YEAR 8/9

English: The year 8/9s have been working on two American short stories - “Exchange Values” and “Nobody’s Fool”. Next week, they will write an exam-style essay in class comparing the two stories. Before the end of term, the class will also be analysing a couple of newspaper articles and writing a response to one of them.

P.E.: This term, the students have been improving their hockey skills. Most sessions have ended in fun, spirited and feisty matches.
Humanities: We are continuing with the History of the Human Race. Most recently, the Middle Ages, feudalism, William the Conqueror, and we are about to embark on the Crusades. In the absence of Year 9’s, due to their Melbourne camp, Year 8’s had a one-off lesson on the life of the Prophet, Mohammed.

YEAR 8
Maths: Year 8’s are finishing a unit on linear equations, y = mx +c and gradients.
Science: Various ongoing activities including the chemistry of solutions and building chain reactions.
Music: Writing music to fit certain poems; students will be notating these using a computer program shortly.
Art: Two things on the go: Dance projects final filming and editing, and Folio work (including sculpture, drawing, painting, ceramics).
Spanish: This week we are looking at Spanish card games - terminology of game play. (last week looked at various perspectives on bulls and entertainment in Spain) - basically been doing a splish-splash of stuff.
YEAR 7/8 Spanish: Learning numbers through interesting statistics of the Spanish speaking world.

YEAR 7

Spanish: Futsal continues (marked improvement in their skills last week!)
English: A study of the application and function of symbolism and metaphor, with reference to the individual and collective unconscious, in literature and film.
Art: Three things on the go: Folio work (including sculpture, drawing, painting, ceramics), dance project filming and editing, and long-term film project.
Humanities: exploring different types of maps and map reading skills (scale, distance, direction, etc.).
Science: Conclusion and critique of individual student-formulated experiments.
Music: Working on a research essay on a song of their choice. This includes discussions on aesthetic values, why do we prefer certain sounds/styles etc., and use of musical terminology.
Maths: We are working on directed numbers and estimation - involving perimeters, area, angles and length, as well as strategies to improve estimating .  Also, revising tables where needed, and different methods of problem solving.  More work on directed numbers next week, as well as exam practice to identify individual needs.

GRADE 6

Music: Two group compositions based on Munch’s painting ‘The Scream’ - bringing to life what happened to the figure before, during, and after the scene shown in the painting.
Spanish: Learning how to play chess in Spanish, + continuing  futsal skills (fastest growing sport in the world!)
Maths: The year 6’s have been learning about measurement (eg hectares, finding the area of a triangle, etc). To enhance their understanding of the size of things, the students have been working out how many smaller areas fit into a much larger one (eg Romseys into Victoria, Australias on the world’s surface, Amenities Buildings in the Tye Estate, etc).
English: The workings of the unconscious in creativity, as seen in everything from Peter Pan to Duel and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Applications to writing.
Science: Studying the nutritional value of various foods, understanding food labels.
Art: Theory essay and folio work (including drawing, ceramics, extended 2D and 3D stop frame animation)
Humanities: We are completing the presentations of individual projects.  Each student has undertaken to research a significant past culture and to present a PowerPoint presentation which answers the following:
Why was this culture significant? What sets it apart from others? What were significant buildings, artefacts or achievements?  Describe daily life for wealthy or poor members of this society.
Show when in time this civilisation began and ended. Give a possible reason for its decline. Describe the achievements of several significant people from this civilisation. Show where this civilisation existed.
We will move on to memorising the countries of Oceania/Australasia via a computer program.

GRADE 5

Music: The students have been experimenting with composition and notation for a range of instruments using a computer program and are now moving into learning guitar chords.

Art: Designing and producing images for Picasso cow competition. (With Zan) Colour, form, and theory. Subject, Picasso. Language, Spanish.
English: The Year 5s are currently revising commas and the “ay” sound (ai, a_e words) in an effort to improve their spelling. Following a unit on the media, the class is now further exploring the concept of objectivity by writing TV ads that they will perform/explain to the class. Using the Fitzroy Readers, Kris Tautkus has started working with small groups (2-3 kids) on a weekly basis to further improve reading/comprehension skills. This program will include all students.
Humanities / Tutorial: selecting and completing small tasks about a country of choice, presenting the collected information as a poster.
Science: investigating the human body, working from the top down - constructing brains with modelling clay, completing experiments to test reaction times, learning how the nervous system works.

PE: different games each week. Some have worked, others haven’t!
Maths: Estimation involving angles, length and perimeter.  Also working on specific needs regarding tables learning, long multiplication and division.  Order of operations work was done on Friday and will be continued next week.  Aiming also to do design work involving paper stained glass window effects this week.

