Blog – Page 136

April 12, 2015April 14, 2015 Beverly Papove Celebrating Success, Diverse Learning Needs, General

A Year of Septembers

My colleague and I have had a challenging class since September. In fact, we are calling this year “The Year of Septembers” because although the students have come a long way, they are still very unsettled and we still spend a considerable amount of time re-establishing class rules and expectations. Thankfully, my colleague, who teaches English to my French Immersion students, is an amazing, funny, dedicated and sincere individual. What’s more, we are both on the same page when it comes to where we are with the students and where we’d like them to progress.

Our biggest challenge this year has been getting support for over 7 of our 19 students who came into grade 3 with a variety of issues and difficulties in learning. We have probably been a thorn in the side of the administration in our efforts to get additional in-class support for a few of the higher-needs students. However, it has been worth it as we have begun to see incremental improvements in learning skills and overall collaborative behaviour within our group. But it has taken great effort! We have often been exasperated with strategies that worked one week and then became ineffective the following. Our aim has been to express our collective expectations to the class so the students will understand that we are a team. This is especially important given that my colleague is only in the class for an hour at the beginning of the day, which has the added challenge of instructional time set aside for morning announcements and the national anthem. To help set the tone, I greet the students with my colleague as they come into the portable, allowing her the time to speak individually to certain students and to help them get settled into their morning routine.

During the week, we meet briefly to bring eachother up to date, to review goals and to cowrite email correspondence to parents. We support eachother with regard to behavioural goals as well as curriculum goals. This has been an absolute necessity as lessons and whole days have fallen apart due to extreme behavioural challenges and consequent interruptions in engagement in the class that have translated into a divergence from the lessons geared to meet curriuculum expectations. None the less, the students are learning and growing and progressing, and after many series of meetings with administration and parents, appropriate supports are being put in place to help us help the students with high needs, which in turn, has allowed us to also meet the various needs of all the other students. It has been an exhausting year thus far, but there has emmerged a sort of cohesion out of the often chaotic environment. Although every month has felt like September, my colleague and I are happy to see the pay-off in the successes of all the students.

April 11, 2015 Alison.Board Assessment, Differentiated Instruction, Inquiry

Assessment for Inquiry Projects

Teachers are encouraged to use inquiry in all subject areas. Using inquiry is not necessarily a set of steps to follow or instruct, but an approach to guide student learning. It usually results in greater engagement and can easily be differentiated to individuals and groups. What is often the biggest challenge for teachers is the assessment piece.

Here are a few ways to support your assessment:

determine check-ins with students as they complete specific stages of the process, such as planning, research/recording observations, interpreting and communicating (use rubrics for these stages as provided in curriculum document – Continuum for Scientific Inquiry)
use mini-lessons to teach skills and content to the whole class that support the Inquiry subject area
use whole-class discussions or small group discussions to make observations about student knowledge and understanding (this also builds knowledge among the larger group)
provide access to a computer for each group or a notebook to record their questions and plans and stay accountable. Communicate with them to further their thinking and provide next steps (Google Docs works well for this)
Keep observations sheets handy to make notes and take photos
Inquiry work provides an excellent opportunity to demonstrate the learning skills
Provide students with a checklist to ensure specific learning, such as “Show impact on environment” or “Determine best solution for power generation at our school” – when assessing effectiveness of final task/project that students may present in a variety of ways (poster, video, website, etc.)

There are some great project based learning guidelines and assessment tips/strategies on the website http://www.edutopia.org/ or follow edutopia on Twitter.

April 9, 2015April 10, 2015 Mike Beetham Building Inclusion, Challenging Topics, Diverse Learning Needs, Learning About Your Students, Making a Difference Through Education

More Than A Student

This past several months have been very challenging as it seems we have plateaued and are not progressing as I would expect us to at this time of the year. Thanks to a young girl in my class, I was reminded just how important it is to remember that I work with children and not adults.

Every morning the bell rings and I expect all of us to move into high gear in order to accomplish the day’s agenda. I am ready to give my absolute best effort (proverbial 125%) and have developed the expectation in the class that each person’s part is to put forth their best effort. Sometimes I can get lost in the tidal wave of curriculum expectations and forget that each and every day my students go home to a life that I often know little about. They come to school with many situations that can either contribute or detract from their success. I was reminded of just how important it is to take the time to check in with my class on a daily basis. This past month one of my students was going through some horrific custodial scenarios and yet she continued to come to school and attempted to live the classroom standards. She was not making the gains she had set and therefore put more pressure on herself, which ended up creating results that were not helpful from either a personal or academic standpoint.

