Shawna Rothgeb-Bird General

Quick and Simple Language Activities

Over the past few years, I’ve spent a decent amount of time amassing quick and simple language activities to use with my class. I’ve focused on finding things that easily adapt to a wide range of abilities, can be used in a variety of ways, and are fast to set up. I like to use these activities during my language groups/centres time, but they’re also really handy to have around in case there are any last minute schedule changes or an unexpected absence.

1) Photo of the Day: I load up a photo from a website like National Geographic (their Photo of the Day galleries are great) or a news source. I like to choose photos with a lot of interesting elements to them – things my students can talk about, think about, compare to their own experiences, etc. I provide my students with some sentence starters (I teach a second language program) and then ask them to write about the photo, prepare a short presentation for the class, or discuss it in groups. My sentence starters are things like:

“In this photo, I see…” / “Dans cette photo, je vois…”

“I think ________ becase ________…” / “Je pense que ________ parce que ________…”

“This photo makes me think of…” / “Cette photo me fait penser à…”

My students talk about where they think the photo was taken, what they think is happening in the photo, what details they notice which provide them with insight into where/when the photo was taken and what is going on. These activities have taught them a lot about providing evidence and justifying their responses, which has helped their literacy development considerably.

 

2) Journal Tic-Tac-Toe: At the beginning of the week, I set up one of my language centres with a tic-tac-toe sheet (really just a 3×3 grid) where each square has a different writing prompt. Over the course of the week, students choose three prompts to write about, with the caveat that their three choices have to make a straight line. The prompts can be as simple or complex as you want them to be. You can tie them into your Social Studies or Science units, or you can focus on specific writing forms, or follow a simple theme. These sheets provide students with choice while focusing on specific skills or subjects.

 

3) Story Starters: My husband is a professional artist, so sometimes I ask him to make things for me to use in the classroom. It’s pretty awesome when he has the time to make something for me! One thing he made me several years ago was a bunch of sets of “story starters” – collections of images (two characters, an object, and a location) based on fairy tales or themes. I printed them out on cardstock, laminated them, and put them all on their own keyring. In my classroom, I use them for writing and drama. They’re handy to have around for having students come up with simple skits to get them speaking (especially useful in a second language classroom like mine). Sometimes I use them in their original sets, other times I mix and match characters, settings, and objects from different stories/themes. I have about twelve different sets of these, which I keep in jars/tubs that students can draw them out of randomly. Here’s an example of a printsheet with a few different sets:

Story Starter Small Set 1

 

4) Boggle: I have a standard Boggle template I’ve made and a bunch of laminated square cards that I can write letters on with dry-erase markers. The square cards have magnets on the back so that I can stick them on the blackboard. Students have to make as many words as possible with the letters provided. In French, I don’t worry about adding accents to vowels, telling my students instead that they can add accents to the letters as necessary when forming words. We keep a tally in the class throughout the week of which students have found the most words and/or the longest words, which really motivates them to try and find more as the week progresses. I usually pick the letters for the week by starting with a long word so that my students have a really good one to find. Sometimes I use letters that I know will form a vocabulary word from a unit we’re studying. I don’t do Boggle every week, but they enjoy it every time I do!

 

Hopefully those are a few ideas others can use in their classroom when they need something fast and simple to prepare. The nice thing about them all is that once you’ve set them up once, they’re really easy to come back to again. I have all my favourite photos bookmarked, for example, and I keep lists of Boggle letter sets my students were really successful with.

If you have any favourite quick/simple set-up language activities you do with your students, let me know! I am always looking to add to my repertoire.

Shawna Rothgeb-Bird General

On Work/Life Balance

When I started teaching five years ago, I quickly became known at my school for being at work late. I was usually one of the first teachers to arrive, and I was nearly always the last teacher to leave. I would be in the building for ten to twelve hours a day. I brought work home with me many nights, and every weekend I would spend hours marking, planning, finding ways to keep working long after I should have been finished for the week. I had the sense that if I didn’t spend that much time doing work, I would fall behind, my students would suffer, and my colleagues wouldn’t see me as a dedicated teacher.

(The funny thing about that, as an aside, is that I never thought any less of my colleagues who didn’t spend ten hours a day at work. I could see that they were all good teachers no matter how much time they spent at work. So why did I feel like I was any different?)

Two months ago, I went back to work after being on parental leave for a little over a year. One of the concessions I had to make, now that I have a child at home, was how much time I spend at work. I pick my daughter up from day care at 4 PM, which leaves us just enough time to get home, play a little, have dinner, take a bath, and go to bed. On days when I have to be at work later than usual (such as staff meeting nights or union meetings), I don’t see my daughter at all. She is just getting up as I leave the house in the morning, and she’s in bed by the time I get home on those nights. Because of this, I make it a point to leave as early as possible every day that I don’t have something after work.