GRADE 3/4
Maths: The Grade 3/4s are just about to embark on measuring the area of various shapes and surfaces.  They will be making 1 m x 1m squares out of newspaper to measure the size of the classroom floor, the table, the blackboard etc.  They will use 1cm x 1cm transparent grids to measure the surface area of leaves, sharpeners, their hand prints, and so on.
English:
Identifying (own) most effective Haiku poems to write and illustrate on a A4 poster in best handwriting. Extending work on ‘magic’ e in spelling and looking at adding ‘ing’ and ‘ed’ to these words.  Create Fete poster. Relate poster layout knowledge to own Fete stall and create effective poster which shows thoughtful layout, appropriate writing and headings, costs, items to be sold, etc.  Fitzroy Workbooks on one day.
Music:  Ostinatos, “Chatter with the Angels”, musical arrangements, recorders,  developing their understanding of Solfa, developing their understanding of  musical notation.
Grade 3/4 Humanities: modelling and mapping Victorian Goldfields, and investigating the gold rushes of the 1850’s from different perspectives (immigrants from Europe and Asia, and indigenous Australians).
Science: Making batteries and studying how various electrical circuits work.
P.E.: This term, the students have been learning how to play hockey. This has included learning to dribble, pass, push/hit, and to play responsibly.
Art: Focus on body/ face  - painting various Picasso faces. Making stop motion animations.
GRADE 2

Science: This week we are exploring sound under water
English: The Grade 2s have been working on writing stories from a first person perspective. They have been following the journeys of ants outside the classroom, and writing accounts of these journeys from the perspective of the ants. In grammar, they have been concentrating on the use of full stops and capital letters.
Maths: In Maths, the Grade 2s have been concentrating on area, and learning their times tables. They also counted the entire takings of the fete, which came to over $1377.40!
P.E.. The Grade 2s have been enjoying some ‘exclusive to Candlebark’ games, such as Binball and Broom Hockey. Different students have been responsible for planning and co-running PE sessions. They are focusing on working well in a team.

Art: Extended 3D stop frame animation, (some with student-made soundtracks)
Tutorial: designing and constructing water bottle rockets for flights during the final week of term.
Music: Coco’s Samba, Latin music, rhythm, rhythmic notation, composing their own rhythms.
Humanities: Have just finished a major unit on the world continents where pairs researched, used continent outlines to show foods, buildings, geographical features, flags, language, and countries of chosen continent.  All presented their posters to the class last week.  Now, we will work on values - related to age, culture, situation.  Act out and discuss behaviours and examine our own values in relation to these.

GRADE 1

Maths: The Grade 1’s have worked on becoming familiar with different coins and their value, with a focus on handling money at the fete. They have also been playing games that reinforce their understanding of place value with 2 digit numbers, and creating their own maps.
English: The Grade 1s are working on story telling.    They are currently preparing a finger puppet show based on two of Aesop’s Fables, The Boy Who Cried Wolf and The Town Mouse and the Country Mouse.  They will show these at the morning meeting Monday.
Music:  Solfa, via “Do a Dear”, recognition of recurring patterns in simple traditional folk melodies, basic notation concepts.

P.E.: Over the last couple of weeks, the Year 1’s have been performing drills and playing games that incorporate the skills they have been working on over the year. These skills include throwing/catching, jumping, and learning to play soccer and hockey.
Science: Studying sound and vibrations, making musical instruments.
Humanities/Spanish: This week we are looking at names of things to do with Spring + revision of colours and numbers.
Art: Extended 3D stop-frame animation, (some with student-made soundtracks)

PREP

Music: Basic musical concepts: call and response, beat, recognition of patterns, extending their personal repertoire of songs, quiet listening.
Science: Understanding how the natural environment around the school functions.
Art:  Sculpting and shaping with clay
P.E.: The preps have been enjoying learning new games in P.E., and are enjoying Crows and Crocodiles, Cat and Mouse, Tails and Scarecrow Tiggy.
Humanities: After working on the Olympics, the Preps have moved on to a study of Australia. This has involved reading Australian stories, looking at maps and drawing Australian wildlife.
Spanish: A mixture of hands on activities covering animals, games, colours and numbers - this week playing number and colour games.
Candlebark Discovery: last week - class pictionary (working in pairs, one student drawing an object while the other attempts to guess what it might be), this week - either paper making or some work with seeds in the garden.
English: The Preps are writing self titled stories using words and sounds that they are able to read.
Maths: Addition and subtraction to 10 and 20; talking about and using money (in preparation for the fete); and sewing a number book.

Dance
In Dance the students are beginning to learn dances for the end of year performance. The year 7s and 8s have been working on their dance videos and earlier in the term all students and most teachers were recorded for the whole school dance video. These will be shown at the soiree next week. The year 9s are working hard to finish a dance using movement they have created. This dance will also be shown at the soiree.

That’s a sample of what we’re doing!

