Blog – Page 135

May 6, 2015May 11, 2015 Mike Beetham Celebrating Success, Making a Difference Through Education, Mentorship, Wellness

You Never Know

This blog is based on a real life scenario that I was fortunate enough to be a part of both on a personal and professional basis. It truly reminded me just how important our teacher/student relationships are as you never know when your kind word, out of the ordinary effort or simply just being there will make a difference.

On a late Saturday afternoon there was a knock on our home door and to our surprise, there was our very distraught neighbour who just needed someone to talk to. Over the course of the next hour this young mother poured her heart out to both my wife and I. During that time she asked us to read a series of letters that obviously were very important to her.

As we scanned the pages it became clear to us that these letters were from a past teacher who took the time to write to this young women while she was in her classroom. The key message that surfaced on each and every page was that this young woman was an amazing person who had the potential to be herself and that alone would make her great. It was clear that she had experienced trauma in her adolescence and did not receive the necessary support that she should have had. Through teary eyes, this distraught woman just kept telling us how important this teacher had been in helping her get through some very dark times in her life. In fact, she owed her life to her.

Although these letters were almost 20 years old, we could tell by the wrinkled paper and tear stain marks, that she had went to these words of support many, many times over the past two decades. Once again, she was going to this teacher for support in these times of hardship.

As a teacher, we are merely a step or two on a child’s life journey. Yet that time we spend with each child is one of the most influential events they will ever experience. It is our responsibility to ensure that memory is as positive as can be.

May 3, 2015May 4, 2015 Mike Beetham Building Inclusion, Classroom Management, Communication Tools, Student Ownership

The Power Of The Circle

The circle has many historical references probably none more meaningful as the significance to the traditions of our First Nations’ People. It is a very powerful formation as it represents the importance of each and every person in the group. There is no start or finish to a circle as well as representing the cycle of life for both nature and humans. I use the circle in my classroom for all classroom discussions, meetings and as a morning check in and day end check out.

During circle time the students are facing each other, taught how to demonstrate a good listener position and become more engaged in each and every discussion. The key message the circle sends is that each and every person in that circle is important and valued for their ideas, who they are and the voice they will share with the rest of the group.

My first month of school is the time when the circle is introduced and the procedures that will be used during circle time. It is like any other beginning of the year activity, it requires a lot of work and consistency in the beginning. I use a variety of adventure based programming activities to further support the concept of how powerful the circle is in our physical education classes.

Over the course of first term there is a gradual release of responsibility to the point (at this time of the year) the circle is lead most often by the students. It becomes a tool for everyone in the room and not just the teacher. Last week a student asked to have circle time so that an issue that had taken place during the fitness break could be addressed and resolved.

Many times I am asked how do you use the circle in a classroom full of students, desks, support material and other classroom materials. My best answer to that important question is that if there is a will, there is always a way to make it work. Through both creative classroom design and the establishment of effective routines, the transition from regular classroom to circle formation can become seamless. I highly encourage you to research more about the traditional circle and how it may become a strategy in your classroom.

April 30, 2015 Shawna Rothgeb-Bird General

Gifts From a Stranger

While we are fortunate in my district to be well outfitted with school supplies at the beginning of the year, there are always things I wish I had on hand that aren’t provided for with limited school budgets. Usually this means I go out and spend my own money on things for the classroom, but last year I discovered something incredible.

Some of you may be familiar with the site Reddit. I won’t go into what the site is here (a quick Google search will turn up lots of info). One of the little offshoots of Reddit is something called RedditGifts, where a variety of exchanges happen between total strangers. There are gift exchanges for a huge variety of things.

One of the gift exchanges is for teachers. As a teacher, you sign up for the program in the summer. You create a profile of your class and your needs. Others sign up as gift givers – people who will be matched up with a teacher and will then go out and buy gifts for that class, for no other reason than that they wanted to. It’s an incredible program, particularly worthwhile for teachers in areas where resources are more scarce and they need all the help they can get.