Before, my hours were generally 7:30-5:30 or later. Now, I get to work between 7 and 7:30, but I leave by 3:30 every day. I am spending considerably less time at work. And here’s the thing: my students are fine, I’m fine, and my classroom is running pretty much the same way it always has. The only appreciable difference between my last year at work and this year is that I’m spending a lot less time “at work” and a lot more time with my family. I still bring work home sometimes, but I don’t feel guilty when it doesn’t get done. I still spend some time after work prepping for the next day, but more of my prep and marking is done during school hours (such as at lunch and recess). I’ve changed some of my assessment practices to make assessment easier and quicker (more on that in another post).

My professional life has not suffered in any way from me leaving at a reasonable time and leaving work at work. My personal life, however, has benefited tremendously from this new schedule: not only do I have more time to spend with my daughter, but I have more time for my husband and friends as well.

I am still behind on marking, just like I was when I would be at work late every night. There is still more I could do to prepare for lessons or plan ahead of time, just like before. There are many days when I am running around all day to get things done before leaving, and there are days when I bring a stack of work home because I have no choice but to get it done that night. But that’s my point: it was like that before, and it’s exactly the same now, only I’m spending a lot less time at work and a lot more time with family and friends.

And my students are okay.

If you’re a teacher doing what I was doing – spending over ten hours a day at work because you think you need to in order to be a good teacher – try taking a step back for a few weeks. Try leaving earlier, leaving work at home, changing some of your assessment methods so that you’re spending less time marking. You might be surprised at how little it changes your professional life… and how much it changes your personal life.

Shawna Rothgeb-Bird Classroom Management, Communication with Parents and Guardians, Learning About Your Students, Start of the year

Advice for Starting Partway Through the Year

This particular post comes to you as I try to wrap my head around going back to work on Monday after fifteen months off. I left mid-October of 2014 after being placed on medical leave for the last few months of my pregnancy, handing off a lovely group of students to a great teacher for the rest of the year. That was difficult, but I knew they were in good hands. This time, I’m taking over a class someone else has been teaching for the first half of the year – something I find much more difficult.

This isn’t the first time I’ve taken over for another teacher. Having done this a few times now at different grade levels, I’ve learned a few things to help make the process a little smoother.

Introduce yourself! This might seem like a no-brainer to some of you out there, but communication with families is really important. No matter what time of year you’re starting, you should either send a letter home or invite families into the school to meet you. I actually like to do both. Your letter doesn’t have to be huge and really shouldn’t be your life story, but a little bit of background is nice to include – where you’re from, how long you’ve been teaching, that sort of thing.

Get to know your students. I start the first day by playing a few get-to-know-you games, then transition into a variety of activities meant to provide insight into where my students are with language. I’m a French Immersion teacher, and at my level I don’t teach math, but if I did I would include some activities to learn their problem solving/reasoning skills in that subject as well.

Find out your students’ goals for learning. This is the perfect time of year to talk about goal setting and have your students do a learning skills self-assessment (in fact, I do that every year already). Goal setting can tell you a lot about a student and where their strengths are. I find students are typically very honest when discussing their learning skills, too. Those two activities can give you a lot of insight into your students’ strengths and areas for improvement.

Don’t try to change the routine all at once. You don’t have to be stuck with the routine the previous teacher put into place before you arrived, but you really shouldn’t overhaul everything at once. Transitioning from one teacher to another is already stressful for students, so try to keep most of the routine familiar to them while you gradually implement your own ideas. It’s hard to rein in your excitement, I know, and sometimes you just have so many ideas you want to try them all right away before you forget them. Resist that urge – you don’t want to overwhelm your students.

Resist gossiping about the previous teacher, either with colleagues or students and their families. I’ve been there, I know all about it: people will try to engage you in discussing the previous teacher’s style, personality, and methods. Just don’t do it. I probably don’t have to tell anyone this.

Don’t take on too much outside the classroom. I love running extracurricular activities, but when I’m starting an assignment partway through the year, I try to limit how much I’m doing other than teaching my class. I need the extra time to plan and, I’ll be honest, unwind. You have lots and lots and lots of years ahead of you to do the drama club or sports team you love doing. Sometimes, it’s incredibly liberating to just have to worry about teaching your class every day.

Remember that students need time to adjust. Don’t take anything they say or do the first few weeks personally – I’ve had students decide on the first day that they hate me, only to have them declare me their favourite teacher by the end of the year. I’ve had students do a complete 180 in behaviour when I started. Students will react differently from one teacher to the next, and they need time to adapt to having a new teacher.

Finally, don’t be discouraged. I find starting partway through the year much harder than starting at the beginning. I feel lost for a few weeks every time, and I think that’s a normal part of the process. Just like at the beginning of the year, it will take time for you to find your footing and get into a groove with your new class. All you can do is show up and do your best every day.