All the best and thanks for reading, from John

The Year 9’s came back from Melbourne the afternoon before, Friday. They had gone there by public transport after school Thursday, accompanied by teachers Wendy and Sarita. They found their way to the house in Brunswick where they were to stay, and spent Friday navigating their way around Melbourne carrying out a variety of assignments. This was one of the final preparation activities for their trip to Italy, which begins in about a month, and it went extremely well.
Among other activities they have undertaken for their Italian adventure are the study of Italian every Monday evening (throughout the year), after school at the Victorian School of Languages in Gisborne (again accompanied by Wendy and Sarita), and the study of `Italian Opera and Chocolate’ with Scott, as a compulsory Friday morning activity this term. Today they’re selling hot chocolates at Gisborne as one of their final fund-raising activities.  A donation last week of $1500, from the Toccolan Business Club was a welcome fillip to their funds.
They’ve had a busy year really. They completed First Aid to Level 2 standard earlier in the year, again as a compulsory Friday activity, did a three-day bike camp at Beechworth, hiked for three days from Trentham to Candlebark, did a four-day hike along the Cross-Cut Saw, (encompassing mountains like Speculation and Howitt), had a four day ski camp recently which included camping in tents in the snow for a night, and through it all have stuck to their studies well.
Included in Friday’s activities on offer to everyone except Year 9’s in this week just concluded were Hockey, Knitting, Rube Goldberg Machines, 500 in Spanish, Garden Path-making, Making Fathers’ Day cards (using natural materials), Bushwalk with the Horses and Donkeys, and Stagecraft and Drama. I also had about twenty adults and children who are interested in becoming Candlebark families here for a tour, and after I’d spoken to them for a while a number of our students showed them around the school.
Also on Friday, the older girls (Year 7) who are teaching netball to younger children had another training session, at lunchtime. Lunchtimes and free time here see such an outpouring of wonderful young energy. I’ve never seen a school where kids are so active. Currently cricket is back in vogue, but a game of handball proceeds in the very middle of the cricket pitch every day, without either group getting offended or angry. It’s negotiation in action. The bowlers just time their deliveries to coincide with the handball players being out of the line of fire. A running/jumping game continues to be popular. Kids scoot past on scooters, race past on bikes, get pushed past on billycarts, skate past on skates. Hopscotch games are drawn on the concrete with chalk. Recently many children have been making posters for the fete. There’s always groups in classrooms, making up their own dance routines, doing schoolwork, reading, playing board games or cards, drawing or making craft items, or (once a fortnight) enjoying their turn to play games in the computer room.

Throughout last week and the one before, at recess and lunchtimes, Scott has been auditioning students for roles in the end-of-year play, which he has written specially for Candlebark. Basil has been offering the facilities of the Art Room for those who wish to work on or finish art pieces (I recommend a visit to inspect Fletcher’s shark’s fin), and Basil has been assisting Year 7/8’s with the editing of their dance videos. As well, Claire is rehearsing different groups for the soiree.

At Friday’s morning meeting the Grade 2’s under the direction of Taran played a piece of Brazilian mambo music. At Thursday’s meeting Zan read a book which she has co-authored with her mother and which will be published by Omnibus. Scott also has a picture book being published, `Not Like Georgie’, from Walker Books, which will be launched in late October. At Monday’s meeting I showed a series of book covers from around the world and talked about their different styles, and about the process through which covers evolve.
For a fortnight Scott has been running a story-writing competition for all ages, where the challenge is to write a story using many or all of the 132 most common words in the English language. Entries closed Friday, and there were plenty of them, giving Scott a lot of homework during the next week.

Wednesday, Chloe, Maeve and Sabrina, all in Grade 5, held a Talent Quest. A huge audience attended. I dropped in with a family who want their daughters to come here, and we stayed for a few minutes. After we left one of our visitors said `You know what was amazing about that? There was such a lovely atmosphere, and everyone was so well-behaved, and yet there were no teachers - they were doing it all themselves.’ It did remind me of how much we already take for granted about Candlebark, after less than three years.
Claire was away Monday, attending a session for teachers, run by the Australian Ballet, observing the Australian Ballet company in class, watching a French ballet master in action, and in conversation afterwards learning new ways of sequencing a class, as well as more injury prevention techniques. On the Friday before that, just over a week ago, Kathryn and Wendy went to an all-day workshop at Box Hill, on the subject of positive interventions with children who present challenging behaviours. Run by Tan Curtis, a Queenslander with a Master’s in Behavioural Management and a Master’s in Counselling, the emphasis was on developing preventative strategies rather than reactive strategies.
The night before that was the Grade 3/4 sleepover, a lovely event, which featured exclusively-Candlebark games such as Bunk-house Breakout and Hostages, as well as the more familiar Sardines. I read them the first chapter of Wind in the Willows before they went to bed and was impressed at their intelligent appreciation of it.
Going back another day, Wednesday saw a visit from the School Nursing Service, at our invitation, so we can take advantage of their skills in assessing children for all manner of issues, from hearing difficulties to dental problems. Meanwhile the older kids were all at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival, for a variety of talks and workshops. The previous day, architect Paul Haar was here for the day, and gave a wonderful presentation of plans for the new buildings. Particularly impressive was the way in which he had incorporated our students’ suggestions into his designs, and was able to show us the direct links between, say, Simon’s drawings or Maddie’s model, and Paul’s implementation of those into the plans. He then worked with Basil and the students for the rest of the day, on issues of colour, design, and furnishings, along with some of our supportive and creative parents. It was great to see so many of the parents who have helped us attend that presentation.
The Saturday prior to that - and I’ve now gone back two weeks, in case you’re losing count - was the Tournament of Minds final at Bendigo. Wendy, Roz and Basil all went to this. Wendy and Basil had offered to judge some of the sections as well. Our two teams, supported by a great turn-out of enthusiastic parents, performed magnificently. There are so many weeks - months - of training and preparation that go into this, but it is richly worthwhile, in terms of what it teaches about teamwork, flexibility, ingenuity, creativity, and language. Each term has to perform a prepared piece, on which they work with minimal adult intervention, and they have to make all the props for it. The performance must run ten minutes. The teams also have to perform a spontaneous challenge on the day. For all this to work, a huge amount of coaching and training is necessary, and Wendy and Roz have spent many hours of free time (including sleepovers) to make it all happen so successfully. Our teams had many - what I will euphemistically call - learning experiences but they came through triumphantly, with wonderful performances.
The night before that was the Trivial Pursuit night, and thanks to all who supported that. I was in Sydney, but evidently it was a barrel of laughs, and the questions, compiled by the Year 9’s were well-received. It sounds like the sort of thing we should do every year.