This isn’t a gift “exchange”; teachers only receive, they don’t send, and people who send things don’t receive anything other than your thanks. The gifts you receive may be completely anonymous, or the person may have included their Reddit username, or they may have included their name and address (in which case perhaps a thank you note or some thank you cards would be in order!).

All you have to do, as a recipient of a gift, is post a photo of it to the RedditGifts website. This is to help the sender know that you received the items and for you to send a message of thanks.

This year, I received all of this from one very kind soul out in British Columbia:

Duotangs, glue, tape, sharpeners, scissors, paint, notebooks, pencil crayons, markers, erasers, pencil cases, construction paper – it was an AWESOME gift and my students were really excited about everything. I had mentioned in my profile that my students often came to school without some of these things (often because they can’t afford everything on the supply list) and that the school doesn’t provide everything (for example, individual sharpeners or pencil cases).

They haven’t opened up sign-ups for the 2015-2016 school year yet, which generally happens in August, but you should definitely keep this site on your radar if this is something that would interest you.

Reddit Gifts for the Teacher

Click here for a gallery of last year’s gifts. You can see the incredible things sent to teachers all over the world. People are remarkably generous and kind!

April 30, 2015 Shawna Rothgeb-Bird Differentiated Instruction, Diverse Learning Needs, Planning

Everyday Accommodations for All Students

I, like most teachers, have many students each year who have IEPs. I have worked with students with a variety of needs, some requiring more complex accommodations than others. It can be daunting to read IEPs and see the lists of accommodations you’re required to put into place for your students, but I promise it’s not usually as hard as it sounds.

Over the past few years, I’ve found that many of the accommodations I put into place for these students are beneficial to all of my students – so now I plan with these accommodations in mind, whether I am “officially” required to have them or not. Keep in mind as you read through these that I am a Middle French Immersion teacher, meaning that my students are all in their first or second year of learning all subject matter other than Math or English in their second language (French).

1) Strategic Seating – I doubt this one is a new idea for anyone. I rarely allow my students to choose their own seats in class because for me, strategic seating has always been a priority. I teach a second language program, so I need to make sure that the different levels of linguistic ability are spread around the room and that everyone has someone at their level to converse with when appropriate. I don’t want there to be a table of strong French speakers or a table of weak French speakers. I want every table to have a few speakers at each ability level. The confident French speakers encourage their peers to keep speaking in French. It’s a really important element of an FSL classroom, to me.

At the same time, I also need to keep in mind attention skills, social skills, aptitude in other subject areas, friendships, not-so-friendly rivalries, and a few other kinds of needs as they pop up. Planning seating arrangements takes me a long time… and I change them regularly. My husband can only laugh at this point when he watches me spend an hour planning a seating arrangement only to realize at the end that I have one student left to place, nowhere appropriate for them to go, and I have to scrap the whole thing and start over. I have always found it worth the effort, though, even if that one evening I spend working on it gets a little long!

2) Simplified Formats – Teachers love to dress up handouts and make things look fun and interesting. When you’re teaching a second language to beginners or novices, though, all of those extra things – fancy fonts, illustrations, etc. – can make it really difficult for students to understand the language. I’ve really worked hard at stripping my handouts down to the bare minimum where possible. It doesn’t just help with language comprehension, of course; this is often a suggested accommodation for students with NVLD, ADD, or LD.

3) Breaking Work into Steps – I love projects. I am all about projects. Some of my students love that, some hate it, and it’s almost always something my students use to describe me as a teacher. “She makes you do a lot of projects.” (Exchange the punctuation for more enthusiastic or frustrated symbols as appropriate.) The thing about projects, though, is that they usually require planning and time management.

I don’t know about your students, but I find that my Grade 4 students are not all that skilled with either of those concepts. They need a lot of training. Consequently, any project I assign has been broken down into steps for them to follow, usually with a checklist that I have to sign (for each step!) before they can move on. What I have found is that breaking the work up like this forces students to plan ahead, whether they want to or not.

At each step, I conference with every student (not really all that time consuming) where they show me the completed step. If I’m satisfied that their work in that stage is done, I initial their checklist and send them off to start working on the next one. When they’ve finished their project, they hand the checklist and all of their planning in with the completed task.