Shawna Rothgeb-Bird Literacy

My Favourite Books for the Junior Grades

I am what one would call an avid reader. My “To Read” pile never really seems to get any shorter; in fact, I think I add books to it faster than I read them. One of my great joys as a teacher is sharing my love of reading with my students. This is admittedly somewhat difficult in my current assignment (teaching first-year French Immersion to Grade 4 students) but I still keep a list of my favourite novels just on the off chance that I ever teach English again. If all else fails, I look forward to introducing my daughter to these books!

If you’re looking for a novel to read with your junior class, consider these titles. You know your students, and not all classes would be able to handle the subjects dealt with in these books – but I’ve taught several classes which were more than capable of reading these and giving them the thought they deserve.

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Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry

It’s likely not news to anyone that dystopian fiction is very in right now. Before the Hunger Games or Divergent series hit the shelves, though, Lois Lowry was writing a series of equally powerful and moving novels. Many teachers are familiar with The Giver, which was recently turned into a movie, but fewer are familiar with Gathering Blue. It tells the story of Kira, a girl born into a town where the weak or disabled are left to die and only the strong are allowed to fully integrate into society. When her mother dies, she is put through a trial to determine whether she has any worth to society, and her talent with embroidery saves her life. Rather than being left out in the field to die, she is given the task of maintaining the embroidered robe which tells the “story of man” and is used by those in power to help keep this society in line.

It’s a dark story in many ways, but it’s accessible to and written for teens and older children. It isn’t violent the way Hunger Games or Divergent are, and is similar in tone to The Giver, which is set in the same world (but not the same society and the books can be read as stand-alones). It addresses difficult topics like euthanasia, disability, parent loss, and corruption – challenging, to be sure, but important. It ends on an uplifting note suggesting change is on the horizon.

* * * * *

Hatchet by Gary Paulsen

This one is likely already on many teachers’ lists. It tells the story of Brian, a young boy who is struggling with the divorce of his parents. On his way to visit his father, his small plane crashes, leaving him stranded in the wilderness. The book is about his survival: how he finds food and shelter, how he copes with his memories of home and family, and how he is eventually rescued. It’s an excellent story about survival against the odds. It addresses divorce through the eyes of a child, which would likely speak to those students who have gone through similar experiences with their own families. It could easily tie into Social Studies during or after reading. In short, it’s well worth the time to read it with your class and offers up many opportunities for rich discussion.

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Wonder by R.J. Palacio

If you haven’t heard about this book yet, you should really look into it. It has been making its way into classrooms for the last four years, celebrated for sparking discussion on empathy and compassion. The book tells the story of Auggie, a young boy with Treacher-Collins Syndrome and a cleft palate, whose parents decide to enroll him in private school after homeschooling him for the first eleven years of his life. One of the most interesting things about the book is how it’s told: we hear the story from multiple points of view, not just from Auggie. Experiencing the story this way makes it more accessible to the reader, as we watch characters struggle with their feelings as they get to know Auggie. It’s an honest narrative about acceptance and empathy, one that many students would be able to relate to, and has worked wonders in classrooms across the continent in reducing bullying.

* * * * *

There are so many worthwhile books out there for students at this age, and while it can seem a little scary sometimes to imagine discussing some of these topics at the junior grades, I assure you that it’s possible (and great) to do. There are challenging topics in all of these books, so you’ll want to read them yourselves and make a decision for your class using your professional judgement. Here are a few more recommendations, without going into detail about them, which you should check out if you’re looking for more:

Number the Stars, Lois Lowry

Island of the Blue Dolphins, Scott O’Dell

Julie of the Wolves, Jean Craighead George

Watership Down, Richard Adams*

The Golden Compass, Philip Pullman*

*These last two suggestions are longer and more difficult reads than the other books in this post. They are excellent works of fiction, but would need the right class and some help from the teacher in understanding some of the writing.

I’m always on the lookout for new books to recommend to my students or add to my classroom library (which I maintain in English and French), so if you have any favourites not mentioned here, let me know!

Shawna Rothgeb-Bird Homework

You Don’t Give Homework?!

I think I might be the queen of unpopular opinions when it comes to my teaching philosophy. If you were feeling scandalized by my refusal to acknowledge holidays in my classroom, this post might not be for you. If you think spelling tests and math practice sheets are awesome, this post is definitely not for you. That’s okay! You don’t have to agree with me. This post is all about what works for me and why I do it. It is in no way meant to imply that you should be doing the same.

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I don’t give homework to my students.

Every year, I make sure to tell my students’ families about my homework philosophy (in that there isn’t any) right at the beginning of the year so that they are prepared. My students, of course, are quite excited to learn that I don’t “do” homework. Their families’ reactions, on the other hand, range from “oh thank you, we were so glad to hear you don’t have homework in your class!” to “I don’t think you’re preparing them for the real world by not providing them with homework.”

People feel strongly about homework. Who knew?

Before I get into my reasons for not giving homework out, let me talk about what I consider to be homework in the first place. When I talk about “homework,” I’m talking about Math practice sheets, language work, spelling tests, finishing projects at home, etc. I do NOT consider reading to be homework and absolutely think that all students should be reading at home.

