Kelly.McLaughlin General

Flexible Seating

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Working towards my student flexible seating classroom has been an interesting journey so far. The journey started in September with two bean bags, two carpets and one outdoor soccer chair. These items were interesting and were the go to spots in our room. The bean bags were always crowded and students enjoyed working on the carpets while reading or working in groups.

I started to bring in more items and we started to need more room for all of these items. The entire class designed a plan for our room (four in total) and I showed every class in the school their plan. Then, after a winner was chosen, we got to work to re-set up the room.

The final plan included a few new items:

  • an exercise bike for brain breaks
  • two more carpets donated by a grade eight student
  • a large purple bean bag donated by a student in our room
  • two blow up coaches that are hard to handle as they deflate every twenty to thirty minutes
  • one large rectangular table
  • one small hexagon table

We are now almost at our goal, we have seven interesting seating areas in our room. These areas are all different and are available to all students. Students are now choosing where they sit every morning, the seats are not permanent and they are a work in progress. I cannot wait to keep adding items and taking some away as they unfortunately break…

Students having a large say in the way their class looks I believe is the best way to set up a class. I encourage you all to give your class design over to your students!

 

Kelly.McLaughlin Challenging Topics, Communication with Parents and Guardians, Constant Learning, Differentiated Instruction, Diverse Learning Needs, Interviews, Learning in a Real Life Context, Modern Learning, Professional Learning and Growth, Questioning

Meet the teacher night

Tonight was open house at my school and as usual parents wanted to know how their son or daughter were performing. This is always an interesting question to answer because parents want to know about math and language and I want to tell about how they are getting along with others and how polite and helpful they are.

It’s interesting to see that what a teacher values teaching the most is not always what would come up at a meet the teacher night. I hope that in my program I can help children with their math and language as well as help them treat others with respect as well as help them make our class a friendly place.

As a young teacher, I am always hoping that parents will be on board with the new shift in education, away from tests and onto rich learning experiences. Sometimes I wonder if after my students leave me, that I have failed them if they start to take tests and have no idea what they are doing. I do see the value in showing how much they know on a piece of paper as many high schools still work with this model, but I am always wondering how that will help them in their future. I understand that test writing is an important skill, so I need to think of ways to include this in my program in the future.

I am working on making our class a very open and comfortable space for learning right now and I am hoping in my next post to share about how the alternative seating is making the student space an amazing place to work. I hope to see the benefits of the seating and I am excited to take pictures of student learning experiences and share the stories.

 

Kelly.McLaughlin General

Introduction

Hello,

My name is Kelly McLaughlin and I am excited to be back blogging for my third year in a row! I am currently working in the Hamilton-Wentworth Elementary District School Board and am a LTO teacher. I am currently teaching grade five, exploring inquiry in all subject areas and am currently working on a classroom re-design project. I look forward to sharing more in my future posts with pictures and stories.

Kelly

Kelly.McLaughlin Inspiring Students, Learning in a Real Life Context, Making a Difference Through Education, Occasional Teaching, Social Justice, Student Ownership

Students making a difference

Throughout this school year, it was one of my goals to not only start a fundraiser that would benefit a charity somehow but to have students orchestrate most if not all of the procedure. At my school Ancaster Meadow, I asked a group of 30 grade eights to plan with me a day entitled “All Star Day”. Together with myself the grade eights:

  • chose two charities for all monies collected to go towards
  • selected how the day would work picking the events at All Star Day
    • 3 point competition $10 to play
    • All star skills competition $10 to play
    • All Star game where kids from grade five to seven would play and would be coached by grade eights $20 to play
    • All star game where grade eights would play the teachers $20 to play
  • help run the day and organize the crowd to watch the event

There were many other tasks involved to help make the day a success. I went to 30 different companies to ask for donations as well as other companies to sponsor t-shirts, lunch the day of and volunteers were involved from Redeemer University.

The day went off without a hitch and we raised $2000 total, $1000 going to each charity. After this day, every grade eight came to me asking to lead more events, raise money for more charities, etc. They had all these ideas that are impossible to all say yes to because it is May at the end of a school year and the ideas they have would take many months to plan for. However, students do have the potential to make the greatest difference in their school. Whenever you have an idea, put it in the hands of your students and trust that they can take it anywhere. I have never seen kids more involved or more into what they were doing in a school building then I saw on that day. I cannot wait for next school year when I can do that same event again, keep building on it and inspiring children to know that they can make a difference and have an amazing time while doing so.

If you would like to see videos from our event, you can youtube: Ancaster Meadow All Star Day. IMG_4604

Kelly.McLaughlin Questioning

Question Master

In regards to questioning, our class has been participating in a new activity called “Question Master.” Each student creates a question according to the steps of creating an effective question. Once these questions have been created, we choose a student to lead the question session each day. They ask their question, decide how many answers they will choose and they also explain if students can use a device or they use their own knowledge.

After the answers have been heard, the question master selects one winner. These questions invoke wonder from the students as well as builds on their knowledge about asking and answering questions.

We have found this to be a great intro to start all classes as well as a good way for students to work on their leadership in front of the class. It has been a great small 5-10 minute activity each day. I strongly suggest it for all teachers to try it out, especially teachers experimenting with inquiry.

Kelly.McLaughlin Combined Grade Classes, Constant Learning, Inquiry, Inspiring Students, Inspiring Teachers, Integration, Learning in a Real Life Context, Making a Difference Through Education, Resources, Students as Teachers, Use of Technology

Tech Talk

I would like to share a new initiative my class is starting at our school Ancaster Meadow.