It’s not as time consuming as it sounds, I promise. We’re talking about steps like Brainstorming (they show me their spider web organizer), Storyboards (they show me their stick figure storyboards for their graphic novel), Sketches (self explanatory), Revision (they show me their rough copy, which they have gone through and revised on their own or with a peer), etc. It takes a matter of seconds to look over each step and sign off on them.

Overall, this has made my students’ work more cohesive, logical, and detailed.

4) Written and Oral Instructions – This one is really, really easy but has huge benefits for students. I used to have a bad habit of only providing instructions orally. Then, when I had a student with Executive Functioning Disorder, I learned why it was important to provide instructions both ways. Now, when I give students a list of instructions, I also write them on the board (usually with numbers). I provide a lot more detail orally than I do on the chalkboard; the written instructions are just a reminder for students about what to do next.

5) Extended Time Limits – On the rare occasion that I give something like a quiz, I never give my students limits on how long they can take to finish it. I find that giving them a specific amount of time really makes some of them panic, which doesn’t really lead to them doing their best work on the quiz. I try to plan an activity after a quiz/test period that they can easily jump into a little late, or ideally a work period for one of the many projects they’re working on all the time. I do also allow students to stay in at recess to finish something, but I try not to do that too much because I’m often calling parents, attending meetings, or supervising at that time.

6) Visual Schedule – I’m still struggling with getting this into my routine (it usually takes a student mentioning it before I update it for the current day) but it REALLY helps my students prepare for the day when they know what’s going to happen. I think my most loathed question (after “how long until lunch?”) is “What are we doing now?” Put a schedule on the wall. It doesn’t have to be detailed – often just having the subject and time is enough for them.

Those are by no means the only accommodations that would be useful to all students, but they’re definitely my top six that I always put in place no matter the needs in my classroom.

April 28, 2015April 28, 2015 Tammy Axt General, Planning

How To Write an Original Song With Your Class For 5 Dollars (With No Music Knowledge)

This year, I tried something brand new with one of my music classes. We wrote lyrics to a song, sent them off to a song writer and performed the original song called “Gymnastics” at our spring concert! This is how we did it.

The idea came earlier this year when I was trying to come up with ideas for our spring concert. I usually ask each class in January what they would like to do for the concert and then they create something to share. This year, our concert had lots of creations, including a tableau piece about anti-bullying, a Japanese fan dance with ORFF instruments, some black light performances and the original “Gymnastics” song.

The grade 3 class that wanted to do the original song was interested in working with a song writer. (I probably could have written a song, but it was WAY more exciting sending the lyrics off). Our first step was to decide what the song was going to be about.

I handed out a blank piece of paper to groups of three and told them to brainstorm some ideas for the topic of the song. After they brainstormed, I asked them to narrow it down to three ideas that they were really interested in. As a class, we did a community circle, and shared our favourite ideas. I noticed that the topic of sports came up in every group and highlighted that for the students. I asked the students to think of a sport that could show off the talents of their class. Immediately, gymnastics came up and the song was on its way! (This class is full of twisty, fidgety, wiggly students. Gymnastics couldn’t have been more perfect.)

Their classroom teacher took over the next part of the activity by letting the students do an inquiry-based assignment about gymnastics. They watched videos about, read, and studied the sport of gymnastics. By the time they came back to me, they were a fountain of knowledge about gymnastics. Our next step was to come up with ideas that we wanted to have in the song. We then compiled all of our ideas into a list and got them ready to send off to our songwriter.

We chose our song writer from the website www.fiverr.com .

www.fiverr.com is a website where you can hire people to do a wide variety of services for five dollars. There is a large section on the website for songs. You can have rap songs written, ukulele songs, etc…. I chatted with the song writer we chose and gave these simple instructions:

The lyrics can go in any order
Write the song in either C major, D major, F major or G major
Please don’t make the melody have large jumps between notes
The range of the melody should be from about middle C to D (one octave plus a note)
Make it upbeat and fun!

