Not your grandma's report card and conferences (or mine for that matter)

If you are a teacher or have children you know that report cards have changed A LOT since we went to school. My report cards looked like this: B,B, A, C, B. Robyn talks too much. My sister has a copy of my mom's 4th grade report card and it's very similar- check marks in the grade boxes and something like "Pam has nice handwriting."

Nowadays, and especially at our school, report cards are a NIGHTMARE! They literally take an hour or more per student to do. All the teachers are cranky and sleep deprived when they are due. Then we have to peer edit them, make changes, send to leadership to edit, and then make final changes. It's a process. Here's a sample (not a real student but a Frankenstein bogus report card that looks just like the real thing): FYI, our grading scale is E: exemplifies C: competent D: developing B: beginning

Sally Super Student
Literacy Read: C Writ: C Com: C	Sally has been working on using the writing process to complete her writing assignments this term. She consistently uses an appropriate writing structure to develop a personal narrative, and is working on developing her sentences from simple sentences to compound sentences. Looking through her journal, Sally demonstrates a good understanding of the concepts we have been learning, however does not consistently apply these concepts to her writing. I encourage her to work on reviewing her sentences during the revising process specifically to add detail and changes in order to apply some of the skills she has learned. Sally is using her comprehension skills to ask questions and make connections about the world around her to complete her research reports. Sally is able to read information independently to find answers from a text, and present the information she has found from her reading. Sally frequently participates in constructive communication. Good effort Sally!
Math DH:  C N: C	Sally shows a competent understanding of the concepts covered thus far. She frequently shows understanding of place value up to 100 as evidenced by her math journal work and through conversations where I have asked her to explain her thinking. Sally is capable of telling time to the hour and half hour and can match the analog time with the digital time. She enjoys completing hands on activities to show her understanding. Sally has shown good, steady progress this term and I hope that the excited mathematician inside her continues her hard work.
Unit of Inquiry 1  C	During the unit, Who We Are, Sally learned how citizens build communities. She has a firm understanding of how citizens build communities. She is able to explain the characteristics of a strong community and the impact of choices on a community.  She shows appropriate responsibilities as a citizen of our community. Sally completed an excellent family community iMovie project which highlighted her responsibilities in her family community. I encourage Sally to model her understanding of how choices affect a community by consistently setting a good example for her peers.
Unit of Inquiry 2  C	In our current unit, Where We Are in Place and Time, Sally is learning that change over time impacts relationships. She is able to explain how our world is interconnected and completed an interesting research project on trade and how it connects our world. She is able to explain that Kuwait needs products from other countries in exchange for resources that Kuwait has. Sally is able to explain how different things around us change, and demonstrated this knowledge through her personal timeline project, which highlighted the ways in which she has changed since she was born. I encourage Sally to work on applying her literacy skills to her unit of inquiry to help her communicate her ideas clearly and concisely.
Learner Profile	Sally is exhibiting the traits of a PYP learner. She is caring, empathetic, compassionate, and shows respect towards the needs and feelings of people around her.  She is open-minded, understanding and appreciative of everyone’s culture and perspective. She shows cooperation and being respectful while working together. She has a very positive attitude and usually excited about the projects we are working on and is eager to participate. Sally is often knowledgeable and understands things in the world. She reliably listens to the instructions and understands the directions for projects.  She asks basic questions and is able to use research skills to find answers to her own questions.  She demonstrates self-management skills and completes work in an organized and timely manner. I am so glad to have Sally in our class!

There are additional comments from the music, P.E., Arabic, and religion teachers. x 22 students. Also, this document is just what we use to write and edit it. It goes into a different formate for the parents.

After we FINALLY finish reports they are sent to the parents and we have three way conferences for two nights (5:30-8:30) but then we get Thursday off (yea!) which also happens to be Thanksgiving so that's nice. Three way conferences are also not like the conferences we had growing up, and I'm pretty sure they're not like what most conferences look like in most schools today either. Three way conferences involve the student, the parents, and the teacher.

Last year we had three way conferences but they weren't really explained to us, or at least not to me. It ended up being that the students came, sometimes, and they would just sit there while the parents and I talked about everything I already said in the report card. With the exception of the last conference of the year. That one is totally student led and I didn't have to do anything.

This year we had a professional development on what an IB three way conference SHOULD look like. This was met the way I meet a lot of new things. A few minutes of "You want us to do what?! That's not what I did last year!" Followed by a slow acceptance and ok, how do we do this? Ending with, "I'm so glad we did it that way- that was AWESOME!"

With an IB school the students are supposed to be more involved in their learning process. Three way conferences are meant to be more collaborative between the students, parents, and teachers. We spent the days leading up to the conferences reflecting on our work and class behavior. Kira, our amazing team lead, found these awesome reflection papers that I used. They did an awesome job reflecting. Here is what one of the final pages looked like:

At conferences I had the students read what they wrote to their parents and then we made a three way goal sheet. My students know all about goals because we talk about them in class. The three way goal sheet has goals for the student from the student, parents, and teacher.