So, why don’t I give my students homework? Here are my top five reasons. I could go on for hours about homework and how I don’t give any, but I’ll save you all from that and limit myself to just these five.

1) You can’t assess anything done outside of school. Without the student completing the work at school, you can’t be certain that the work wasn’t in part done by someone else, meaning it isn’t an accurate reflection of what the child can do independently. Many boards have policies against using homework for assessment.

2) It’s a lot of busywork for the teacher. Preparing homework for students, checking for completion, and marking (if you mark it) all take a lot of time. It’s a lot of work for very little gain, in my opinion.

3) Families are busy. Some of my students have a different extra-curricular activity every night of the week. Many of them are gone on the weekends to sports tournaments, family get-togethers, religious services, etc. Some of my students just have very busy homes where finding time to sit down and work on homework is difficult. I don’t feel right asking all families to somehow make the time to sit down and work on homework when I can’t really do very much with that information anyway.

4) You aren’t there to help the child with the work. In the classroom, you can check in with a student regularly to make sure he or she is headed in the right direction. You can do a lot of course correcting as students work, meaning they don’t have the chance to do too much work the wrong way before you redirect them. At home, you don’t have that benefit; a student could think they understand the directions and spend hours working on something only to find out they did something wrong right from the beginning.

5) Not all families are able to help the child with the work. Language barriers, for one, are huge problems when it comes to some students getting help at home, and it’s unfair to assign work to all students when they don’t all have access to help. There are a lot of reasons why children don’t all have equal access to help at home – language is just one of the most prevalent.

 

In my opinion (which I keep writing because then I feel like I’m making myself painfully clear that it’s really, honestly, completely okay if you don’t feel the same way), there isn’t anything you can teach a student through homework that you can’t teach at school just as effectively. Many of my colleagues assign homework as a way to help their students develop good work habits or responsibility; that’s great, I’m not denying those are useful things to learn, I just think I can teach them other ways.

I could write about this topic all day, but I’m sitting in a villa in Costa Rica enjoying a much-needed vacation with my whole family (which is a little crazy) before going back to work in January. A glass of wine is calling to me.

Try not to hate me too much when you read that, okay?

I’m curious, though… how do you feel about homework? Do you assign daily practice for your students? How do you mitigate the problems I mentioned above?

Shawna Rothgeb-Bird Homework

Coping With Students on Vacation

At least once a year, I am asked by families to provide work for a student who will be missing several days while on vacation. When I first started teaching, I found myself spending hours preparing heaps of work to cover every single subject the child would miss, preparing packets of math work, French language work, social studies and science readings…

…none of which I could assess, as it wasn’t done at school, and most of which went untouched or unfinished.

It didn’t take me long to realize that doing that was a monumental waste of time. A few years ago, I changed the way I looked at providing work for absent students – primarily thanks to discussions with colleagues about what they do in their classrooms. It’s important to note that you are not required to give students make-up work in any way, even if a parent asks you to do so. Many teachers do, but it isn’t an obligation. Also note that when a child is missing school for a more sombre reason, like family illness or bereavement, I don’t ask them to do anything.

When students are away from school for a week or more in my classroom and their parents ask for work, I ask them to keep a journal of what they do and see. They don’t have to write every day, but they are asked to write in French (as I’m a French Immersion teacher). When they return to school, they have a few days to turn their journal entries into an oral presentation. The presentation provides the student with the opportunity to share their experiences with little stress (because they know the topic of their presentation very well, being something they experienced first-hand) and high interest.

The oral presentation provides me with the opportunity to get a bit of assessment in to make up for the child being away from school for a few days. I do look at the journal entries, but never assess them since they weren’t done at school; the journal entries are primarily a way for the child to remember more of what they did on the trip, serving as notes they can use when preparing their presentation.

It doesn’t sound like much. It isn’t, really, and that’s the key for me; I don’t want to ask my students to do anything which requires them to stop enjoying their family vacation and sit down to do schoolwork. Any work I ask them to do, in my opinion, should be something which doesn’t break them out of the reverie of vacation. It addresses only one strand of one subject area (unless their trip happens to complement another subject area like Social Studies or Science), but I find that Oral Communication, particularly in French, is one of the most difficult strands to make up for.

Everything else, I find, can be made up quickly and easily once the student is back from vacation. With respect to Mathematics, while I can understand the idea behind sending along practice sheets for skills being learned in class while the student is absent, I don’t like to do that. I will often give the student a diagnostic assessment for the lessons they will miss, using that assessment and other observations to inform me on which topics the student will need to review with me upon their return.

Not every parent likes this approach. Some were hoping for more busywork to keep their child busy during downtime. Others feel that their child is missing too much and will be behind upon returning to school. Others still think I’m just being lazy by not preparing more for their child. Quite honestly, I’m not being lazy; I’m just someone who believes that a child on vacation shouldn’t be taking time away from their family to do schoolwork that can be done when they get back to school.