The week before that was Maths Week, when we had an amazing variety of Maths activities for students to choose from…
And so it goes on. Tomorrow Basil and Roz are taking 22 of our best chess players to Castlemaine for an inter-school competition. Wednesday of course is the Fete, one of my favourite days of the year. Kids have been hard at work getting ready for it.
In the middle of all this we continue with our central activity: the classroom education of children and young adults. We have a wonderful collection of bright, intelligent, sparky and engaging teachers, whose work ethic surpasses any staff I have ever seen or worked with.

So, that’s my snapshot of what we’ve been upto lately!

John

Another is so that we the community can satisfy a primal need for retribution or revenge. We want the perpetuators to suffer in a way that will make them feel something of what their victim suffered.

Jail sentences are also of course intended sometimes to protect society from the criminal. Usually when schools expel students, the same reason is given.

Candlebark is not a punishment-based school. We’re not interested in raising children to become adults who do the right thing because they’re afraid of being punished, because we have successfully created an `activity-punishment’ connection in their brains. We’re interested in raising a rather rare kind of adult: the one who does the right thing because morally and philosophically the person thoughtfully understands the nature of their actions and the effects their actions have on others.

This is a much harder path to take, and one that is easily capable of being misunderstood.

Schools should be places where children can make mistakes, and where they will be held safely when they do so.

All crimes fall pretty much into two categories. They are either offences against persons or offences against property. Many of the mistakes children make - the `crimes’ they commit - result in other people getting hurt. As with adults. One of the most awful things for parents is to see their dearly loved child suffering pain and injury, and it seems even worse when the injury is inflicted by another person, because that seems unfair. If a child falls off a bike, we have only one emotion: that of concern for our child (although interestingly, we often look around for something to blame, like a pothole, (`bloody Council’), or, failing that, we encourage the child to `smack the naughty bike’ We are deeply committed to the idea that for every pain there must be a perpetrator).

When a child is deliberately hurt by another, other emotions come into play, including anger.

The trouble is that throughout their lives your child is going to be hurt, sometimes very badly, and often it will be at the hands of others. Equally, your child will often hurt others, except that it’s not necessarily `equally’, because some children are more inclined to inflict pain than are others.

We should admire the parent who is able to concentrate fully on the well-being of their child when the child is hurt by others. To be able to put aside the desire to have other children punished for the mistakes they have made, to recognise that there is another path, is a kind of greatness.

The belief that punishment is the appropriate way to respond to the mistakes children make is entirely understandable - our whole society is a punishment-based one, and we were probably all raised on that principle - but it’s funny that no-one seems to notice how poorly it is working. Those jails just keep getting more and more crowded…

John Marsden

I went to France in early January for the wedding of Tim and Clothilde Berryman. Tim is Principal of Fitzroy Community School, and he met Clothilde, who is French, in China. They were actually married in Melbourne some months ago, at a registry office, because in France a church wedding has no legal status. But the real celebration was the church wedding, which was held in a beautiful part of Normandy, near Rouen.

Given the international flavour of their union, it seemed appropriate that guests came from Africa, China, Finland, Australia, England, Thailand and of course France. It was a wonderful weekend – a great celebration of family, friends, love and all those good things. I was deeply impressed by the calibre of the young people, Tim and Clothilde and their friends, most in their twenties and early thirties, many of whom I already knew, many of them ex-students of Fitzroy Community School, but so principled, thoughtful, kind and good-humoured. If Candlebark graduates have those qualities I’ll be happy.

I then went back to Paris for a week of tourist type stuff, but also to work on a book in peace! I’m on a deadline to get an edited manuscript to a publisher by the end of this month, and knocked it off successfully (I hope) before leaving to return to Australia.

