Writing a haiku and active learning

The P6 class were having a ball today writing some haiku poetry. They’ve been using “Hercules heroes and bampots” as a book study, so used words and phrases from that to write these. Here are a couple of examples. I think they’re great.

Hercules

Hercules strang man

Can banjo his opponents

Built like a hoose end

Hera

Hera hated Herc

She wanted tae malkie him…..

She wanted him deid!

Eurystheus

Eurystheus – feart!

He gave people the dry boak.

A pure mammie’s boy.

At our stage meeting tonight we were talking about using our open areas differently for active learning sessions in the junior and senior department. The infants were explaining how they use big books and how they structure groupings etc. A teacher who is is fairly new to our school said she wasn’t used to the freedom of this kind of approach and was used to just following programmes of study. It’s not so much freedom as trusting teachers to be professionals and to be able to use their judgement! The best way to implement change as a Head is first of all to let go…. That’s a bit scary sometimes.

As a profession have we deskilled our teachers by focusing on programmes of study rather than outcomes?As HTs have we used hierarchical systems and sometimes fear to implement a way of teaching and learning which is now very difficult to move on from? We seem to have put in security blankets/assessment sheets/planners which have taken away a lot of creativity from the teaching process.

My continuous mantra this weather is not just asking why but also why not.

When I went into the nursery today they were making soup, in  P2 some children were working away on doing trick sums where the answers were negative numbers eg 7-9= because they wanted to find out about that and wanted to know how you got the answer! P6 were writing their haikus, P1 were doing “long” by making a huge connected circle of wee toys, using long strings etc, P3 were working on good listening with their new teacher who had a head band with fluffy antennae on as a sign that it was her turn to talk. So it goes on….These teachers know what to do and we need to work with them so they can get on with it without fear and keep asking them what other possibilities they see to be even more creative in their teaching.

Tomorrow we’re having a day dedicated to learning more about Malawi throughout the school. Various speakers, visitors and activities have been organised. I’m looking forwad to hearing about Mrs Gibson’s visit there. We have people from Mary’s Kitchen and a visitor from street kids. Children will be doing art work, trying some rhythms/music from Africa, having some related PE activities, learning about money in Malawi, having talks from our community policeman about how we treat new children to our school etc etc It should be a good day.