I started with the student and let them say what goals they thought they should work on. Then I let the parents talk about the goals they thought their child should work on. Then I added mine. BTW- I put play as one of the goals for ALL my students. The goal sheet looks like this:

I LOVED having conferences this way. The students are more invested in their learning. They had great insight and were very thoughtful and honest about what they need to work on. They didn't just sit there and listen to adults talk about them, the adults talked TO them the whole time.

One last interesting thing from conferences. One of my students had been out of school for a couple of days because his sister has H1N1 (we have a few cases going around school-- but that's another story that I'm not getting into) He was basically quarantined so he and his mom couldn't really come to conferences. His mom emailed me and asked if I could call her and we could do it over the phone so we did. She put me on speaker and we did it exactly the same way. The student was very much involved even when it was a conference call. I thought that was pretty awesome too. :)

Now.... to get ready for some turkey and stuffing!!

All the single ladies

Last weekend I went to the UAE (United Arab Emirates) for a singles conference with my church. I'm a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and we do this kind of thing all the time.

I know, I know, it SOUNDS awesome but..... I have mixed feelings about these conferences. To be honest, I do usually enjoy them. There are usually pretty fun activities, you meet new people who are having very similar experiences to you, and it's pretty much always a spiritually uplifting event. The downside is I am pretty much always reminded how A) old I am to still be single in this church, B) just how very few active LDS guys there are, and C) there are SO many beautiful and amazing single LDS women out there I don't stand a chance. I mean-- have you met Filipino women??! and this conference was about 50% Filipino women.

Meeting a guy to date is always a hope- let's be honest- but it certainly wasn't an expectation on this trip. I've been to too many of these. I went so I could actually visit the UAE, see just who are the single LDS people in the region, and to be spiritually uplifted. The conference was great and it did just that. The timing was good too. I really needed a spiritual boost and distraction last weekend for several reasons. With other announcements and things going on... it was a good place to be I think.

I arrived late because I had to work on Thursday. I missed all the dancing and socializing that happened Thursday evening. I stayed with this really nice family from Rexburg, Idaho- which is just down the road from where I grew up. They have triplet daughters who are seniors in high school and the husband works for Exxon. They were all very nice. A very lovely girl from England also stayed there with me. She teaches in Oman. We totally hung out together for the whole conference. It was very nice to have a friend to go to in a crowd of people you don't know.

There were about 130 singles that attended from all over the region. It was so cool to see so many different people from so many places come together. We are all so different and yet all so much the same. One speaker asked people to stand up for the continent they are from when he called them. We had people from EVERY continent (excluding Antartica for obvious reasons). There was as guy from Iraq- not an expat, but an Iraqi- a Syrian man, a few people from Jordan, and literally people from Europe, Asia, Australia/Oceania, Africa, North America and South America. It was really neat.

We had some great talks and workshops at the church in Abu Dhabi and then we went into the desert to have a literal fireside. For those of you that don't know, fireside chats is the term used to describe a series of 30 evening radio addresses given by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt between 1933 and 1944. Our church still uses the term for basically an evening spiritual talk. It was really nice out there and Elder Price gave a great talk about burying our own weapons of rebellion like the Anti-Nephi-Lehies did.

The next day we headed to Dubai to the UN warehouse... or something like that... where we assembled 8,495 hygiene kits. The kits were handed out with food at Gurunanak Darbar Jebel Ali Gardens as part of the Diwali celebrations this weekend. It was organized by the Gurunanak Darbar Sikh Temple and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in memory of Dr. Robert Bateman, President of the Abu Dhabi Stake of the church. It was something Pres. Bateman was working on before he passed away suddenly a few weeks ago. It was a really nice weekend. Here's a link to an article about it.

I didn't take a lot of pictures and I may have stolen one from someone on Facebook... but here is what I've got.

Most of the group-- those that were at church and the workshops on Friday. 

Sunset in the desert.

Our literal fireside. 

Assembling kits. 

We worked pretty hard for about 2.5 hours. 

It was all organized really well. Oh, and we got these cool shirts for the weekend. 

All finished. 

On the flight home I did find someone to hold my hand. :) 

Halloween 2015

I love Halloween!!!!

We're not allowed to celebrate it or acknowledge it at all at school. :( I guess the could a couple years ago--like, the year before I got here-- but the ministry came to school when they were celebrating it and our school got in trouble. Or that's the story I heard.

