Blog

At a professional learning workshop in the fall, we went around in our circle and offered tips to each other for report card writing.  I thought it was a great way to have an opening and also a great way to share ideas and strategies during this time of year.  Many of you may already be thinking about report card writing or even be in the middle of writing by the time this is published, but I’d like to share some of my own tips and ones that were shared with me.

First, know what conditions you need to focus on your writing.  For me, I need silence but I know many other educators who have a ‘report card playlist’ or who are able to maintain focus with some ambient sounds in the background.  I definitely require a well lit space (it helps if there is a view) and I put my phone in another room… I can be easily distracted!

My next tip is to take breaks when you need them.  When I sit and write, I know it takes me a while to get started, but I have also learned to recognize signs that I need a break.  My mind starts wandering or slowing down and I lose focus – two key indicators that I need a movement break.  I will get up and walk my dog for a quick outdoor break and it’s amazing how 15 minutes outside recharges my brain instantly.  Whatever your clues are, think about the strategies you need to refocus and bring yourself back to task.  

Just like some of my students students, I like to use a timer.  I’ve tried a few different techniques in the past, such as finishing all of one subject before a break or writing for three students and then a break, but I’ve found that a timer helps me the most.  I’ll set my timer and then keep track of how many comments I can write during that time. It helps to keep me accountable, but can also help me to anticipate when I will likely need a quick break as well. 

Last tip: plan your snacks!  I’m all about the snacks to fuel my motivation and I like to have some things in the house on hand….Whether popcorn is your snack of choice or fresh fruit, having those things ahead of time is handy. One educator I met told me that their staff members each bring a snack pack or fruit or such to give to every staff member;  each educator then goes home in report card writing season with a variety of snacks.  

This time of year when report card due dates are looming on the horizon can be daunting. While I love the opportunity to reflect on student learning, I also acknowledge the immense amount of time and energy that writing takes. Some of you may already have these strategies, but you might find some new ideas and maybe even some reminders of tried and true methods that have worked well for you in the past. If you’ve got more tips, share them with your colleagues – and me!

As both a teacher and a parent, I get to see what engages children including my own. Lately, my daughter has been bursting through the door with this excitement, arms waving, cheeks flushed, words tumbling out faster than I can catch them.

And every time, her stories follow this simple but exciting pattern. A picture book they read in class. The outdoor adventure that connected to it and the research they did afterwards to answer the many questions they came up with.

Watching her connect all those pieces has reminded me, more clearly than ever, how powerful picture books and outdoor time truly are.

My daughter will start by telling me about the picture book of the day. Maybe something about forest animals or changing seasons. But it’s really what comes after the story that shows the power of those pages. She talks about the characters, the setting, and the questions the book planted in her mind.

As a teacher, I know picture books can spark inquiry.
As a parent, I get to see that spark ignite in my own child.
Then comes the outdoor stories. Her absolute favourite part.

Her class has been exploring the forested trails behind the school, and hearing her describe it feels like listening to a nature documentary narrated by a very excited five-year-old. She tells me about following the path, spotting tracks in the mud, and crouching down to look closely at “real evidence,” as she calls it.

Recently she came home thrilled about finding animal scat on the trail . “We found ‘clues’, Mom!” and she continued to explain the different lines pressed into the dirt and snow that a muskrat had dragged cattails and sticks to the pond. She explained it like she had been on a wildlife expedition. And honestly? Her excitement was contagious.

After their walk, she said they went back inside and looked up muskrats on Google, because, of course, she had a hundred questions. And the facts she learned came flying at me as soon as she got in the car. She told me these things with such joy that I couldn’t help but smile. The book gave her the curiosity, the forest gave her the evidence, and the research gave her the answers. That combination of story + exploration + information is what made the learning so powerful.

Watching her experience all of this has reminded me, both as a teacher and a parent, that these simple ingredients aren’t extras, they are the driving force for deep, joyful learning.

We don’t need elaborate materials or hours of planning. Sometimes all it takes is a story, a walk through the trees, and the chance to follow a question wherever it leads.

When my daughter comes home overflowing with enthusiasm, talking about trails, animal scat, muskrat homes, and underwater facts, it’s impossible not to see the magic. It is clear that picture books and outdoor time don’t just teach. They invite curiosity and make learning come alive.