My primary role at that time should not have been academics and curriculum accomplishment but rather meeting her social/emotional needs. Which in turn would have helped her where she needed it most.

April 1, 2015 Kelly.McLaughlin Assessment, Inquiry, Students as Teachers

Inquiry and science

When talking about inquiry, teachers are always challenged with what to do to guide students in the right direction or to even give them any type of direction. I thought back to my university courses this time last year and thought about the way my peers and I presented a topic. We were allowed to choose a topic,choose our groups and then choose how to present it. This way we planned our own route to success and found topics that interested us.

I decided to present this approach to my class with our current flight unit. I gave them the choice of curriculum expectations and then they chose how to teach a lesson to the class with any methods they desired to use. My students just need to involve the audience and create a handout for students to refer to after the presentations. So far I have seen students creating paper airplanes, making websites, making pontoon, making videos, interviewing different people and creating exciting and engaging lessons for their class.

I did use the rubric from the growing success document but I feel that assessing my student’s projects are more than that rubric. So for me, the challenge is finding out how to assess these authentic student tasks. I wish that it was simple but I am finding that I do not know how to figure out the best way to “mark” my grade sixes.

March 31, 2015 Shawna Rothgeb-Bird General

Confessions of a Non-Sporty Phys Ed Teacher

I’m not a great Phys Ed teacher. Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t really do sports. My biggest claim to fame with sports is that I officiate roller derby – but my position is more mentally demanding than physically and involves more paperwork than movement, if I’m being honest.

As a kid, I was one of those students who flailed, at best, and just sort of hoped that one of my limbs would hit the ball. Maybe even in the right direction! But probably not. Mostly I just avoided everything and prayed I wouldn’t mess things up for my team.

I was not a highly sought-after pick when choosing teams.

One of my greatest challenges as an elementary school teacher in my school board has been Phys Ed. My board doesn’t generally have specialists, so I really have no choice but to teach Phys Ed. For someone who has never really played or followed many sports, this has been challenging. I have to read up on the rules of every sport before I introduce it to my students, and even then I usually have at least one student who corrects me at some point during the unit.

Once I understand the rules of a game, I can teach it. I can run drills, referee games, and get an idea of my students’ abilities. I can even recommend good players to my colleagues when they are looking at creating school teams.

I can’t help but think about the students I have who are like me, though – the ones who find traditional sports difficult and just really do not enjoy them. I have found it immensely helpful to develop a repertoire of games which develop students’ skills without being traditional sports. Obviously not every student will enjoy every game, and no matter what you do some students will not enjoy any physical activity, but I have found that these games are usually a hit with my Grade 4 and 5 students.

1. “Ballon quilles” (I guess you could call this Pinball in English)

Scatter hula hoops around the gym, usually around 8. Don’t put them too close together and don’t put them too close to the wall. In each hula hoop, put a bowling pin. Two students are assigned to each hoop, and their mission is to keep their pin from falling over. They can’t touch the bowling pin.

Using soft balls (the ones you would use for dodgeball are usually good) students try to knock over other students’ bowling pins. They have to have one foot inside their hula hoop to throw the ball, but can leave their hula hoop to go retrieve a ball to throw. They can block balls with their bodies, but if they knock over their own bowling pin by accident, it still counts.

When their bowling pin is knocked over, those two students leave the game and join the line of waiting players. The next two students in line run in and take their place, resetting the bowling pin when they get in.

I love this game because it moves fast, players change each time (they’re not allowed to change place in line just to be with their friends), and there is no winner.

2. Capture the Flag

I don’t know what it is about this game, but my students love it. I won’t even get into all of the rules I use because there are so many ways to play it. The general idea is that the class is divided into two teams, and each team has some kind of object (a “flag”) that the other team is trying to steal and get back to their territory. I use rubber chickens, which my students think is hilarious.

The game is popular with my students in part because there are many positions, not all of which require a lot of physical ability. Some students will go offensive and take the role of trying to steal the other team’s flag, but some students will play defense and keep a keen eye for opponents trying to sneak in and grab their flag.

Sometimes we go through an entire 40 minute Phys Ed period with no one winning. They don’t care. They love this game.

