High five worthy moments

So, my mum is also a teacher, and an incredible one at that. She's an Individual Needs educator who specialises in sensory processing disorders (amongst all the other amazing things in that brain of hers) and is a huge inspiration for me both as my mum and as a professional. 

(She's actually written a book on the topic! Check it out here.)

Anyway, as I'm a fairly incredibly anxious person, talking to my mum is a massive help as a 2nd year teacher who is still attempting to figure out the right end of a whiteboard marker, so to speak. 

*Note: its the end with the ink.

I've had a pretty rocky start to the year behaviour wise, (read: my class can be little you-know-whats) so one piece of advice my mother dearest has given me is to write down one positive thing a day.

So today's... A day of fan-Tan-stic reading and writing.

See what I did there? Yes, I'm very punny!

Please, don't all cheer at once.

I could rave about Shaun Tan forever, but my happy face moment came today with my student's writing.  Truth be told, my students aren't the world's best writers. In fact, often much banging of the head against a wall ensues when marking their books. 

So when we have a little breakthrough, like metalanguage or figurative language use, I exclaim loudly about how truly incredible they are and demand high fives all around.

(its like a scene in a Disney movie actually - everyone smiles so hard our faces hurt)

So today, we looked at 'they came by water' (which, in its own right is a beautiful piece of art that I'm dying to have up on my wall if anyone is feeling particularly generous???) and we studied the differing perspectives in the image (power/majesty vs. domineering/invasion) as well as reviewing the concepts of salience and vectors (two VL terms my nutbags are very confident using now!). 

Ahh, its just so AWESOME!
Taken from: http://www.shauntan.net/images

Here are some of my high five worthy statements from today's writing:

(Overprotective Teacher Disclaimer: Please bear in mind that these kids have only been in my class for 6 weeks, none of them are achieving above a Satisfactory for writing and they are all LBOTE learners)

"I think this picture is that the big humungous ship and how small the tiny numbats are compared to the ship" a comparison, woohoo!

"I think the author made the numbats look anxious at the pointy part of the ship" adjective use, hell yes!

"First when I opened the book I saw the mighty ship staring at the land" personification???!!! WOO F***ING HOO!

Ok so the last munchkin didn't realise he used personification, and then called it 'person fiction' but small steps!

It might not seem like much, but for these kidlets, small successes might not be celebrated anywhere else, so I make even the smallest of achievements the Biggest of deals. These kids deserve to feel like they've inspired someone, like my mum inspires me.

So take a second to reflect, whether teacher or not:

What was your high-five-worthy positive moment today?