On a family visit to the zoo the Stewart children, Imogen and Arthur, catch the eye of a small penguin. He seems to be trying to communicate with the children. As they prepare to leave, their mother says “And you, Mr. Penguin, you must come and stay with us whenever you like.” No one expects that he would soon arrive on their doorstep!

The themes of family, friendship, welcoming strangers, and helping friends are built into this tale of mystery and adventure. Einstein is a brilliant penguin who enjoys messy meals and sneaking into Arthur’s backpack to spend time at school. There are many humorous scenes as their beloved feathered friend gets into a bit of mischief trying to find his friend. We see the siblings form a tighter bond and they begin to show each other more respect as the story goes on.  Both of them feel they don’t fit in but Einstein helps them have more confidence. 

The story is set in during early winter so a read aloud in December or January would be very relatable. That said, it really could be read at any time of the year. In the end, the children in the story grapple with the idea of saying goodbye but they realize Einstein isn’t suited to living in a townhouse.

I love that the chapters are short enough that you just need 10-15 minutes to read each one aloud.  Perfect for transitions from recess or at a time when the students have been out of the room for another subject. I remember my grade 2 teacher often read at the end of the day and we gathered together on the carpet. There is something about coming together for a read aloud that builds community as we share laughter, curiosity, fear, and sometimes even tears.  No tears for Einstein though, just giggles and surprises!

Einstein the Penguin can ignite our own excitement about writing and telling stories.  What type of animal could students imagine arriving at their door?  Would the animal stay at their house? What kind of adventure would they have?

Learning about penguins is a natural extension of this story. There are a few varieties of penguins mentioned in the book and students will be curious to learn about them. Einstein is a little penguin (also known as fairy penguins) and his friend Isaac is a rockhopper penguin like the one voiced by Robin Williams in the animated film, Happy Feet.

Einstein the Penguin has a mystery to solve and a villain in pursuit. Your students could very well get hooked on mystery stories at a young age. Setting up a mystery in the classroom makes for a very exciting hook in a lesson plan. Something as simple as a scavenger hunt can be a time for students to show teamwork and leadership. 

Students could also compare Einstein to Tacky the Penguin. As you may know Tacky is my favourite read aloud for primary grades so I wrote this blog all about it. Einstein and Tacky have similar traits of being dedicated friends and free-spirited creative thinkers.  I think your students will love them both.

Happy Reading!

Brenda

Einstein the Penguin was written by Iona Rangeley and illustrated by David Tazzyman. It was published in 2021 by Harper Collins.

In part 1 of this article, I talked about the difficulties I had faced when it came to sharing information about ESL/ELD programming with families. In the community where I worked, ESL/ELD programming was often viewed from a deficit perspective by many caregivers and even some school staff. Widely held deficit perspectives about ELLs, combined with my own need to learn more about ESL/ELD programming, resulted in rather poor communication with MLL families.

In my current work as an instructional leader working in ESL/ELD programming, I talk to educators that experience similar issues regularly. How should teachers go about addressing ESL/ELD programming with families that may not be aware of what it is? How should educators re-start conversations about their child’s ESL/ELD programming with families when it has gone unaddressed for an extended period of time?

Recently I spoke to a middle school colleague about how she communicates with MLL families when they transition to grade 6 from the feeder elementary school. Her practice was to call all MLL families to welcome them in the early months of the school year, and share with them that their child would be receiving ESL or ELD support. In her experience, families were often happy to hear how their child would be supported in this way.

The teacher also shared with me that she also calls families when their child is no longer receiving program adaptations, or had completed STEP 6 of the ESL continua. In her experience, caregivers often responded positively; after all, becoming proficient in another language is something to celebrate.

Listening to these reflections on family communication and transparency made me think of how empowered we are as educators to shift thinking in our schools and communities.

Let’s take a look at some ways educators can build transparency and communication with families about ESL/ELD programming, while also re-casting the work we do as MLL educators through an assets-based perspective.

Make Information about ESL/ELD programming Readily Available to Families

In an age of endless information, there is no reason families should have difficulty accessing information about ESL/ELD programming. Leave an easy-to-read brochure that explains what ESL/ELD programming looks like in your school in the main office so families can build their understanding and know who to contact should they have any questions.

