have come across a number of new fantastic authors like Michael Morpurgo, Philip Pullman, J.K. Rowling, Stephenie Meyer and Anthony Horowitz and it is with great delight that I am pillaging the children's section at the library to continue my quest into the wonderful world of children's literature.  If you would like to follow my journey, I will be posting the books I read as I finish them over at my 'Wiki' and you can find it here: https://robbaker-portfolio.wikispaces.com/Book+Log

I wish us all happy reading!

“Colours, like features, follow the changes of the emotions” - Pablo Picasso

An interesting Art lesson yesterday.  As well as an opportunity to work with and get to know a number of different people on the course, I particularly enjoyed the casual blend of theory, discussion and practical work.

The notion that particularly struck me was the fact that art doesn't always have to be an activity tacked on to another subject: 
Literacy: write a story and then draw a picture to go with with it.
Guided Reading: pick a character from the story; draw and then annotate the picture.
Science: make a poster.
Etc...

Art can be proactively used in a cross curricular manner, e.g. ask the children what are their favourite colours, encourage them to play with colour and express it in some format.  Then go on to use the pieces they produce to inspire a piece of writing - perhaps a colour poem?

I have seen a lot of occasions where art was used cross curricularly in a reactive manner, but I cannot recall even one occasion where I have seen it used proactively.  I think that this is definitely something that I could try to include into my own teaching.

We also created our own artwork inspired by some famous images.  My group had Picasso's Night Fishing at Antibes (1939):

And this is what we created:

I thought everyone in the group had created some very interesting pieces and the notion of 'being good at art' never came into it - it was all about individual expression:

Thinking inside the box

Yesterday we had a seminar regarding the use of story boxes in English/literacy.  To be honest, I had forgotten all about them until the session, let alone what a powerful resource they can be!  Our tutor asked us if any of us had ever used them before and I thought of loads of occasions that I had either used them or seen them used in my last school.

The first time I ever saw one was when my class teacher used one when meeting her new class on Transition Day.  She had created a story box of her life and had a number of personal objects in it that she was able to pass around the children whilst telling them about her.  Things like a photo of her husband, a favourite childhood toy, a souvenir from a favourite holiday were really enjoyed by the children, it clearly helped the teacher remember all the things that she had wanted to tell the children and it was certainly more interesting and visually stimulating than my unplanned, on-the-spot monologue that immediately followed...

I have also seen story boxes used in the foundation stage, when the children were learning the earlier stages of their phonics.  I remember the class teacher there had placed a number of objects into a box (decorated to look like a postbox) that began with the letters, S,A,T,P,I & N: the first stage of teaching Jolly Phonics - I have pasted the stages below for anyone that is interested.  During a session on the carpet, the children took it in turns to remove an item from the box and then say the word, identify the first sound and then perform the sound with the appropriate action to the rest of the group.  The group would then mirror the  sound and action.

Jolly Phonics Stages:
1. s a t p i n
2. c k e h r m d
3. g o u l f b
4. ai j oa ie ee or
5. z w ng v oo oo
6. y x ch sh th th
7. qu ou oi ue er ar          

When we were discussing our experiences of working with story boxes, I decided to tell the group about a time when my year six class made their own story boxes, story mapping Philip Pullman's Clockwork:

The task was completed during a number of art lessons, but the curriculum links are glaringly obvious and it allowed the children to develop their comprehension of the story by looking at the finer detail of the descriptions, the chronology and the characters and settings within the book.  I don't want to go into too much detail, because you all NEED to read the story, but it was a fantastic exercise to do with the children, not to mention the best boxes could even be kept for use with the following year's year six class.

While I have not yet decided if I will be doing English for my Core Assignment 1, story boxes are definitely something that I will be taking into my own classroom...

Don't it always seem to go, you don't know what you've got 'til its gone...?

So, an eventful weekend this weekend.  I did manage to rewrite my assignment before I went away for my surprise stag weekend, but it sadly reads like a bit of a rush job - as these things normally do.  If nothing else, I am just pleased that it was only my formative assignment and not one that carries towards my results.