Last year a lot of parents (or maybe it was a just a few really loud ones) were upset when the school said we wouldn't celebrate Halloween because they had bought expensive costumes in Europe over the summer. The first week of school, when I asked my class what they were most excited for in the 2nd grade half the class said Halloween. We tried to get around the no Halloween rule by having a Book Awareness Month and allowing the students to dress as their favorite book character.

This year we weren't even allowed to do that. No costumes at all. Turns out it wouldn't have happened anyway with all the rain. *update from the last rain post: the ministry cancelled school for the students on Thursday. Our school still required all the teachers to go in for professional development.* We would have missed any dress-up day because of the rain.

I LOVE to play with Halloween makeup and I love scary/gory makeup. I think it's fun to figure out how to do it (YouTube is amazing! and Amazon where I bought my special effects makeup over the summer) There was an adult party that some teachers were having. This gave me the opportunity to do something a little scary. I did a sewn-up Chelsea smile. *from Urban Dictionary: A torturing term used all around the world but originating in Chelsea. The victim's hands are tied or held and the sides of there mouth are cut slightly breaking the strong lip structure. The victim is then kicked very hard in the nuts or in the case of a woman a leg is broken and as the victim screams the cuts rip creating the Chelsea Smile. I made big X stitches and stuck the needle through the ripped skin. It took me about 2 hours to do. I think it turned out pretty good. :)

For our church party I toned it down a little and just went with scars. I bought this special effects stuff called rigid collodion. You just draw your scar with a pink lipliner and then apply the rigid collodion over the top of it with several layers. The stuff REALLY stinks, but it makes your skin pucker and gives your scar a 3D effect so it looks totally real. I had fun pretending my cats got me. :)

Rain rain...

It almost never rains here. When it does it is cause for much excitement. If it is more than a slight drizzle for any length of time it is likely to start flooding.

This morning I woke up around 4:40 to slight rumblings mixed with the call to prayer. I listened for a little bit trying to determine if it was thunder or the street cleaner guy with his garbage can. I determined it was thunder and when I got up I noticed some lightening. Cool! I love storms! The cats were meowing (like they do every morning) so I got them some food but they wouldn't eat-- not normal. They were kinda freaked out by the storm.

We sat and watched the lightening out the window but there was no rain. We waited about 20 minutes and then it just barely rained and seemed to stop. I thought, "Wow, that was a lot of show for nothing." Then, about half an hour later and just in time for school, it started to pour.

What'sApp messages were flying- asking if we really had to go to school in this? are you going to drive? can I get a ride? In one group with people outside my school a person's apartment was flooded and someone else was without power. Still no official message from school so we headed in. Right before going in I see this on Facebook:

and Sinae sends me this: 

Great. This should be fun. I roll up my pants and head in. We were able to avoid wading through water by carefully choosing our path through the middle school to the elementary. Teachers and some students are trickling in. We are told all kinds of conflicting information- kids go to the multipurpose room, no they stay in your room with you. Half the building loses power. More kids are coming in.

This is what it looked like:

Rumors fly that the Ministry has said school is canceled so we have to cancel school and send the kids back home. This proves to be a good lesson for the 5 kids that are in my room. We had just started a lesson on researching yesterday and I had talked to them about making sure your source is credible. They all got excited thinking school was going to be canceled but I told them, until the principal says it is, we don't believe those things.

They did not cancel school and we were to try to actually teach. I had anywhere from 8-10 students. A couple students came VERY late and a couple students were picked up by older siblings after a couple of hours when the older siblings and the parents decided it was a waste of time for them to be there.

Luckily I had just taught that lesson on research and I had taught them how to look up topics on Britannica Online. I let them research whatever they wanted and then present the information to the class however they wanted. They researched flowers, sharks (two groups) and dogs. Three groups used iMovie to present and one group did a drawing and showed a video they found. I had them write words for my word wall and then we watched WALL-E. I tied WALL-E into our new unit with the central idea: Change Over Time Impacts Relationships. It was fun to see them watch it with a new lens and they were making connections, asking questions, and generally getting more out of it than they had before.

Oh-- and in their religion class the teacher was talking to them about sharing and caring for others, how other people need our help. I piped in and said I had some really good images to show them and we showed them these images. I had posted the link on Facebook earlier this week. Amazing images of the migrant workers here in Kuwait. http://www.faisalthef.com/#/friday-gathering/ In the middle of looking at these images one of my students said, "Ms. stop! I'm going to cry. Please stop!" I told him it was ok to cry and this is a really sad part of Kuwait. It was neat that he had such a strong reaction.

I'm going to end with my favorite What'sApp message of the day. This is in a group for the place that Sinae and I work at after school and where we did summer camps. Sinae posted a picture of the flooded tennis courts.

Citizens build community

The theme for our first unit is "Who We Are" and the central idea that we inquire into is "Citizens Build Community." Basically we talk about the different communities that we are a part of (home, school, city, country) and what our responsibilities are in those different communities. A big emphasis is usually on how we can help each other to make our communities better.