However whilst in Paris I nicked over to London for a day via the amazing Eurostar train for the biggest educational technology exhibition in the world. I’d been wanting to go to this for years, and it was well worth the trip. I staggered out after seven hours without a break, dazzled, starry-eyed, amazed and generally gob-smacked. Pretty hungry too actually. But even after seven hours I only left because all the stands had been packed up and they were turning out the lights (It was the last day of the show).

My main interest was in finding out just what is going down for students with learning difficulties, and I knew that whatever they had there would be state-of-the-art; absolute up-to-the-minute. It sure was.

I picked up a couple of kilos (not kidding) of demonstration CD’s and DVD’s. and spent a good deal of time on the trip home evaluating them. Ever since they put power sockets for computers into planes, my travel habits have changed dramatically. In fact I’m writing this on the plane at 3.35 a.m. Australian time, no doubt to the annoyance of my fellow passengers. J. I’m half-way between Seoul and Melbourne, January 17.

The items that excited me most from the show were a couple of programmes that use human voice. One works best for children who have difficulty writing. For example, one of the things this programme does is to immediately read back to the child each word the child writes, so the child knows right away whether the word’s right or wrong. If it’s wrong, the computer will suggest alternative words so the child can identify the correct one he or she wants to use. This all happens instantly, so the child can move the story or piece of writing along at a good pace.

In other words, the child is immediately made aware when he or she has made a spelling mistake, and then gets to choose the correctly spelled word from a list – and further, will immediately realise if the wrong choice has been made from that list.

But my favourite programme is one that can be installed on your computer as a floating toolbar, and which reads to you whatever text you ask it to. I thought this looked pretty promising when the guy demonstrated it to me at the show (the demonstrators were very generous to me, given that most of them knew they wouldn’t be selling me much stock, as soon as they looked at my name-tag and saw I came from Australia). But I swear to god, when I tested this stuff on my computer on the Paris-Seoul leg of this trip I nearly leapt out of my seat and ran around the cabin cheering. It is totally astonishing. If I want, right now, I can put on my headphones, press a key, and the computer will immediately read me this letter to you, in a flawless, fluent, attractive voice. I would guess it makes about one mistake per two thousand words.

Not only that, but when you get the full version, you can choose from about twenty different voices, two of which are Australian – one male, one female.

The voices read with quite reasonable expression, they totally respect punctuation, and they read made-up words without a blink.

However, the disc I’ve got does go haywire occasionally, so I’m hoping that’s just a minor glitch affecting this particular disc.

One of the applications – just one – of this new software is that we can scan, for example, an English novel onto a computer and a child who is not a good reader will be able to have it read to him. If the child follows the text on the screen at the same time, we are basically giving the child a course of neuro-linguistic programming - one of the most powerful ways of improving reading in children with learning difficulties.

Imagine also the advantages for teaching foreign languages!

Now I know that these programmes are doing exactly what a sympathetic adult sitting next to a child could be doing, and so in a way we are paying a lot of money to have technology replace humans (yet again!) But in the real world those humans aren’t always available. And all kinds of emotional issues come into play when adults work with children who are struggling academically.

Above all, to me, the main advantages of these two programmes is that they put tremendous power and independence into the hands of kids who typically don’t enjoy a lot of power and independence in their school careers, because their learning difficulties make them so dependent on adults.

The other advantage is that children who are struggling with schoolwork can get a lot more done! With the best will in the world we can’t provide kids with full-time individual tutors, any more than parents at home can sit with children for hours every night. But a child with a half-way decent attitude to learning will be able to make huge progress with this kind of software. And for children who are severely dyslexic, these may become life-long tools of great value.

Another item at the show which blew my socks off was a 3D T.V. I don’t think we’ll be picking up one of those, but it was extraordinary. No special glasses required, but you did have to stand at a particular spot to watch it, i.e. to get the 3D effect.

Anyway, onto other stuff. I’ve been catching up on professional reading during the holidays and found some interesting snippets, including this one on learning problems.
A major study by Macquarie University compared the reading test results of identical twins, (identical twins have the same genetic identity), with the reading results of non-identical twins (who on average have half identical genes).

What they already knew was that identical twins get the same scores on reading tests, but non-identical twins get varied results. It reminds me of two sets of identical twins I’ve known, from other schools where I’ve taught: in one case, they got identical HSC/VCE scores, in the other they were a mark apart… 589 vs. 588.

Given that they could not – surely? – have done exactly the same amount of work, it made me wonder whether education does any `value-adding’ at all.

The Macquarie people knew already, but confirmed again with their results, that genetics has a major impact on reading success and reading problems. It figures, given that basic language skills, attention skills and memory skills are all highly heritable.

But this particular study went a little further. They compared the effect of genes on the two methods of learning to read – phonics, which we use at Candlebark, especially in the younger years, and word recognition, which we also use.

They found what they expected to find, which was that different children inherit a `preference’ for one system over the other.

Schools would ignore that finding at their peril – or at the peril of the children.

The same team also researched spelling with the same groups of twins. Spelling’s not something that most researchers get into much – not sexy enough I guess. What they found was that again spelling is highly affected by genes, and it seems the same genes are responsible for both spelling and reading. But with spelling, there is not the differentiation between the two approaches that they found with learning to read.

