Sarah

Hi, I'm Sarah - I'm from Waikerie Primary School. I'm in my second year of teaching Year 6/7s and am consequently considering an early retirement *lol* :-) I am looking forward to learning all sorts of technological goodies over the next five days and then taking it back to my school so we can use it on the IWB in our classrooms. I've also taught at middle primary at Meningie Area School, N.I.T. and upper primary at Maitland Area School and a rather disastorous term at Ramco Primary with a group of 32 5/6/7s who were learning through Student Initiated Learning - that was an experience and a half! I spend altogether too much time on the internet shopping/surfing/looking for resources, I get very little sleep due to my darling two-year old and I'm an enthusiastic but completely uncoordinated hockey player!

Day One - Wednesday I apologise if this makes no sense - my brain has clocked off for the day :-)
 * 1) What real-world connections are you considering?
 * 2) What would be the role of the students?
 * 3) What project scenario are you considering?

I'm basing my project on a concept of having a Waste Free Lunch day at school. We had an environmental person come and speak to our staff about the types of activities and systems we have in place to create a sustainable environment on our school grounds. I find the last 3 outcomes of SOSE really difficult to plan to because I find politics really boring (pardon my lack of care) and when I saw a suggestion about recycling programs on there I thought that I would approach the outcomes by combining the ideas from the meeting with this suggestion.

So the students will consider the different environmental issues that affect them (using the visual ranking tool), they will then look at the impact of litter on the school environment (using the seeing reason tool) and then will look at the statement "Littering is always a deliberate act" and justify their arguments (using the showing evidence tool). Students will investigate the types of rubbish in our yard and bins, list and analyse the types of packaging used for food and why it is used, look at how we could further reduce the rubbish (ie. through recycling, reusing, reducing and throw away) and then look at the concept of Waste Free Lunches and the alternatives that are available for packaging. The lady who spoke to us (whose name I have completely forgotten - she was very nice though) I would ask to come and speak to my students so that they have the real-world connection and to also tell them about other schools that have implemented the system. The students would then inform other students about the day and how they can participate and then organise the day and then afterwards evaluate it to look at whether it is an achievable goal for the school to have regular waste free lunch days. That's my project in a nutshell :-)

**Day Two - Thursday** Thought I had it all figured out - but I most certainly don't! Feeling very overwhelmed and a bit annoyed with myself that it isn't 'clicking'. Fingers crossed I'll have some sort of an 'aha' moment in the next few days :-)

Don't worry, you will! I had an Aha moment half way through day 4. Keep plugging away, chat with the other MT's, don't try to force it. Perhaps take a step back from the plan you brought along and look at it as an entirely new topic. Steve

**Day Three - Friday (TGIF!)** Okay - I spent an hour lying in bed last night trying to come up with a different idea for '**the plan**' pulling ideas apart and trying to come up with an essential question that inspired me to go - Yeah! that's great. Didn't happen, I started thinking about what I was going to wear the next day and what I'd do on the weekend. The last few weeks (terms!) at school have been especially difficult and so not only is this conference a great opportunity to learn something new - it's my 'mid year crisis' break as well, so to speak. It's hard to think inspiring at the moment when my head is still trying to get around behaviour management and dealing with the ever changing emotions and behaviours of 12 and 13 year olds. So at this time I'm still sticking with the whole environmental thing. I'm going to go and review my plan again and I'ved decided to ditch my initial idea of holding a waste free lunch day and am instead leaving it open ended - hoping that inspiration will hit me like a brick wall as I skim the web and peruse the project ideas. So - once again - feeling like I'm blindly making my way along the path, I'm going to go and take a bash at '**the plan**'. Wish me luck...

End of Friday - well three o'clock has come and gone and I've officially logged off for the day. People are talking to me and what they're saying is taking a few seconds to process so I know that my brain is well and truly over it all! Do I feel any more positive about my unit plan? Not really. I still think it's a bit of a load of rubbish but I'll still look at it as a load of rubbish in progress... I was happy with my visual ranking tool but the seeing reason tool - well that was a bit bler and not making a huge amount of sense. Ugh, even my fingers aren't coordinating with my brain! I think my colleagues will like this program - I think if I push the whole concept of the developing meaningful programs I think that they'll really go for it. We have some first year teacher's who would appreciate it for sure! Anyway that's my brain gone for the week - see you Monday!

Hi Sarah- Deb here. You were right. It was a great piece of footage on powerpoints- think I will use it to begin my intel teach unit at school. Think my staff will get the point? Further to your Waste Free Lunch day- contact Pirie West Primary School- they used to have a regular no wrapper lunch box day. No food in their lunch box was to come in pre-packaged wrappings- so no processed foods, no commercially prepared food and their sandwiches had to be wrapped in paper. I'm not sure if they still do it but it was great at the time. Deb

Okay reflecting on what's going on - um, yeah... I'm a little bit happier with my unit plan - I had a brain wave of sorts (or perhaps it was my brains futile attempt to get some sleep - as in for goodness sakes woman - here's an idea now stop thinking and go to sleep) and I like it better than the one I had previously but still not loving it. It's hard because I know how it's meant to work in my head but trying to actually write it out is another matter - I feel myself desperately trying to explain to those around me in the hope they'll go - yeah - I get you and whilst they're all very positive I still feel like I'm rambling a little... I spoke to my dad on the weekend about the program (he's a teacher on the Yorke Peninsula) and he was very interested, impressed but did question how easy it was going to be to implement in the classroom - he's kind of right - it's been fabulous spending five days focussing on this unit plan, but I hate to say that usually my unit plans have a start and as I go through the term I add to them and they're usually sort of complete by the end of the term. I was thinking about how to approach the question because I'll no doubt get asked it at school and I think I'll encourage the teacher's to create one really good, indepth unit plan - share it with others and then use what they have learnt and adapt it to best suit their needs and time constraints. I also found this type of planning hard because I'm the type of teacher who goes - you know what I love Shakespeare - let's do a Shakespeare unit, then twist and turn SACSA until it meets my needs so the kids have set outcomes but there's no really deep thinking involved - well that's not true, there is a bit of deep thinking - but none of the essential question type deep thinking. Is that so bad? Do all of our units need to have that type of deep thinking? I think we need to encourage it and give students the opportunities to practise it but at the end of the day some students find deep thinking really difficult and simply want a lesson that requires very little thinking at all. I don't know. I'm rambling, I'm very, very tired and I'm not really sure where I was going with all of this! Time to get up and go for a wander I think :-)
 * Monday morning **