3. Prisoner Exchange

This is a variant of Capture the Flag that can be played in a gym. The gym is divided into four and students are split into teams as evenly as possible, with each team wearing a different coloured vest. Each quadrant has two hula hoops – one holding bean bags (I usually have around eight per team) and one empty. The point of the game is to steal other teams’ bean bags and have the most bean bags at the end of the game (usually the end of the period).

Players run into other teams’ territories to grab a bean bag. If they get tagged by someone on that team, they become a prisoner (they stand off to the corner to denote being in “prison”). They get back into the game by having their teammates pay a bean bag to release them. The empty hula hoop is a “safe zone” where they can buy some time to figure out how to get back to their territory without getting tagged.

Like Capture the Flag, there are both offensive and defensive positions. The game can get a little hectic if you have more than 25 students, so if you have one of those monstrously huge classes, you might want to adapt this somehow.

4. Bowling Pin Dodgeball

I don’t know about everyone else, but every class I have ever had has been obsessed with dodgeball. They love this game. I don’t understand the appeal of trying not to get hit by phys ed equipment. That said, dodgeball remains one of the only ways to get every single student in my class to play something actively. Why?! Why do they love this game?!

I have tried to find ways to make dodgeball less about hitting other students with the ball and more about developing precision and ball-handling skills. Usually, I play this game that I have called “Bowling Pin Dodgeball” mainly for lack of a better name.

The class is divided into two teams, as is the gym. At the back of each team’s area, four bowling pins are set up. The goal of the game is to knock down all of the other team’s bowling pins. As per usual dodgeball rules, the ball hitting you below the shoulder means you’re “out” and move to the wall, so there is still a dodgeball element to the game.

To get back into the game, one of your teammates has to catch the ball. When a ball is caught, the person who has been out the longest goes back in. To facilitate this, I have students stand at the wall in a line, with the most recently eliminated player going to the end.

There’s another way to get your teammates back into the game, though. We have basketball nets in six places around our gym, so I made a rule that if you get a basket on one of the nets on the other team’s side, then everyone on your team who is out gets to return to the game. Even better: you get to put a bowling pin back up!

What I’ve found is that my students spend more time trying to catch a ball AND trying to make a basket that they rarely even end up throwing the ball at each other. They feel like they’re playing dodgeball, but really they’re working on throwing/catching skills. Shhh, don’t tell them. 😉

For my kindred spirits who don’t feel super successful with traditional sports, this game offers them a few options. Some like to defend the bowling pins. Some like to lie in wait and try to roll a ball at the opposing team’s pins to knock them down unexpectedly. Some end up being the last member of their team still in the game, then get to feel like a real hero when they get a basket and let their whole team back in.

I didn’t invent any of those games. They were all introduced to me by colleagues, with adaptations happening from year to year as I refine the rules (or my students suggest new ones). They’re just a few of the games that I keep in my regular rotation (and get requested by students time and time again).

March 31, 2015 Shawna Rothgeb-Bird General

Five Things I Learned as a New Teacher

The first five years of teaching come, perhaps unexpectedly, with a lot of highs and a lot of lows. It’s no secret that many new teachers end up leaving the profession due to stress. It’s hard to go from the support of an Associate Teacher in your practicum placements to flying solo in your own classroom. Are you doing this right? Are your students learning? What if something crazy happens?

Here are a few of the most important things I’ve learned in my first five years.

1. You will have good days and bad days.

Some days, you’ll feel like you are the world’s best teacher. You might finish an activity, send the students off for the day, and want to run to tell the nearest adult that you really nailed that math lesson. You might take photos of your students’ work so that you can include them in your portfolio for interviews.

Other days, you’ll struggle just to make it through the day without crying. Your students won’t listen, your lesson plan will go wrong, you’ll forget your supplies (or realize that every one of your 30 packets of notes to give to your students is missing a key page), a fire drill will happen in the middle of an activity that was going really well… the possibilities for ‘top ways to ruin a teacher’s day’ seem endless. Sometimes it will even feel like your students are out to get you; as if they know that you didn’t sleep last night, or you fought with your significant other this morning, or your kids are sick.

It isn’t just you. Every teacher has both kinds of moments. Enjoy the really good days and find yourself someone you can excitedly tell about your awesome day. On the not so good days, remind yourself that it’s just one day out of the year. You have 193 other days. They can’t all be bad.

2. Always have a back-up plan.

No matter how prepared you are, every lesson won’t go smoothly. Sometimes, you may even find that you have to abandon an activity entirely because it just isn’t working. This has happened to me at least once every year, and that’s a very conservative estimate.