At the same time genes ain’t everything (that’s not quite how they put it in their article). What they actually said, with a nice double negative, was `It’s never the case that we find no environmental factors.’

Another item I came across which was absolutely no surprise was one concerning drugs like Ritalin. Plagiarism warning – I’ll quote this pretty much word for word: The USA multi-modal treatment study of children with ADHD has been monitoring the treatment of 600 children since the 1990’s. The study found that treating children’s attention-deficit-disorder with stimulant drugs is not effective in the long-term. It found that after three years of treatment, stimulants are no more effective than therapy. The research also suggested that use of such drugs could stunt children’s growth.

In the same educational journal, dating from mid-November (hadn’t had time to read it till now) was a story about research into children’s preferences for play. The study, a UK one, found (no surprises coming up) that “children wanted to play football and to play outside. Rarely did they mention wanting more playgrounds as such.”

The researchers said: “Part of the problem with playgrounds was that small budgets and risk-aversion led to areas with unexciting equipment.”

It reminded me of the wonderful story (tragic story actually) also from the UK, about a year ago – a letter to the paper from a school principal describing how his school had spent nearly a million dollars (pounds? — I can’t remember) on play equipment in recent years. And he said that they’d had some good value from it. But he had never seen children having so much fun as when a few truckloads of soil were dumped at the school in preparation for a new building. Just a big pile of dirt – and the kids were ecstatic.

Next up is a collation of info about the Finnish school system, which is suddenly attracting enormous attention after surveys showing Finnish kids getting the highest scores in the world in tests which assess reading and science standards, and the second-highest (behind Hong Kong) in maths.

Trolling through three different articles, I ended up with the following information:

• Most Finnish children go to day care until the age of six. Means-tested subsidised child care is available to everyone for children aged between 10 months and seven years. Some children get up to 55 hours a week free.
• There is no attempt to teach academic content at the child-care centres; the emphasis is strictly on play. The people who run centres in the most affluent areas have given an estimate of 20% for the number of children who can read by the age of five. No statistics are available, because Finland simply doesn’t “do” testing and assessment, until age 16.
• Academic learning begins at the age of seven. This includes learning to read.
• In Finland, teachers come from the top 10% of matriculating students. (In the USA, they come from the bottom 30%.) (I shudder to think what the figures are for Australia. I’m still scarred by the applicant for the English teaching position who confided that she was poor at grammar. About 20% of the applications I get contain spelling errors.) In Finland, a master’s degree is a minimum requirement. Students compete to get places in teaching courses, even though salaries for teachers are not high.
• The respect in which teachers in Finland are held means that they are trusted to get on with the job. There are no inspections of schools, no AIMS tests or equivalent, no publication in the newspapers of comparisons between schools.
• However there are fears that changes are imminent. Parents who are returning from living overseas are demanding the kind of information about schools, and their own children’s standards in relation to others, that schools in other countries often provide. Also, a large influx of immigrants is causing some reaction among some Finnish parents.
• And, to finish on a sober note: you may remember that at the start of November an 18-year-old high school student went berserk in a Finnish high school and shot seven other students, the Principal, and then himself. So, again we are reminded, in this tragic way, that when it comes to schools and schooling systems, Utopia doesn’t exist.

Back home now, and delighted to see how good everything looks. Roll on, 2008!

They carried packs, with tents and water bottles and so on, and they handled it well . But we were disappointed at their organisation beforehand. Five of them didn’t bring backpacks to school and a couple of them didn’t have boots or shoes that were anywhere near appropriate.

I keep running into people who try to idealise this school, to sentimentalise it even, which is worse. I want you to know that every day we deal with issues that don’t have any kind of golden glow to them! Mundane, boring, irritating issues, like people not doing their clean-up job properly – yesterday for example I had to go and find Alex, who was in charge of the Outdoor clean-up group, because they’d left quite a lot of plates and food scraps in one area. Play rehearsal was a bit of a crock because Luke didn’t know his lines – in fact it seemed like he’d never even heard of some of his lines before. Talking to the Year 7’s briefly I got the impression that two of them had barely started their homework for one teacher, even though they’d had two weeks to do it.

On the other hand I gotta admit I taught a Maths lesson that was really lame. I was trying to get the class to the point where they could figure out that if a number has factors a, a and b, it will have 6 factors, and if it has factors a, a, b, b, it will have 9 factors. I’m embarrassed at how long it took us to get to that! I’d thought I was properly prepared for the lesson but turned out I wasn’t.

Still, it would be fair to say that by and large our school runs well, and the vibe is overwhelmingly positive. Last week we had a Week of Writing. All classes were suspended and the five days were turned over to writing. Each morning we all gathered in one big room and everyone worked together on a writing activity. For instance, Basil ran a workshop where each student and teacher got a book of poetry, went through it looking for interesting words, then wrote their own poems using some of the words. The results were wonderful, but what I found even more wonderful was the sight of eighty people, most of them young, all engaged in a common task, working with care and commitment and enthusiasm.