The song came back and it was amazing. It was a big hit at our spring concert and I am sure the kids will always remember the gymnastic song that they wrote.

April 26, 2015April 27, 2015 Beverly Papove Diverse Learning Needs, General, Learning in a Real Life Context

Water Day, Earth Day and Poetry

The ideology of an eight year old can be inspiring and heart warming. In the form of a poem, it is also honest.

For International Water Day (March 22), my students researched and experimented outdoors to see what they could find out about water. We turned this project into Water Week by creating a bulletin board in the main hall sharing water facts written on large paper raindrops. In preparation for Earth Day (April 22), students looked for signs of spring in and around the school yard. They found helicopter seeds, worm castings, clumps of moss growing in dirt and on bits of tree bark, early dandelion leaves, and trees and shrubs in bud. From the school yard, they also heard and learned to identify birds and their songs; Cardinal (easy to locate from his song and brilliant red plumage), Chickadee, Canada goose, Robin, and Mallard duck (we observed a couple, male and female, as they waddled around the schoolyard one rainy day across from our portable).

Sadly, Earth Day was no celebration at our school. Ironically, it was the day the city decided to cut down all the trees lining the sidewalk along the school fence as all of the trees had become victims of the Emerald Ash Borer. Seven trees were limbed, their branches tossed into the hopper for chipping, and the trunks sawed down to the ground in chunks, right beside our portable. Some of them were 45 years old. The fact that the city and the school board will be replanting 16 new trees in and around the school yard was a bit of a consolation to the students, however, they pined for a tree they named, “Hug Me” which grew outside the school yard gate a few metres from our classroom.

The students were brimming with questions and thoughts about what they had recently learned and witnessed.With April being Poetry Month, what better way to express yourself than in poetry? We had already explored many different forms of poetry, but to consolidate their thoughts without the constraints of a rhyming scheme (a thrill and challenge for some, a cause for deep anxiety for others), the students could share their ideas in a repetition poem that began, “Je veux vivre dans un monde où…” (I want to live in a world where…). This turned out to be a great form for a poem because everyone had something to say and by repeating the phrase, their poems took shape while their thoughts filled the page; I want to live in a world where trees don’t get sick and die; where you can hear bird songs instead of machines; where everyone has clean water to drink; where there are no iPads or iPhones; where people are nice to each other… Some students ended their poems with a rallying call, “Help me make this world!”

Their poems, written in colourful letters and decorated with drawings and images cut from magazines, will be proudly displayed for the school community at our Literacy Café in May. They are not all talk, either, for along with their proclamations for a better world, students have organized a school yard clean up and sprouted seeds for our school garden. Some have asked for help writing letters to the government to ask for protection of the Blue Whales in the St Lawrence Seaway and the Blanding’s Turtle in a wetland that was recently paved over and build up for a convention centre. In an effort to raise awareness, other students in the class have prepared messages for the morning announcements sharing what they have learned about water and about the Earth, and others still want to help out by having a class garage sale to raise money to protect the Great Lakes, “the last great supply of fresh drinking water on Earth” (quote from Waterlife, National Film Board of Canada, 2009). And so the inspiration continues and the stewardship begins.

April 24, 2015 Tammy Axt Professional Learning and Growth

Professional Development in the ARTS

It has taken me a few years now to locate some of the amazing professional development sources available for teachers who teach the arts. Below is not an exhaustive list, but a place to get started. I have divided the resources and conferences into three categories: FREE, REASONABLE and EXPENSIVE BUT WORTH IT!

FREE

ETFO is offering an online book talk for its members starting in May. The book that will be the focus of this book talk will be “Primary Arts”. An online book talk is a great way to connect with teachers from other boards and get some new ideas. If you are unable to join the book club this spring, consider running your own book talk at your school. ETFO has created manuals for members to run their own book talks at their schools. You can find more information about these book talks at: http://www.etfo.ca/professionaldevelopment/etfosbookclubs/Pages/default.aspx.