What are your thoughts on providing work for students on vacation? Do you send busywork? Do you do journals? Do you send nothing? Tell me what you do!

Shawna Rothgeb-Bird Communication with Parents and Guardians, Interviews, Report Cards

Time Management and Reporting

One of the greatest challenges teachers face is developing a healthy work-life balance, particularly when it comes time to write reports or meet with parents/guardians. While I am by no means an expert on this topic (as anyone who knows me will attest), I have learned a few strategies which have helped me immensely during the busiest times of year. I spent so much of my early career feeling overwhelmed during these times that if even one of these things helps someone out there, I’ll be happy.

1) Use jot notes to stay focused.

Before sitting down to write detailed comments on academic subjects or learning skills, I take a few minutes to go over my class list and write some point-form notes, particularly for learning skills. This gives me an overview to refer to while writing them in full later. It also helps me to keep my thoughts focused, as my “jot notes” are typically divided into categories: what the student does well, areas for improvement, and a specific next step or two.

Jot notes are also key for staying focused during parent/teacher interviews. I keep a notebook with a page for each student. I write my thoughts on the page in point form and refer to it during interviews. I can also use the space to write down anything important that comes up in the interviews.

2) Write comments as units are finished.

With subjects where you are expected to report on multiple strands, particularly Mathematics, you can easily find yourself needing to write comments about a unit you haven’t touched since the early part of the term. My teaching partner (who teaches English and Mathematics to my French Immersion students) introduced me to the idea of writing comments for a particular strand as he finishes the units. It had never occurred to me before, but it really does save time and it makes your comments more meaningful as the information is fresh in your mind.

3) Start early and do a little bit each day.

You know reporting deadlines well in advance, and we all have at least a few students whose comments could be written several weeks early (again, particularly for learning skills). Your student who came to you as an independent, respectful, hard working student on the first day of school and has continued to be exemplary in all the learning skills throughout the term? You can probably write that comment earlier than others. I don’t say this to take away from that student’s work or achievement – I just personally find that those comments can often be “safely” written a few weeks earlier than some others, and that doing so helps me free up time later on. You can always tweak comments as needed closer to the deadline.

I also try to break the work up into chunks – either by working on a few students a day or by working on a specific subject each day. 40 minutes of prep time isn’t much to work with, but when you’re doing a little bit at a time, it makes it feel like much less of a daunting task.

4) Write your comments in a word processor so that you can save them.

There are a lot of good reasons to want to work in a word processor (like Microsoft Word or Open Office) rather than your board’s reporting software. For one thing, word processors aren’t subject to system downtime, so you don’t have to worry about the board software being updated or worked on. I also find that my board’s software tends to suffer from some crashing problems from time to time, which can cause me to lose work even though the software is supposed to save your input regularly. There is nothing more frustrating than spending twenty minutes on a student’s learning skills comments only to have the browser crash and all of that work disappear. Word processors are often better at identifying and correcting spelling/grammar mistakes than your board software, so you save time proofreading.

I also like to save my comments from term to term (and year to year) because they can help me out when writing reports the next time. I will often refer back to my previous comments on a student’s learning skills when writing reports, and I would really rather not take out and re-file 30 earlier report cards to do so. Sometimes when I’m feeling lost or stuck on how to say something, I refer back to previous years when I know I’ve made a similar comment. It helps with inspiration!

You can also easily work on reports from school and home (not that I’m advocating taking work home… in a perfect world, that wouldn’t be necessary) when you’ve been working in a Word document. I save it on a flash drive that I keep on my keychain, so I’m not likely to forget it in one place or the other.

5) Use a timer for parent/teacher interviews.

We are given very little time in my board (and I suspect many others) for conducting interviews. It can be very hard to cut off an interview at the 15 minute mark, but it’s really vital to do so if you are going to keep your interviews rolling, keep waiting families happy, and keep you from being there way longer than you should be. I’m not suggesting that you use a loud buzzer to let parents/guardians know that time is up, but a simple timer with an inoffensive beep (or a phone set to vibrate) can be enough to keep things moving. Often they don’t realize how short 15 minutes really is and don’t know when they are going past their allotted time.

6) Communicate regularly with parents/guardians.

You really shouldn’t be meeting with every single student’s family during interview time. You shouldn’t need to. In some cases it’s unavoidable, I suppose, but I have found that by communicating regularly about students’ work in class, some interviews can be avoided. Many parents/guardians “just want to know how (their child) is doing” and would be satisfied by quick notes home in the agenda, quick e-mails or phone calls, etc. throughout the term.

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If anyone out there has other tips to stay on top of things during reporting periods, I’m all ears! I can always use more help developing a balance.

Shawna Rothgeb-Bird Building Inclusion, Challenging Topics, Equity

Creating an Inclusive Space in the Classroom

(Disclaimer: I suppose some of this could be considered controversial or unpopular. This is obviously being written as my personal opinions/beliefs and not meant to suggest that anyone who is doing things differently is doing something wrong.)