I keep a binder of activities ready to go in my classroom. There are enough photocopies/supplies on hand at all times for any of those activities. (Side note: this is also helpful for when you have supply teachers in because they can pull an activity from there if necessary.) On days when my students just cannot handle whatever free-form activity I planned for that day, I set that activity aside for another day and pull one of these back-up activities out.

What you put into that binder will really depend on your class and what subjects you teach. My binder of back-ups has never been the same from year to year. Mostly I keep it simple: vocabulary games, partner games for math, that sort of thing.

3. Not all of your students are going to like you.

Some new teachers try really hard to be liked by their students. It’s an admirable notion to try to connect with every single one of your students, but it’s also unrealistic. Life doesn’t work that way. I’m not saying that every year you’ll have a kid in your class who is rude – that’s not true! But every year there will be at least one student who never really clicks with you. It’s okay. Don’t take it personally. I promise they’re still learning even when they don’t like you all that much. The key thing I try to get through to my students is that they don’t have to like me, but they do have to show me respect.

4. Your students ARE learning.

You may finish a year feeling like nothing ever went as planned. You may get to June and realize you haven’t taught half of the specific expectations in the curriculum. You may start the year with grand notions of never using worksheets, never giving tests, and being the Best Teacher Ever, only to get to the end of June and realize you didn’t meet any of those goals.

Don’t panic.

No matter what happens, your students are learning. They may not always be learning the thing you intend for them to learn*, but they’re still learning. Just try and stop them!

*One year I made the mistake of trying to teach probability before checking my students’ knowledge of fractions first. Whoops! My lesson quickly ended up in a very different place than I had intended.

5. No news is (often) good news.

As a new teacher, one of the hardest things to get used to is that parents and colleagues who think you’re doing a good job will often not tell you that. It can become even harder if you have someone question something you do (and that will happen at some point) because you may feel like all you ever hear about are the things someone thinks you’re doing wrong.

I promise that many of your students’ parents think you’re doing great. Many of your colleagues do, too. As a society, we tend not to openly commend others for a job well done because for some reason we feel like we don’t need to, but we also tend to be highly self-critical and assume that we’re screwing up somehow. We allow for others to make mistakes and dismiss them as a part of life, but when we make mistakes ourselves we dwell on them and convince ourselves that all anyone will ever remember about us is that one time we did something wrong.

I can’t tell you how many times I have been impressed by a colleague’s work and meant to tell them that, but life got in the way. You see something you want to comment on, and then next thing you know it’s five o’clock, you need to get home, your colleague is gone anyway, and you completely forgot to commend them for that cool thing you saw them do. You tell yourself that you’ll definitely talk to them tomorrow, but odds are you’ll forget.

Someone out there is thinking that about you too.

March 31, 2015March 31, 2015 Tammy Axt Assessment, Differentiated Instruction, General

How to Run a Recorder Karate Program

A very common program that is run by many junior music teachers is called Recorder Karate. The program is a series of songs that the kids learn on the recorder that get progressively more difficult. After each song that they have completed correctly, they receive a “karate belt” with a corresponding colour.

Recorder Karate is a program that encourages student growth and allows for a highly differentiated music class. Every student is working at their own level and receiving consistent, specific feedback about their progress. You can buy the program online through Music K-8.

The program looks like this in my classroom:

5 minutes- Warm-up/hand out recorders (either a student or I lead a quick warm-up)

10 minutes- Sight reading/song practice (we work together on difficult spots within the songs)

20 minute- Independent practice and testing of students

5 minutes- Sharing/clean-up ( I invite anyone who wants to share to come to the front and be a shining star)

After running this program for a few years, I have learned from some of the mistakes that I have made. I hope some of these ideas will help you with your recorder karate program.