Make ESL/ELD Programming part of Regular Family Communication

When you make welcome calls or share updates to families of MLLs, take the time to reference the student’s growth in language and literacy. It’s a great opportunity to share what you are doing to support their growth as multilingual learners, and keep the conversation going about academic language development.

Leverage Curriculum Night, Open House, and other school Community Events to Raise Awareness about ESL/ELD Programs

The tools, terminology and resources we reference as educators, like the STEP Continua, accommodations, and modifications, may be unfamiliar to families. Have a short presentation ready that you can use (or share with staff) to explain to families what these terms and tools are, and how educators use them to enhance and adjust programming for newcomer students. If possible, invite a settlement worker or community member that speaks the same language(s) as the communities in your school in to help interpret whenever necessary.

Sharing information with families about ESL/ELD programming should never feel like a hard or difficult conversation. With the right combination of direct communication and use of digital information, you will find that it will get increasingly easier to make programming for MLLs a regular part of your communication with families.

In my previous post, I shared that I implemented a foundations of literacy component to my language program to support students in developing the knowledge and skills that the revised Grades 1 – 8 Language curriculum (2023) states they need to learn to become confident, competent writers and readers. In my previous post, I also focused on how I’m explicitly teaching students sentence structures that includes sentence types and sentence forms, and I provided a brief overview of a lesson I taught. In this post, I’ll share additional strategies and insights to how I’m further supporting students in developing their ability to comprehend and compose a variety of sentence forms by teaching them about conjunctions.

Specific expectation B3.2 which focuses on grammar states that students need to demonstrate an understanding of the parts of speech, their function in a sentence and use that knowledge to support understanding and practicing expressive and receptive communication clearly.

Conjunctions are one of the nine parts of speech listed in expectation B3.2 and they are a defining component of compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences because they connect the clauses within the sentence. For example, in a compound sentence students need to understand that a coordinating conjunction can be used to connect the two or more independent clauses contained within the sentence. In a complex sentence, they need to understand that a subordinating conjunction connects an independent clause with one or more dependent clauses contained within the sentence. In a compound-complex sentence they need to understand that the sentence includes both coordinating and subordinating conjunctions that connect two independent clauses with one or more dependent clause or clauses contained within the sentence. They also need to know that some coordinating conjunctions include for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so while some subordinating conjunctions include when, if, although, before, after, since, even though, unless.

I think the value of teaching conjunctions in relation to sentence forms is that this approach helps students to deepen their understanding of one of the nine parts of speech in practice, while also supporting them in further developing their vocabulary knowledge and their ability to communicate and understand increasingly complex thoughts and ideas in written form.

Next, I’ll share a lesson and strategies I’ve used when explicitly teaching conjunctions in relation to sentence forms while working with students in intermediate grades 7 and 8. I’ll end this post with an insight I gained from my teaching experience that may be useful to other educators.

As usual practice, I began my lessons by sharing a learning goal and success criteria with students to inform them of what they were learning, why they were learning it, and how they would know when they had been successful in their learning. A sample learning goal I shared with students while explicitly teaching conjunctions was, I am practicing writing compound sentences using coordinating conjunctions and the new vocabulary I am learning to apply my understanding of both in written form. The success criteria I used to accompany this learning goal was, I can create a compound sentence using a coordinating conjunction and one of my new vocabulary words. I then provided additional insight to the learning goal and success criteria by informing students that they were learning to include and connect multiple thoughts within a single sentence using conjunctions.

I then shared a list of coordinating conjunctions along with an acronym to help students retain the information. The acronym I shared was FANBOYS – for, and, nor, but, or yet, so. After reviewing the acronym, I provided insight to how each conjunction works within a sentence by telling students a meaning associated with the conjunction; I did this to support building students’ vocabulary knowledge. For example, I shared that the conjunction for can show a reason that an action occurred within a sentence. And can provides additional information within a sentence, while but and yet can show contrast within a sentence.

Next, I provided an example of each conjunction in use within a sentence then examined the way that the conjunction connected the two independent clauses within a single sentence. My purpose for doing this work was to help students develop the background knowledge I believed they needed to successfully construct compound and later compound-complex sentences.