I work hard to make all students and their families feel welcome in my classroom. It’s important to me that everyone feels that their family has been considered carefully in my teaching and correspondence. Sometimes, it can be hard to see just how much bias is out there; it isn’t intentional, it isn’t malicious, but it can be hurtful just the same. A few years ago I took a step back and looked at what I was doing in the classroom. I examined everything carefully for any signs of bias. Here are a few of the changes I made after that critical thought:

1) I changed the wording on my class contact information sheet.

– I got rid of the words “mother” and “father”. By using “Parent/Guardian” instead, I was properly reflecting families with same sex parents, families where other relatives are caring for the child, and foster families. It’s a very simple thing but really can make someone feel valued and respected right from the start of the year.

– I added two spaces for parent/guardian, bringing the total up to four. For the child whose family is best reflected by using all of these spaces, such as blended families or polyamorous families, it can be very meaningful to be “allowed” and encouraged to include all of the guardians in their lives on their contact sheet.

– I included a space for parents to identify their child’s preferred name. I teach a program where many students are coming to our school from feeder schools. They are sometimes anxious, shy, and overwhelmed the first few days of school – not confident enough to tell a new teacher, who is a stranger, that they prefer a name other than what was on my board-issued class list.

 

2) My classroom is gender neutral.

– My bathroom passes are not a “boys’ pass” and a “girls’ pass”. I have two passes for the washroom. They are identical. I realize some people won’t like this and feel strongly that they should have one of each because they don’t want two students in the same washroom at the same time. I’m just telling you what works for me. You may have a student in your class who doesn’t identify with their biological sex, and asking them to take the girls’ pass when they don’t identify as female can cause some harm.

– I make an effort not to divide things by gender, such as in Phys Ed. Many students love playing “girls versus boys” in group games, but what they (and adults) often don’t realize is that this may be hurtful to some students in the class. Some of my transgender friends have told me that they knew they were transgender at a very young age, often before the age I teach (Grade 4), and for that reason I try to be cognizant of not asking students to identify with a particular gender.

 

3) I generally don’t celebrate holidays in the classroom. (This is contentious, I know. This is just what works for me and you may have strong feelings about this. That’s okay!)

– I don’t want my students to feel they need to miss an entire day of school if they don’t celebrate a particular holiday, such as Halloween. I let the school handle any Halloween celebration (such as a costume parade) but in my classroom, it’s generally a pretty standard day aside from changes to the schedule. I don’t mind costumes in the classroom, but I don’t do a day full of Halloween-centric activities and I don’t throw a party.

– Mother’s Day/Father’s Day activities can be very hurtful to students whose parents are estranged, deceased, or never existed (such as same sex couples where there is no mother or no father). I appreciate the sentiment behind having students create cards, crafts, etc. for their parents for these holidays, but we need to be aware of the harm we can do by making these activities part of our lessons for all students. Instead, I let students know that they can stay in during lunch/recess and I will provide them with supplies and help to create things for their parents if they choose.

– We don’t sing Christmas songs. There are many winter-themed songs you can sing with your class which aren’t about specific holidays. For the students in your class who don’t celebrate Christmas, being asked to sing songs about it can be a little uncomfortable.

– I don’t give out Christmas cards. I do give cards to my students on the last day before the break, but they generally wish students a happy new year. If I know that family celebrates Christmas, I may add a note about that.

 

That isn’t an exhaustive list of all the things I do to try and make an inclusive space, but it’s a start. This doesn’t come from a place of “political correctness” – rather, a place of kindness and compassion. If even one more person feels appreciated and celebrated in my classroom because I did these things, I consider it a worthwhile venture.

Shawna Rothgeb-Bird Classroom Layouts, General

Seven Reasons I Like to Gather My Students at the Carpet

I’m a little late getting this one posted. There was recently a death in my family, and my head just hasn’t been in the teaching game. I’ve been off work for almost a year, too, and man I can’t wait to get back. Staying home with a baby is cool, but I miss the madness of a busy Junior classroom! On that note, let’s just jump right in…

I rarely use my chalkboard. Sometimes a whole week will pass with the notes from Monday’s lesson still there, untouched but for spots where my students ran their fingers through the chalk on their way by. One section of my chalkboard is dedicated to reminders to be written in the agenda – but since I don’t assign homework (an issue for another post), even that is rarely used.

There is no “front” to my classroom, either. There isn’t one place where I stand while teaching, one spot where my students know to look for me if it’s lesson time. My desk and my computer are on opposite sides of the room. My students sit in groups/pods, not rows.

I am, I guess, what you would call a fairly non-traditional teacher.

When it comes time for whole class discussions, more often than not, I gather my students on the large carpet. (Okay, up until last year, my “carpet” was actually two giant rugs I bought from IKEA with my own money… but last year, RIGHT before I went on maternity leave, my principal let me know that I was getting my very own large rug provided by the board. Awesome! I’ve seen it. It’s great. I can’t wait to use it!)