In other news, on Friday I started to suffer from a bit of an earache.  I thought nothing of it, but when I woke up on Saturday morning, the ear had gone totally deaf.  I managed to get an appointment with the GP and he explained that an eczema flare up in the ear canal has caused wax production to go mad and totally block the drum.  While this wasn't the end of the world, it has left me feeling incredibly sluggish and run down.  It is strange how much we take our senses for granted and as the song says, you 'don't know what you've got 'til its gone'.  I also didn't realise how the loss of one can affect your whole being in such a profound way - even if it is only temporary.

For today, I will mostly be found sat right at the front of my science seminar, in an attempt to be able to hear at least part of what is being said and I just hope that my hearing comes back soon.

A bit of inspiration for us all.

There is something about teaching that has always appeal to me and when people ask me why I want to go into the profession (which, somewhat oddly, many people do), I often tend to joke I am attracted to the idea of a captive audience of 30 people that have to listen to the sound of my voice all day.  Obviously anyone with the slightest bit of classroom experience will know that this is not the case.  Firstly, because an input driven education is in most cases extinct these days, but mainly because children won't do anything that they HAVE to do.  To get children to engage with their learning, they have to want to do it.

I think my main reason for wanting to teach and specifically teach primary age children is the memory of my insatiable curiosity at that age.  Every day threw up a whole ocean of questions: Why is the sky blue? Why do cows have four stomachs? Why can't I roll my tongue? What is gravity? Could Jurassic Park happen in real life? I could go on and on and on...

The best teachers, the ones I really remember, were the ones that made these subjects come alive for me - that pointed me in the right direction and gave me the tools to find these things out - and above all, made learning fun, engaging and something that I looked forward to every morning.

Today is our first Professional Studies day - which means that we are midway through a whole day of lectures, seminars, independent study and discussion groups and already, two things come up that made me think quite deeply.  In this morning's seminar, we discussed the case study of a child named Michael.  Michael has a number of behavioural difficulties that his teacher is struggling to deal with and the case study was structured in such a way that only a small amount of information was released at a time about Michael, his homelife, his school life, his teacher's homelife and the school's structure.  After each disclosure we were asked: what is the problem, who has the problem and what can be done.

Within my group, at each stage opinions conflicted and it was interesting to discuss the various different viewpoints regarding one case study.  I identified that Michael only seemed to have a problem with the female members of staff and thought that a number of reasons could be the cause of this; from an absent father figure and lack of authority at home, through to a cultural reason: we were not made aware of Michael's ethnicity or culture at the start and I suggested that if he was from a devout muslim background, then he may take issue with female authority figures (something I have experienced first hand with a family that moved to the UK from Afghanistan two years ago).

As mentioned, within the session, we were asked at each of the stages, who has the problem.  Within my notes, I have apparently been very reluctant to assign blame to any one individual and indeed, it turned out that there had been a breakdown across the board, with failings within the classroom, the SMT and the school-to-home and home-to-school communications.  I think that it is important to remember that Every Child Matters isn't just a concept and we DO need to remember that the children should be kept at the heart of all we do.  It would be very easy to blame Michael for his behaviour, but I feel that in the most part, children aren't inherently naughty and it is our responsibility to try and understand that if there are problems they probably exist for a reason.  A lot to think about...

Anyway, I promised you some inspiration didn't I?  At the end of the session we watched a video entitled Inspirations: Everyone a Winner.  The video told the story of teacher called Trevelyan May who was awarded Primary Teacher of the Year 2005.  If I am honest, May is exactly the teacher that I want to be and I found the video SO inspiring!  Rather than talk more about it now, I may write a separate post about it later - but first I would like to know your thoughts. 

So here is my new hero Trevelyan May doing what he does brilliantly (and what I will hopefully do equally brilliantly in a couple of years time!):

http://www.teachersmedia.co.uk/videos/everyone-a-winner