I showed my students this video that my amazing mentor teacher while I was student teaching- Sandy Tolbert- showed our class. It fits perfectly with this unit. 

The kids LOVE that video. They literally asked to watch it every day. It became my little carrot to dangle-- if you sit quietly while you eat your snack I will play the video. My kids loved it last year too. Last year they asked if we could make our own version, but I hadn't thought about that video until the end of the unit and we just didn't have time to do it. 

When we watched it this year I asked them how we could do the same things in our school community. We came up with ideas of what we could do to help each other in different areas of the school. I told them that my students last year wanted to make their own version of it and the kids this year loved that idea. So we spent some class time talking about specific areas of the school and how we can help each other in those area. Then we made a list long enough for each student to have a part. 

When I handed out the list of who was helping who with what, one of my students said, "Miss, this is called a script." Their previous teachers did such a great job teaching them! We also talked about extras on set so when it was not their turn they had to be extras in the background. 

It was kinda ambitious and I wasn't sure we'd be able to do it the way I was picturing it. When we practiced it I had to take the whole class in a group to the different areas and practice it in chunks. The day we filmed it I had recruited teachers that had a prep period and people from the leadership staff that didn't have meetings. Our tech coach, Matt, did the filming on my iPad. Matt studied film making so that's a HUGE reason why it ended up as awesome as it did. His filming made all the difference. I was so proud of my students too. We did just a couple takes and we got one with very minimal mess ups. 

After we filmed it we invited all the other 2nd grade classes and our parents to come to a "world premiere" of our movie. We showed it in the school auditorium (something the students asked if we could do) and then we put it on the school YouTube channel (something else the students asked if we could do) so now you can see it. It's only viewable to those who have the link. 

Enjoy! 

Shooting the souq and driving through dust

Last weekend we went to the old souq for the photo club and the explore Kuwait club. I brought my big camera but I forgot the card so I ended up shooting with just my point and shoot. (all the photos posted here are totally unedited- no lightroom or anything to make them look better- I was feeling too lazy to do any of that)

I'm still pretty uncomfortable shooting around local people. I'm afraid they'll get mad. Looking at the very few pictures that I took I think I needed to wait some things out a little longer. There were some good opportunities but I needed to wait longer for the right moment. Part of that is because I felt like others didn't want to just sit and wait so I didn't allow myself to wait. The other part is there just wasn't that many people at the souq so it didn't look like the shot I wanted was going to happen. I didn't realize that the souq closes in the middle of the day and reopens later. We got there just before it started to reopen so it was pretty empty, but the lighting was awesome.

We ate at the little food court area there and then started to head home. As we got up to leave we noticed some lightening and thought that was cool. It might actually rain- yea!! About 2 minutes later, half way to the car, the dust storm hit. We hadn't noticed that's actually what those "clouds" were. It was very interesting to be out in as the shop keepers frantically tried to close up shops and get inside. We had been hot and sticky and now we were being coated in dust. Nice.

When we made it to the car, it started to rain a little. Rain + dust storm = mud storm. It was dark, dust everywhere, visibility was low. I couldn't tell where we were because I couldn't see the buildings around us. We had to pull up Google Maps just to find our way home. It was crazy- but I kinda love those things. I think it's the journalist in me. :)

a friend posted this pic of the dust storm moving in

Playing with fire in the desert

Happy New Year!!

It's Islamic New Year so we were given two unexpected days off of work- yea!! With this little gift, the photo club decided to go play with fire in the desert. We reflected on the experiences from Eid and we finally had all the kinks worked out. We have working equipment and a good location. We did have some challenges finding more steel wool but when we found it we bought bags and bags of it, so I think we're good for awhile. :)

Since my car only fits 7 people max we ended up going out two nights in a row to accommodate as many people as we could. I really like working with the random graffiti wall that is out there- I think it really adds to the pictures- but that road is still somewhat busy. I think they have a big kegger going on out there or something. The cars coming and going.... it just feels like there's a kegger going on. It just gets a little annoying because we have to wait for cars to pass so it slows us down. It would be nice if we could find a beach location with the water--- that would be cool. I'm going to find that for the next one.

Here are pretty much all the pics we shot. The first night we just kept trying different ways to spin the wool and different angles to shoot it from. The second night we spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to make the umbrella shots look how we wanted them to. We never REALLY got what I wanted with that. We'll have to do that again.

*btw- I don't remember if I mentioned how this is done before, but basically it's that fine steel wool inside a metal whisk that is attached to a leash. You light the steel wool and fire and then spin it. Sparks go flying out. It looks cool in the photos with the long exposure. It's cool in real life but now as dangerous as it looks in the photos. More like a sparkler.