Gathering students is awesome. It was something that was never really talked about during my teacher training, nor did I see a lot of my colleagues doing it. I started doing it in my Grade 5 class because I had set up a really lovely little reading corner and found that my students really enjoyed the space. We used it for read alouds at first, but since I saw the benefits of having them there, I expanded it to most lessons. Now, four years later, I pretty much only teach that way. Why is it so awesome? Let me tell you!

1) No desks, no random things to play with. We’ve all had students who just can’t keep their hands out of their desks or their chair on the floor during lessons. I got tired of telling my students to keep all four feet of the chair on the floor every few seconds. I got tired of trying to keep their hands out of their desks. When the class is gathered on the carpet, there are no desks to hold tempting trinkets and no chairs to lean back in.

2) Kids can move. I find it much easier to accommodate students who need to move around when we are gathered at the carpet. Kids who benefit from being able to walk around during lessons can sit on the edge of the carpet, giving them freedom to get up and move without disrupting their peers. When you want to give the whole class a body break, you don’t have to hear thirty chairs all screeching at the same time.

3) You can set up centres before class. Sometimes I set things up on my desk pods while my students aren’t in class. When they come in and see things on the desks – group work supplies, science experiments, etc. – they know to go straight to the carpet instead. From there, I can give all instructions and send students off to the desk pods without worrying about them touching things or having to set things up while they wait.

4) It’s easier to hear everyone. Students can hear me better, I can hear them better, and they can hear each other better when we’re all in a group on the carpet. It’s a smaller space, so even the quieter students can speak their minds without too much difficulty. I don’t have to project as much, which makes me seem “softer,” if that makes sense. Redirection doesn’t seem so harsh, reassurance seems even kinder.

5) Turn and talk is more varied. I find my students never sit in the same place every time, so when you ask your students to “turn and talk” during a lesson, suddenly they’re speaking with a wider variety of peers when they’re gathered on the carpet. In pods, they are always stuck talking to the same peers, and that gets a little stale.

6) Students need fewer reminders to pay attention. When you have students sitting in pods, the temptation to look across the desks to the person sitting in front of you is huge. You can make faces, pass notes, generally just not pay attention… and it’s pretty easy to get away with, too. Sitting on the carpet, everyone is facing one direction: the speaker. It becomes glaringly obvious when you turn to speak to the person next to you. When you aren’t paying attention, you get called on it immediately. Very quickly, students learn that during carpet time, they’re just better off paying attention from the get go.

7) It feels like a community. There’s something really nice about everyone sitting together as a group on the carpet. Instead of sitting in pods or rows, you’re sitting with all of your peers together. It feels different.

There are many, many more reasons why I like having my students gather on the carpet, but hopefully those gave you at least a few things to consider. If you never gather your students together (and you can do this even if you don’t have a carpet – the bare floor works, but you can always do it outside, too!) maybe think about trying it out for a read aloud one day. You might be surprised by how much your students enjoy it, even at the Junior level!

Shawna Rothgeb-Bird Classroom Management, Differentiated Instruction, Diverse Learning Needs, Learning About Your Students

What Elizabeth Taught Me About Spec Ed

(This is a story about a student I had several years ago. Her name wasn’t actually Elizabeth. Teaching her taught me a lot about Spec Ed – how to tackle problems in steps, how to work with students to find what works for them individually, and above all else, how incredible it feels to know you really helped someone learn how to be successful.)

I heard about Elizabeth before my job even started. She was one of those students. If you haven’t had one yet, you will: the kids whose reputations precede them. The “hard” kids.

Let’s backtrack, shall we?

Fresh out of my teacher education program, I had just accepted a position teaching a full-day kindergarten program at a private child care centre. At that time, the OT lists for my board (OCDSB) weren’t open, so in order to pay the bills and get some money for AQs in the hopes of one day getting into the board, I took this job.

Because this was a child care centre, my class was small: 10 students total, with 2 more transitioning in partway through the year. This was starting to seem like a pretty easy assignment… until we got to Elizabeth.

“Oh, she’s going to give you a run for your money.”

“She’s vicious.”

“Good luck with her, she’s a nasty one.”

Those were all things people actually said to me about this child. A five year old. I have something of a stubborn streak in me, so right then and there I decided I was going to make it my goal to change Elizabeth’s experience at school.

Elizabeth was a bright, articulate girl who loved story time more than anything, needed you to know her opinion on something, and readily shared facts about things like the moon because she was always reading books and learning new things. She loved art, and she really loved success.

In the classroom, however, Elizabeth seemed to act out. It didn’t take long for me to see what other teachers had warned me about: she hit, she threw things, she had a hard time working with her peers, she couldn’t sit through circle without making at least one other student miserable, and she would have meltdowns during seatwork time.