Both the OMEA (Ontario Music Educators’ Association) and CODE (Council of Ontario Drama and Dance Educators) have amazing websites. If you were handed music, drama or dance as part of your teaching package and you have NO idea how to start teaching these subjects, these two websites will get you started. Both have entire units, assessments and modifications that are aligned with the Ontario curriculum for teaching music, dance or drama. You could easily print off a unit from these websites and teach it in your class tomorrow. These can be found at: www.omea.on.ca and www.code.on.ca .

REASONABLE

This year, I applied to the Ontario Arts Council to have a guest artist come in and work with my grade five students for a week. The cost of five full days of workshops, including a performance for the community, was $500.00. The money came out of our performance budget at school, but the added bonus was that I had a full week of PD in traditional Cuban music. I learned right along with the students and will be able to continue to teach this type of cultural music going forward. The program is called “Artists in Education”. This program has artists from all over the province in all of the arts disciplines. As many of the conferences and workshops for the arts are in the Greater Toronto Area, this is a great way to get some professional development at your school in the eastern and northern parts of Ontario. Go to: http://www.arts.on.ca/AssetFactory.aspx?did=7967.

If you are in the Greater Toronto Area, ORFF Ontario holds excellent workshops three times a year for teachers who instruct music. I have used some part of every ORFF workshop that I have attended in my classroom practice. Even if you don’t have ORFF instruments at your school, the core philosophy of creation, movement and engagement will make your music lessons successful. The workshops are usually in October, February and, for those that are members, there is an extra workshop in March. Workshops are usually between 30 and 50 dollars. It is money well spent. The link is: http://ontarioorff.ca/content/professional-development/workshops/

EXPENSIVE BUT WORTH IT!

Both the OMEA and CODE conferences are intensive experiences with four to six workshops, trade shows, keynote speakers and performances. I have attended everything from “Starting a Ukulele Program” to “Understanding Aboriginal Music”. There is a wide variety of workshops to choose from and I always leave feeling energized and excited about teaching the arts. Both of these conferences are expensive (in the $300-$400 range), but most boards have funds that you can apply for to cover the cost. Your local union may also have money to assist in covering the cost of the conference.

I hope this helps. If you know of another great source for professional development in the arts, please leave a comment below!

April 19, 2015 Lisa.Taylor Classroom Management, Occasional Teaching

Is it worth “picking your battles” in the classroom?

“Choose your battles.” – It is something you have heard a thousand times, and have probably applied it in your classroom or on the playground. But is choosing your battles really worth it in the long run?

The short answer is NO! Absolutely not. But why?

When you set a boundary, like make sure you push your chair in whenever you get up from your desk to avoid tripping, etc., you have to stand by it. If you want it to ALWAYS happen, you have to ALWAYS enforce it. If you have a “no calling out on the carpet” rule, even if you have a child who has a behaviour plan and has an IEP goal to only call out 3 times per carpet time, you still have to address it when it happens. In my classroom, we spend all of September establishing these classroom rules, or boundaries, and we make sure they are solid.

One of my biggest pet peeves is lining up. I hate it when kids just slam their chairs in and run! So all of September we practice. We work on how to stand up all at once (I even have a palms up, pushing up towards the ceiling in front of my body signal for them) and push in our chairs. We try it once and if someone forgets to push in their chair, I address it, and we all sit down and try again. This works best if they are getting ready to go to something they LOVE like recess, gym, snack, etc. They are eager to get it right! Go over it a few times until they get it right. There is always a positive you can point out. “Addressing it” doesn’t necessarily mean saying, “Jimmy didn’t push in his chair and Amy was talking.” You can address the same problems by stating, “Erin pushed her chair in so nicely and Marc was so quiet as he did this!” Jimmy and Amy will (hopefully) recognize their mistakes and correct them the next time. Once they have successfully done that, let them line up. As you move through September, add in steps – silently push in chairs and stand behind them. Wait for the signal to go to the door and WALK quietly. Again, if there is a mistake, go right back to sitting and try again. It doesn’t take that long to perfect and they will love to show off their mad skills to other teachers, classes, principals, really anyone who will watch!