Following the review of the sample sentences, I modeled creating compound sentences using the coordinating conjunctions for, and, nor. Then I invited students to co-construct compound sentences using the coordinating conjunctions but, or, yet, so. I concluded the lesson by having students work in groups of 2 – 4 to create 7 compound sentences using one the coordinating conjunctions found in the FANBOYS acronym. I used this as a consolidation activity to see how well students were able construct compound sentences at the conclusion of our initial lesson.

I recently completed my second foundations of literacy assessment. Again, to monitor and measure my instructional impact on student learning along with a more formal opportunity for them to demonstrate their learning. On the assessment, I included a question where I asked students to identify and explain 1 thing that they had learned about sentence forms, sentence types, or conjunctions since we began studying them. When reading student responses, I noticed that a significant number of students commented that they learned how conjunctions worked to connect ideas within sentences.

The insight I gained from the experience and believe to be worth sharing with other educators is I/we should avoid assuming that students in intermediate grades arrive to our classrooms with a clear knowledge and understanding of how to connect ideas within a sentence using conjunctions or that they even understand the difference between coordinating and subordinating conjunctions. I think that at times reviewing and at other times explicitly teaching students how conjunctions function within a sentence serves to positively impact all students learning.

The children of Ontario get a chance every year to vote for their favourite Canadian picture book from the Ontario Library Association’s list of nominees. Some of my most beloved books are from this category and as a teacher I’ve used them countless times. The two books featured in this blog both demonstrate the fantastic imaginations of writers and illustrators. Plus, these books both feature humour as a literary device to make these stories unforgettable.

The Boy Who Loved Bananas by George Elliott; illustrated by Andrej Krystoforski
2006 Winner of the Blue Spruce Award

Matthew loves the monkeys at the Metro Zoo so he decides to be like them and only eat bananas. Suddenly he feels an itchy sensation and he turns into a monkey. His parents try all kinds of interventions but everyone says Matthew will stop being a monkey when he wants to stop. He gets up to many types of mischief while he is a monkey, including influencing all the kids at school to eat bananas. The principal joins the trend too! The story ends with Matthew switching to peanuts and he is pictured sitting at his desk in his classroom as an elephant!

This book is a terrific story starter for shared, partner or independent writing. To analyse the writing style we realize that the story can be broken down into parts:
*The main character is introduced and is shown to love the animal he is going to turn into;
*The reader must suspend their disbelief and accept that the main character “transmogrifies” into an animal;
*The main character visits many practitioners but cannot be cured;
*The parents learn to accept their child the way he is;
*Just when we think he will become human again, the main character changes into something else that he likes.

Using The Boy Who Loved Bananas as an example we can emphasize that there is no harmful violence in the story. The type of humour is quite silly and uses exaggeration such as Matthew climbing the flag pole or the principal eating bananas under his desk. When students are creating their own story, they can also use exaggeration to add humour to their ideas.

It is possible to go a step further and have students add detailed illustrations to their work. Look carefully through the original book and notice how the other characters’ facial expressions show their reaction to what is happening.
Having students create books with illustrations is a terrific project. It helps them understand the publishing process and they end up with a wonderful creation. The stories could be put on display in the class library so that they can read each other’s work. I have found that when we send these books home, many families treasure a book created by their child.


If Kids Ruled the World by Linda Bailey; illustrated by David Huyck
2016 Winner of the Blue Spruce Award

Similarly, If Kids Ruled the World asks us to suspend our disbelief and imagine the world with children in charge. The story stresses the fun and silly antics that would occur in this situation and as you can imagine, kids absolutely love it. The illustrations add a tremendous amount of humour to the story as we see multiple characters on each page acting out everything from unusual pets like giraffes and ostriches to bubble fun in a swimming pool to a trampoline sidewalk.
This story would make a wonderful lead up to an art lesson where each student illustrates their answer to the question: What funny things could happen if kids ruled the world? Assembling all their work into one class book makes a very popular item in the class library.

Both of these books can be adapted easily for K-3. Depending on your students, you could use these stories with older students too. I have had success partnering with older students to create picture books as an assignment. These books are perfect examples to demonstrate how to use your imagination and humour to create a hilarious and unforgettable story.

Happy Reading, Writing and Drawing!
Brenda