After the first session each day we split into groups – students were offered a choice from a list of eight or nine that changed every hour. One of them was writing picture books inspired by The Hungry Caterpillar. Another was designing your own island, then writing fantasy stories that were set there. Song-writing with Taryn, Recipe writing with Kathryn, Writing poetry outdoors with me, Choose-Your-Own-Adventures with Clare-Elise… there were a lot of mouth-watering workshops.

Yesterday, when we resumed school after the Melbourne Cup, one of the Prep kids, Edgar, said `My head was really surprised today when we weren’t doing the Writing Week… I wish we were still doing the Writing Week… my head thought we would still be doing it… it was good…’

So, that’s a snapshot of a few days at Candlebark. But it’s only the corner of a snapshot. We’re a small school but so much happens that it would take a very large photo album to capture even one day. But thanks for taking the trouble to read about us.

John Marsden

But we’ve all been out and about a lot, with a trip to the Science and Technology Centre at Bendigo, as part of National Science Week; lots of visits to the Melbourne Writers’ Festival, where our students saw everyone from Dave Eggers to Clive James, from Geraldine McCaughrean (author of the Peter Pan sequel) to Louis Sachar (’Holes’), from Leigh Hobbs to Barry Jones; and to Bendigo again for the Tournament of Minds,where one of our teams walked away with the big award for displaying outstanding values and attitude. Only seven of these awards are given in the whole of Victoria.

On Friday we sent two teams to an inter-school chess tournament. They both did really well. As we — at the moment — only go as far as Year 8, our secondary team had to compete against much older kids, but they won their division. The primary team, in a larger field, came third; a great result.

Also last week was our annual fete. Of course nothing around here is really annual, given that we’ve only been open for 18 months. But my guess would be that as long as Candlebark keeps going, the fete will continue, basically because everyone has such a great time. The only rule is that the kids have to do everything: there is no adult help A few of the parents are so enthusiastic that there’s no stopping them, but basically the rule holds good. Last year one of our Preps organised a stick sharpening competition. If you entered, you spent as long as you liked sharpening a stick with a knife, and at the end of the day the sharpener of the best stick got the prize. This year the highlights included a slow race, several bow and arrow competitions with home-made bows and arrows, a fortune teller, a house of horror, and lots of great food and drink stalls.

The fortune teller was Oliver, a Year eight boy. He had me select a number of cards, several of which had swords in them. He then searched through his pack and found a picture of someone lying on the ground dead, with many swords sticking out of his body. My fate, he informed me, was to be killed by four swords. I asked him if he was speaking literally or metaphorically, but he assured me that four actual swords, resembling the ones in the picture, would be the agents of my death. However, just as I was feeling a little faint, and coming over all dizzy, he whipped out a card from the Teachers’ Credit Union, and told me that if I invested my funds with them I would live a long and happy life.

I have to say I left the tent with the gravest suspicions as to the incorruptibility of fortune tellers; well, of Oliver anyway.

Of course when you write or talk about the school publicly, you only mention the good stuff. But I feel there’s a great vibe here. I love what I see happening around me all day, every day. Last week a parent sent me an e-mail describing her son’s response when asked by some friends of the family whether he was enjoying his school. He said it was the “best, best, best school in the whole world, milky way, on the other side of the milky way and all the universe, and in other worlds; but then I don’t really know what an alien school would be like!”

So on that happy note I’ll sign off!

With just a mouthful of muesli and a swig of juice our family hit the road excitedly at 7.30am. The sun was slowly making its rise over Melbourne town, on a crisp winter morn, way more crisp and rainy than expected seeing Aus has been in a draught for the past 10 plus years. I love these unexpected adventures, you get word there’s gonna be a school open day you’re dying to see, so we hire a car and off we go.

We eye spy lots of open green pasture and sheep, a few cows and some horses. Once we hit Romsey we all start to feel the buzz that will persist throughout the day. We round Kerrie Rd and find a nice, bumpy, corrugated, red earth track and then the enchanted, green and ancient land of Tye estate aka Candlebark school finally appears.

The first thing to impress my three year old son Kai is the statue of the dancing girl, his reaction being, “Hey mummy, look at the dancing fairy.” We contemplate telling him that fairies don’t exist but I let it slip today. I notice beautiful old ferns and bubbling streams and great rolly-polly hills, hoping that one day Kai, or my nine month old son Jett, will one day be able to tell me fantastic stories of how they wore the bum off their pants whilst skidding down those slopes. After a few looks of concern as to where to go, and a nice long ride up a winding, gravel path we finally make it to the school. My husband Levin and I were immediately reminded of a camp we went to in San Diego, it was like a commune where a group of 10-15 people lived in hand built log cabins, grew their own organic food, and ran an adventure/challenge camp for children from disadvantaged homes in need of some guidance and growth.

That place we visited was really warm and so is Candlebark.

A really spunky boy showed us the way to the “main area,” as he put it, and as we entered the open plan eating/kitchen area we were blown away. It was abuzz with excited chatter, games, kids making food, eating food, reading everything! All of a sudden we were meeting teacher upon teacher and kids were just so easy to talk to. It was just such a very welcoming experience. How many schools feel like this when you walk into them? Mine certainly never did!