We practice walking down the hall quietly, getting our lunches out, how to leave the coat hook after recess, how to leave the chairs and desks at the end of the day – really anything!

But why do we not just pick our battles. If we are running late to start gym and someone didn’t get into line properly, why bother stopping to correct it? Why not just get to the gym so we can move on? I’ll tell you why. Routine, clear expectations, and boundaries. Children need these things. If most of they have to line up properly, but sometimes they don’t, they will never know when they have to do it properly, and when they can just do it however they wish. This will result in chaos. Children need clear expectations. They need to know that if they do X, the response will ALWAYS be Y. This way they know exactly what your expectations are and can behave accordingly.

If you want kids to put their hands up but then when they call out you accept their answers and don’t address the issue, they learn that it is okay to call out sometimes. They cannot necessarily establish a clear idea of when it is okay, but they know sometimes it will be okay so they sometimes do it. If it is NEVER okay, they don’t need to wonder what the expectations are.

But what if you want kids to be able to call out sometimes? You need a visual or verbal cue. I always had a special hat, or signal. I found a hat or prop was tricky because you don’t always have it. I would put an open palm up to my ear after I asked a question if it was okay to call it out. This is something we also practiced – kind of like Simon Says. You don’t have to make a negative statement when someone slips up, you can address it in a positive manner or joking manner, as long as you don’t belittle the expectation.

Children thrive when they know what is expected of them. If you mix it up and “choose your battles” with them, you will lose many of them. There will always be the students that amidst all of the chaos, will still wait quietly with their hand up because they know that is what you want, but if you don’t reward them by calling on them and pointing out to the others that you are calling on those students because of their positive behaviours, you will undoubtedly lose them all in the end.

Classroom management can be a struggle and it can take years to find something that works for you. But whatever your system, be consistent. If you only follow through sometimes, your students will be moving through your class blindly, never knowing when they will be “on” and when they won’t be. That feeling of uncertainty is overwhelming, especially for young ones. Set clear boundaries, teach them how to work within them, and uphold them. This is sure to set your class on a positive note!

And don’t forget, sometimes you need to modify! If your class can’t handle the stand up, push in your chair, wait quietly behind your desk until you get the signal, then modify it to suit your class. If they can only handle it without the pause at their desk, but do everything else flawlessly, cut that part out. And don’t hesitate to take some time to teach any other teachers that work with your class your classroom magic tricks. I will often even close my eyes and tell the other teacher that the “classroom fairy will move my class from their desks to the door without a peep – watch!” and do the signals and when I open my eyes, they are there. The young ones love this too!

Whatever you do, just be consistent and uphold the “law” all the time! It doesn’t help anyone when you are too lax with the rules.

April 19, 2015 Lisa.Taylor Assessment, Before School Starts, Communication Tools, Differentiated Instruction, Diverse Learning Needs, General, Math, Resources

Bulletin Boards – Teaching Tool, Art Gallery, or Wallpaper?

Every classroom has bulletin boards, some have one, some have 10! It all depends on the space you have and how you plan to use it. It is easy to set something up with plans for it to change or evolve, only to find that 4 months later you haven’t touched it, taught to it, or even referenced it!!

In my experience, Bulletin Boards end up falling into 1 of 3 categories: Teaching Tool, Art Gallery, or Wallpaper. Some bulletin boards are a blend of two or even all three of these categories. It is important to make the most of the space you have on your walls, while being cognisant of the fact that many children find too much stuff on the walls to be distracting.

When planning your walls, make sure you check with health and safety regulation, as many school boards have a maximum percentage of walls space that can be covered to stay within the fire regulation. So before you hit pinterest for some great ideas, make sure you are even able to cover the space! In my classroom, I have 5 large boards that cover almost every space that isn’t blackboard, windows or doors. The space that the bulletin boards cover is actually above the maximum percentage I can have covered in paper!! So I can’t paper back my boards as it is a fire hazard.

