Term 2 reflection

Term 2 Reflection

It's winter here in Australia and it is cold! I mean... it's not outside cold like in Canada, but it's definitely cold in the house. Temperatures in Adelaide are around 8-12 degrees, and colder up in the hills where we are they tend to be 6 degrees cooler. Normally this wouldn't sound too bad, but homes in Australia have no furnaces or central heating (usually) as well as no insulation or weather stripping of any kind. Our house in the hills has a wood burning heater in the living room and an air conditioner that can be turned into a heater. That means that we have to walk down the hallway and crawl into some very cold sheets when we go to bed. Jenny and I bought a small heater from K-Mart for $15 dollars that warms up the bedroom right before we go to bed. Unfortunately there is no heater in the toilet room so it can feel like you are camping all of the time!

At school I have really started making some good connections with a lot of the staff at Stradbroke and usually if I have a Canadian "what's up with that?" face I get someone to help me out. I couldn't figure out how to turn on my heater in my classroom so Sera Smith (one of the Flexi teachers) showed me how and it's a lifesaver as there is also no insulation in the school. When the kids come in in the morning the door to my classroom is left often open for a while and I end up wearing my jacket in the class for a good part of the
day.

At the beginning of term I came with some clearer ideas of what I wanted to do with the kids and focused more of my time on teaching them about Canada. We wrote letters to my Grade 3 class at Sarah Thompson School and got really good responses back. I'll have to talk to Cathy Kepa and see if there is a way to keep this going. I'll have to wait now that she is on summer vacation.

For our Year 1 assembly we learned some classic Canadian tunes like Land of the Silver Birch and Canada is... by Michael Mitchell. We all stood for Australia Fair and Oh Canada.

My Units of Inquiry this term centred around being "Healthy and Safe" and "Packaging." I always enjoy teaching kids how to cook, clean and use practical skills so I had them find recipes based around their cultures. They found some and then we had to pick some to make. I have a number of Indian and Asian families in my class so we ended up making "Sabji" which is an Indian vegetarian meal as well as Tofu which was based off of a Chinese recipe. The kids loved making it and then went home and shared the recipes with their families. I had a few parents sending me pictures of their child eating vegetables!

Doing the dishes afterwards

At Stradbroke they have some great resources for STEM learning so I took advantage of that. We have a number of robots that we can use for coding. I showed the kids how they could code a "Bee Bot" to navigate a maze of popsicle sticks and then had them create their own mazes both in the classroom and with their learning buddies.

For our packaging inquiry I had parents help out by sending lots of building materials so that we could explore, create prototypes and test different packages to see if they could withstand 4 different trials. One of the trials being that it had to be towed by a Bee Bot.

Now that it is winter everything is starting to really grow and turn green and my parent reps came to me with a plan to create a garden in front of my room. They raised money and had the kids help out to create our "Snow Garden" It looks amazing and the kids are really starting to take ownership of our area.

One of the highlights of the term was that I got to take part in a teachers vs students netball game. I had no idea what netball was or what the rules were, but I got the hang of it pretty quickly. The Year 7 girls that played against us were amazing.

Josh McGuire explaining the rules to me wearing his wife's netball skirt

Totally got this!

On Canada Day we had people from school over for some Hoser Day fun so we found and made as many Canadian treats as we could. Graham crackers don't exist in Australia so we used Marie biscuits to help make the base of the Nanaimo bars. We found some Motts Clamato for our Caesars at Chile Mojo on Magill Road.

When the teachers arrived they put on a rousing rendition of Oh Canada complete with moose puppets and a picture of Justin Trudeau.

Carol, Sue, Pete, Vanessa, Gillian, Jan, Penny, Sue, Morgan and Christiana

At school the next day, the leadership put on a "Canada Day" for the staff that included some interesting foods while they played Celine Dion and Bryan Adams in the background.

I can't believe I made it through another term and I'm 6 months into this trip of a life time. I'm past the halfway point and it is just getting better. My classroom definitely looks different from when I first looked at it in January. I'm off to Sydney in a couple of days for our 2 week break and I'll be back for term 3 right after my birthday.

No summer vacation for me!

Stradbroke School

Stradbroke School

 

I figured it was about time I did this and showed where I get to work in Australia. I'm currently living in Crafers in South Australia and I have about a 22 minute commute to Stradbroke in Rostrevor which is just at the foot of the Adelaide Hills. Stradbroke is a gorgeous Reception to Year 7 IB (International Baccalaureate) school that is held in high esteem by the rest of the schools in the area.

My impression to start off with was WOW, it's huge! It reminded me more of a small college campus than a elementary school. It has over 800 students and many, many buildings. I'm not even sure how many staff, but our staff meetings are really big.

Schools in Australia seem to take a lot of their culture from the UK and from what I can tell, Harry Potter. There are four houses in my school, Koonga, Leabrook, Forest and... Morialta (Hufflepuff). Each team has unique colours, there is a point ceremony at the end of each term and a sport cup between the houses. No sorting hat though...

Students all come to school dressed in uniforms which are really just blue shirts and shorts with school crests on them or a checkered dress for girls. During terms 1 and 4 students are required to wear hats with a wide brim all the way around.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Outside my classroom (F3)

I'm in the Flexi building in unit 3 or just F3 so I face out onto the oval which is a big patch of grass in you guessed it... an oval shape that has a cricket strip and some play equipment around it. The classroom is open to a bunch of other classrooms with a common space in the middle.

The Oval

During the rainy months of winter if there is rain, a rain bell will sound so students can come in for indoor recess. Nobody comes prepared with boots or even jackets. There are no hooks and no boot racks anyway so I guess that's why. It never really gets cold enough even in winter, but I do get some odd looks sometimes walking around with my t-shirt when teachers are wearing jackets and toques in the morning.

Stradbroke has some really nice outdoor areas and you really have to walk outside to get to other classes. The library and gym are in two totally different buildings. The office and staff room are about a few minutes walk as I'm the furthest out from the rest of the school.

In Australia they have reclassified Kindergarten. This was somewhat confusing when I first started researching where to send Miles to school. Playschool or preschool in Alberta is Kindy here in South Australia. Reception is similar to Kindergarten in Alberta, but it is full day as opposed to half day and more academically focused.

Reception open unit

There are some great outdoor areas for kids to play, but it makes "yard duty" (supervision for Canadians) difficult as there are so many places for kids to hide. I also walk around with a yard duty bag and can hand out infraction cards that will give kids planning room/reflection time which is an alternative to detention.

We have a wonderful outdoor classroom area, which I haven't used yet. I'm excited to try, I'm just worried my kids will start throwing rocks. I'm going to try small steps in Term 3. Maybe Daily 5 under the bridge eventually by Term 4.

The best part of working here is the amazing staff! I go to Wednesday coffees, the staff post heaps (tons) of helpful information in various school organized Facebook groups and I get lots of help from my Flexi building neighbours, Year 1 team members and everyone else in the school. The best part of all is that there is another Canadian teacher from Ottawa at the same school so we get to talk and commiserate about all of the things that are both great and "complex" about our exchange school for the year. I'm halfway done and in a couple of weeks... Look for my Term 2 reflection and Term 2 school holidays coming soon!