Other teachers had tried positive and negative reinforcement strategies with her, their success limited. Her parents seemed defeated and were obviously reticent to even ask how her day had gone when they picked her up at the end of the day. I couldn’t figure this kid out: she really enjoyed learning, she really enjoyed arriving at school every day, and she loved her peers, so where was her behaviour coming from?

So I asked her. No one had ever asked her why she did these things. After a particularly trying circle time, I took her aside and calmly asked her why she had trouble sitting through circle time without rolling on the floor, taking out books from the shelves, or touching everyone and everything around her.

And at the tender age of five, she said, “Sitting still hurts.” Her tone was serious. She was distressed. “When I sit still for too long it hurts so I move around, but then I hit people and they get mad.”

It was clear that she felt compelled to move, and that asking her to stop moving was having a detrimental effect on her ability to engage with the class. Together, we discussed some strategies to help her through circle time. As a starting point, we tried fidget toys; she was partial to two bits of LEGO which had been put together with a hinge, so she could move the pieces back and forth while she sat and listened. Most of the time, just having that small toy was enough to keep her physical body occupied while she focused mentally on circle time. Some days she needed more than that, and in those times, we had an arrangement where she could get up and walk around the classroom as long as she didn’t play with anything and was still participating.

So that’s what she did. I sat with the rest of the class, going through our daily calendar work, reading stories, singing songs… and she did everything we did, she was just walking around while she did it. When she had something to contribute, she came to the edge of the carpet and raised her hand just like her peers. She waited to be called on. And when she felt she needed to get up and move again, she would show me a peace sign with her hand, I would nod, and off she would go.

These two small strategies completely changed her experience at circle time. After a month of success, we decided together that we would start tackling seat work next. It turned out that seat work was just as simple to “fix”: she just needed breaks where she could get up and move. She would work on her printing/reading for five minutes, go to a centre for a few minutes, come back to her seat work for another five minutes, go back to centres, etc. Some days she was able to get her seat work done all in one shot, other days she needed to break it up repeatedly, but she always finished it. I used a small timer (which I taught her how to operate) so that she could manage this herself.

There were other things I did to help, of course; I tracked her behaviour relentlessly to see what was and wasn’t working, I tried other strategies like an exercise ball to sit on, I worked with her parents to maintain consistent language and discipline between school and home. But the circle time and seat work strategies were really the key.

As Elizabeth’s behaviour in class improved, her relationships with her peers also improved dramatically. Because she wasn’t upsetting them at circle time any more, they were more keen to play with her and call her to join them at centres. Their forgiveness of her past behaviour was total and almost immediate. Even though they had known her for years and had nearly all been hit, pushed, bit, or yelled at by her, they were willing to set that aside and give her another chance.

By our 100th Day Celebration, I wasn’t tracking her behaviour any more because there wasn’t any need. By the end of the school year, all of our strategies were so second nature that I wasn’t even aware of them any more.

I saw her once a few years later when I was working as a daily OT at her elementary school. I said hello, we shared a smile, and off she went with her friends. She seemed to be doing well!

So, what’s the point of all this? I mean, it’s a nice story, sure, and we probably all have a student or ten like this…

1) Identification isn’t everything. Because this was the private system, I didn’t have any specialists to call on and I couldn’t refer her for any assessments to determine whether or not she had an official diagnosis. I could have suggested that her parents get her tested privately, but I was too new to feel that it was my place to make any comments like that. The thing is, even without being “identified” as Spec Ed, I was able to implement several accommodations which ended up helping her immensely. I didn’t need a legal document telling me that she needed to break work into chunks; I just went for it.

Now, as a public school teacher, I do the same thing: from the first day, I put strategies into place based on my students’ needs, even if they don’t have an IEP. If I think it’s going to help, I do it. I still flag students of concern, don’t get me wrong – but I don’t sit around waiting for those flagged students to actually be assessed. There is a LOT you can do while waiting for your concerns to be addressed.

 

2) Class size is important. I was teaching a full day kindergarten class with ten students. I was managing several other challenges in that class, but because I only had ten students, I was able to give each of my students a significant portion of my time and energy. It was easy to track behaviour and implement strategies because I only had ten students. I can’t imagine trying to identify, address, and follow up on students of concern in a full day kindergarten classroom in our public boards because they have two or three times as many students as I had. This is part of why we are fighting for smaller class sizes in Ontario.

 

3) Your students can tell you a lot about their needs. We spend a lot of time drawing on our own past experiences, training, and psychology in order to come up with strategies to help our Spec Ed students, but sometimes we forget that sometimes the best source of inspiration is the student him- or herself. I have made it a point, ever since teaching Elizabeth, to work with all of my students (not just the ones with IEPs) and have them identify their strengths and needs. I make them advocate for themselves: if they need to sit closer to the board, or not near their friends, or have a seat totally away from their peers during lessons, then they tell me that and I make it happen. The results have been astonishing and have dramatically reduced the amount of behavioural problems I deal with on a day to day basis.

 

Make them take ownership of their learning needs. You won’t regret it, I promise. 🙂