Many teachers like to paint their boards so they look crisp and clean all year. Again, double check with health and safety, as it is often an issue as it adds weight to the board which might not have been considered when mounting it. Especially if you are the 10th person in the classroom to paint them because the previous colours didn’t suit anyone’s decor!

Once you have established what your health and safety guidelines are, you can start to think about what is going on the walls. Ask yourself a few questions before you put something up there.

1. How will this help the students? While a Word Wall CAN help students, if you slap it all up before school starts and casually refer to it from time to time, it is not a useful tool and it is just wallpaper. Make sure you teach to it. Make it with the class and do it organically!

2. Is this something we need up for more than just today? If you only need it for the immediate future, don’t make a whole board of it. If you want to show off student work, I find the hallway is the best place for this type of thing. It gets more “traffic” from other teachers/students/parents, and it isn’t a distraction to learning. If you do need it for more than just today, you may want to ask a few more questions before you decide where to put it!

3. Do I need to put it all up right away and on my own? As teachers, we hate to look or feel like we aren’t organized, prepared, and ready to go! I recall as a young teacher, putting up bulletin boards before the first day of school. Yes, sometimes I taught to them, but generally they were just wallpaper. Many of us are guilty of putting up the whole word wall kit the day we get it! It just looks so pretty when it is done! Put it up gradually, and with the class! This will make it a more meaningful teaching tool. As teachers, we like everything to look complete and not “in progress” – but having the word wall with just 3-4 words up in September is what your students need!

4. Am I done with this? If you aren’t using it anymore, and the kids aren’t, take a picture of it and take it down! The more “stuff” you have on your walls, the harder it is for students to find what they are looking for. If you don’t need it anymore, take it down!

5. Are the kids using this? Even when you read the research, do the work, cut, past, laminate, and put up a beautiful board, the kids may not respond to it and it may not be useful to them. If you put up a board for math showing single digit addition strategies to start off the year, if they have all mastered it by December, they probably aren’t using it anymore. We have a tendency to keep things up in lieu of blank space to avoid looking like we aren’t accomplishing anything as a class! If they aren’t using it, take it down, or teach to it more, modify it, model how to use it. If after teaching to it more, they still aren’t using it – TAKE IT DOWN!!

There are thousands of blog posts and pinterest boards dedicated to amazing bulletin board ideas. Before you put one up, make sure it is actually something you need, that will get used, and that you install it in such a way that the students know how to access it.

There are great blog posts about what to do with your bulletin boards when you are done. My personal favourite is to snap a picture and create a bulletin board binder. That way, if there is still one of two children in the class that still need that bulletin board, they can go to the binder and look at it all year long! It will also serve as a nice reminder of how they looked if you end up needing to recreate it another year!

April 17, 2015April 17, 2015 Mike Beetham Before School Starts, Classroom Layouts, Classroom Management, First Week Reflections, General, Planning

Sweat The Small Things

Contrary to what you may have heard or read, in a classroom it is critical that you pay attention to the small things. Those intricate details are what can either make or break a classroom. Each teacher has their own style and that is as different as each student is from one another. Therefore when you get new students every September they are products of the teacher or teachers they had in the past year. Every component of the school day is based on what approach was taken with them (or not addressed) in the past. Once again you must start with your vision. What do you want your classroom to look like, feel like and sound like. From that point, you backward plan to achieve your goals. This approach is necessary whether it is September, starting an LTO in March or whether you are moving into a new division. Each component is dependent on fulfilling many small, intricate details.

The following topics are key domains that I focus in on and plan out every detail to assist me in reaching my goals:

How will I make my classroom a learning community where every member is valued and contributes to the overall success of the classroom (relationships)?
What routines will need to be developed to ensure maximum on task time and therefore student success?
How will I track student achievement and communicate to both parents and students about their growth and next steps?
How will my classroom set up contribute to student learning and the development of positive relationships?
How will I develop a student’s ability to self assess and not only be reliant on adults telling them how they are doing?

Each and every one of the above domains require specific attention to details in order for them to yield the results I desire. By sweating the small things, I am able to accomplish many BIG IDEAS!