We were all banished from being inside even on freezing cold days; like dogs sent to the dog house we felt small, unwanted and totally controlled and it shows because most of us had a complete disrespect for the system and our school. But these kids were totally different, they all looked happy, some were being hugged by their teachers, (I’d actually rather call the teachers of Candlebark mentors,) and there seemed to be so much love and respect flowing through the place. This was the perfect time for us to see the school, as John had come to us and casually told us he wanted. We sat down on communal benches with fresh apples, carrots and other fruit on the tables which was so cool to see. The fact that kids could just take food when they needed to nourish themselves proved to me and Levin that the school really cares about the wellbeing of its students. John sat us down with some of the students from the school and we all just chatted about what the school was about, what it’s not about, and what it could be about.

Everyone has a say in their school so it feels like a close community with great communication between students, teachers, and even the principal! I didn’t even get to meet the principal of my school, ever.

The coolest part of the day was meeting Rosie, Matty and last but certainly not least, Hannah. Those three girls proved to me just how exciting, important and interesting it was to be a part of Candlebark. They showed us every room with tonnes of explanations as to what went on, they loved their art room (and teacher!), there was a potting wheel and punching bag in the art room- how cool. We saw science at work, they told us about the rolling hills that make great tobogganing- on cardboard boxes no less, we saw an organic garden with jars full of beer to keep pests away (we particularly liked that it was beer being used,)and Kai was in love when we saw the two donkeys, horses, geese, goats and chickens. Animals are integral to life, and they teach kids about the cycle of life so it’s awesome to see them there. Kai then died and came back from heaven when we saw the train model set that the kids had been working on. The girls told of us of waterfalls and creeks that were of great refuge in summer. On the way back I asked them if they had seen all of the 1100 acres of land and they looked at me like I was crazy! Might be an interesting day trip sometime, *wink, wink, nudge, nudge*. The girls just blew me away with their knowledge and passion of the school. They were so mature and responsible for their age group, which shows how the school is working well. On the way back to lunch a little girl of the age of 6 or 7 showed us her tooth! Just another example of how the bigger kids look after the younger ones. What an enlightening day! Kai even managed to find a friend! We got to see how the teachers teach, how recess and lunch work, we felt the environment which was alive like the kids, we managed to meet John and most of the exciting, wise faculty, we met the coolest kids and even got to read books from the library. As far as most school open days go, this was the coolest, most insightful day ever!

We left that day feeling exhilarated and exhausted. Isn’t that the way you should always leave school.

- Della

Anyway, here are a few moments in the recent life of Candlebark. We’re getting ready for a soiree at the end of term, so that means a lot of activity. The hills are alive, with the… I think you know how that line goes. All the students will be soireeing, both singing and dancing, and for many, playing musical instruments.

The latest sporting craze is a game the students invented last year. It’s a form of hockey, played with tennis racquets and a tennis ball on the basketball court. It’s only recently made a comeback, but I’m glad it has (I’m John by the way, the Principal) because I love it. The game is superfast, and the players range in age from 7 to 56 (I raise the average age somewhat when I join in).

Most of the games played here are pretty much the students’ own invention, but they have a few things in common. There are no boundary lines, so the ball never goes out, which means that the game never stops. Also, there are no penalties for stoppages or infringements, because no one really cheats much, so when, for example, someone treads on the ball in hockey, it’s just accepted as an accident, and play continues — no one says anything. If someone treads on the ball deliberately, then everyone just laughs, although if a person did it too often, they’d soon get told.

A totally new development is the creation of a skipping team. Nick, a Year seven student, is a state champion skipper, and after giving a demonstration of his skills the other day to an amazed and enraptured audience he now has 23 kids who want to be in a team. He’s training them at lunchtimes.

Meanwhile, back in the classroom, I’ve been trying a new approach to reading with my Grade 4 English class. The results have astonished me. On Wednesday I got them to demonstrate their prowess to the other teachers, at lunchtime. They each read aloud, from a passage they had been working on, although they didn’t know in advance which part they’d be reading. The material was about Year 10 standard, and to hear these guys, who represent a wide range of abilities, reading so fluently and confidently was very exciting.

Finally, a quick synopsis of other events: we’ve just taken delivery of a Yamaha P70 keyboard, which is a great bonus for our piano students. It’s been purchased as a result of a generous donation from the parents of a student. Kate Stewart, a grade 6 student who came from Wales to spend a term with us, has only two weeks left here, and that’s making everyone sad. Art teacher Basil Eliades and a group of wildly enthusiastic students have been making great progress on our model train layout — the trains are now whizzing through some wonderful scenery. Older students have been creating dance videos: I’ve had a few previews, and have been blown away by the sophistication and skill of their work. We’re looking at hosting a group of Japanese exchange students here next term, to further extend our students’ understanding of the wider world.

And I hope you’ve enjoyed this first instalment of Candlebark’s blog!