Our class realized the large need for technology in the classroom. We noticed that students are sometimes unfamiliar with apps that are available for completing work and for presenting learning. We are starting a new program called “Tech Talk” where as a class we travel to classrooms and instead of “Reading Buddies” we will assist the class one on one with apps of the teacher’s choice. We came up with a benchmark of five:

  1. Explain Everything
  2. Kahoot
  3. Weebly
  4. Pic Collage
  5. Prezi

These apps will be explored in detail by my class so when we visit our first class after the break, the break off sessions will be smooth and very productive. We will offer this program to grades two-five and speak to teachers before regarding sign up. Students will be able to explore the apps, prepare a small task and then share it with the whole class. The sessions will be fifty minutes long as that is how long a period is in our school. We hope that students will learn from each other and that everyone will be able to use these apps in the new future. I hope it will be a meaningful experience for my class to teach younger students skills that they already have. I cannot wait for our first trial after the break. I encourage everyone to try this  “Tech Buddies” program and share your experiences as well.

Kelly.McLaughlin Assessment, Classroom Management, Constant Learning, Use of Technology

Recording Process

I recently gained access to the HWDSB app catalogue on our new teacher iPads. I was able to download up to 175 apps and check out the apps I thought would be very helpful for my students. The one app I discovered that I think helps with recording student progress and behaviours in class is the app called idoceo.This app allows for you to walk around with your iPad and keep track of all student work ethics throughout the day. I have started to use the “happy face” symbols that come in four different colours to note the four levels of achievement. This is so helpful because you do not always have to have your mark book out, you now have a portable mark book with easy to use features.

You can also use the “seating plan” section app that helps you chose students at random rather than calling out random students. This keeps all students on their toes and always ready to answer.

You can always show students how they are doing on this app by calling them over to check their process marks in class. I find that I am always so focused on the end product and do not focus enough on the process of my students. With this app in hand, I feel I will be more readily available to record student efforts.

I am very fortunate to be able to have this extra iPad for my class which makes using technology that more accessible.

Kelly.McLaughlin Assessment, Communication Tools, Communication with Parents and Guardians, Start of the year

Assessing Student Work

Adding onto my last post about the excellent book I read, “Creative Schools”, I would like to expand on an idea from Sir Ken Robinson. He spoke of a program called “Fresh Grade” where you would take pictures of student’s work and you would store that online. These are online student portfolios where you directly take photos of their work and comment on these photos. You can set up parents to be the eyes of the account so that each day or week, depending on the time you would like to take to update this, your parents will see the work of their children. Sir Ken talks about not including marks on these tasks as we have become too mark orientated as a whole generation. I have included comments on students work and I have made sure to include next steps for the parents to see. I hope to continue using this program “Fresh Grade”.

My next step is to contact parents asking permission to email them the portfolio that goes with their child’s work. The letter I will create to go with the portfolio is yet to be created and I would love advice of how to create that letter! I hope to attach the parent’s email to their child’s account so the communication of student work is always ongoing!

I cannot wait to see the reaction from parents and I hope that this app interests them.

Kelly.McLaughlin Inspiring Students

Re-designing education

I wanted to spend this post discussing a new book I have purchased called, “Creative Schools” by Ken Robinson. This book has inspired me to try many different things with my grade six class.

1. We renamed all our subjects- our class has been thinking about relevance with the different things we learn in school. We decided to change all the names of our subjects so that they can be more suited to what we actually learn during those subjects. We have also started to tailor our projects and lessons to ones that will benefit us as a class in the present and future. No “meaningless activities” ever!

2. Recreation of schedules- the students used their survey skills, graphing skills and averaging skills so that they can choose their own schedule. They know created our class schedule so all the subjects they feel are the most meaningful for them will be studied the most. This new schedule reflects student interest and time that is best spent.

3. Class jobs- As Ken states in his book, students are best prepared for the real workplace by having jobs in the classroom in their childhood. I have now started to give students jobs weekly that really challenge them for example, post on my classroom blog, and then at the end of the week I evaluate their weekly performance. This mark goes directly onto their report in the initiative column.

4. Goal setting- Students are now creating goals for themselves and for the school. The students have these goals on their desk as the focal point for their day. Students work toward these goals daily. As they complete a goal, they get a visual sticker to remind them of what they have accomplished. These goals are for personal success as well as a celebration of their efforts toward our school. Some goals include fundraising for our school, raising money for different efforts and sports related actions.

The book has been very inspiring so far, knowing that everything in it will help inspire students in various ways. I am very proud of the changes we have made so far and I have seen a change in interest in students daily activities. I hope to continue this student led classroom for the rest of the year! I will continue to post about these initiatives.

 

Kelly.McLaughlin Before School Starts

Getting the class ready in September

Over the summer I had a lot of free time. I found I had time to finally read a book I had received as a graduation gift called “The First Days of School” by Wong and Wong. This book taught me all about the things to do to get ready for the first days of school. It is now October and the things I found most rewarding and the things that really helped the most were:

1. Developing routines as a class and practicing them over and over again so that they were reinforced to all my students. The one routine I found we really needed to go over was stacking chairs and cleaning desks off before they went home.

2. Getting the classes attention was a very necessary act to demonstrate and develop. We came up with the clapping method which gets the students attention no matter what they are doing. I even asked that any student do it anytime they want the whole classes attention whether they are presenting from the front of the room or they want the classes attention from their desk.

3. It was also helpful to leave a lot of walls blank to add student work in the first weeks of school rather than cover it with inspirational posters or unnecessary paperwork.

4. Another thing I found really helpful was making red/green signs that students flip around when they need help at their desk. Red means they need your help and green means they are working independently and they are ok. This helps students stay focused because they do not need to raise their hand or wander around the class to get you.

All these things are more I all found in the amazing book I read and I continue to use tips from that book daily. It also offers great advice about lessons and how to focus them for maximum student success. I look forward to the next month of school!