I have learned:

Never start the program without taking a period to do an activity on building community. When I first starting doing the program, I used to dive right in as I felt that I had such limited time with the students. However, during the program, inevitably someone received a belt before someone else and another student struggled to get through the first song. I learned that if we took the time to do activities that talked about “put-ups” instead of put-downs, this encouraged positive language and the class was less competitive. Now most students will high five each other every time someone passes, no matter what level they are at.
Feedback needs to be quick and easy for students to understand. I used to give elaborate feedback to students on pages and pages of paper and I realized that all that writing took up too much class time. Also, the students never read it and it was not helpful in moving the students forward. Now I have a simple chart that they refer to regularly and I can see at a moment’s notice where the student is having trouble. Also, I want to get through at least ten students in a period. This requires my assessment to be quick, specific and to the point. (I have attached the template that I use for my assessment tracking.)
There is only one of me in the room. I have learned to accept the fact that I see my students for 40 minutes and I cannot help everyone every period. I have learned to stress to the class that we are a big recorder learning team and we need to work together. Sometimes I assign people to help others, and other times I do a mini lesson with one group while another group is being led by another student. What I have seen is that for students, sometimes helping another student to improve solidifies their own learning.
Recorder karate is great to run with one grade while you are prepping your other classes for performances or concerts. Once Recorder Karate is up and running, there is very little preparation for each period. This can be SO helpful when preparing concerts, choirs and all the other performances your students will do throughout the year.

Overall, my students have had a lot of success with recorder karate and it is a program that I would recommend to junior music teachers.

Karate Belts and Scores sheet

March 30, 2015March 30, 2015 Lisa.Taylor Challenging Topics, Professional Learning and Growth, Wellness

How do you push forward when you feel like you are failing?

So often as educators, we feel like we are just failing. It is a common feeling, especially among new teachers. The term “teacher burnout” is often used to describe the exhaustion, both physically and mentally, that comes from teaching. Teacher burnout is especially common in the first few years of teaching. Teaching in Ontario is tough. Everyday you are tasked with planning and accounting for children’s lives from 8:30am to 4pm, give or take. That in and of itself is an exhausting thought. Add to it the curriculum you need to cover, the parents who want to meet to discuss their child, the IEPs that need to be updated, the IST you have to attend, the administrator that is scheduling your Teacher Performance Appraisal, the ministry and the school board coming down on teachers and public sector workers in general, and the overwhelming feeling that the public hates you! It is enough to make you consider another career. So why do we do it? We do it because we love it – plain and simple.

So when things get tough, it is so important to take care of yourself. When you are struggling with content, seek help from others – we aren’t in this to reinvent the wheel! Reach out and find a “pro” that can help you out. Often school boards even have teachers released from their teaching duties to come and work with you 1:1. Take advantage of this!!

You can also turn to the internet (which is possibly what lead you here!). There are countless blogs, Pinterest Boards, and Twitter PLCs, just to name a few places to start. Building your confidence as a teacher can be as simple as finding a simple lesson idea that supports your current learning goals and trying it out. Even if you crash and burn in the middle of the lesson – you can use it as a personal learning experience and reflect on it! Everything we do as educators contributes to our own professional learning. That includes every failed lesson, and every activity planned and abandoned half way through because they just weren’t getting it – these are all ways in which we as teachers evolve and get to know our students.

Each time a lesson flops, don’t be so hard on yourself. If every lesson we did went swimmingly, it might indicate that we aren’t pushing our students hard enough. If every inquiry you did went exactly as planned, perhaps you are guiding your students too much. It is the inquiries that fly off the rails and go in the exact opposite direction you had hoped that really challenge your students and yourself. It is the lessons that you abandon half way through and change course to meet their needs that make you an amazing teacher. Embrace these moments – they will never not be there! Learn to enjoy the ride and if things don’t work out, there is always tomorrow.

I have had my own fair share of days where I felt like it just wasn’t working. I have had weeks and even entire years where I have felt like maybe teaching isn’t for me. But it is when you have that one class, that one student, that one golden moment when everything you have been working for comes together and you see a child show compassion, or empathy, and you know why you got into this business of educating children: the payback the students give you is more than any paycheck you will ever receive, it is more than any World’s Best Teacher mug you will ever get (I may have a shelf in my kitchen cupboard full of these!) – that feeling you get when you know you have made a difference makes it all worth it. Knowing that if you hadn’t been there, if you hadn’t known that child, that might not have happened. You are making a difference everyday and that is what keeps us coming back no matter how tough the job gets!

It is important to note however, that through the course of teaching, the wear and tear of your emotions can be quite difficult and devastating at times. Keep a close watch on your mental health as this is often something teachers struggle with (and rightfully so). When a child is struggling, you struggle along with them. When we walk out the door at the end of the day, no matter how hard we try, it is impossible to leave all of them there. You will find yourself worrying about if a child has enough to eat at supper time while you prepare dinner for your family, or you will wonder if your students are going home to a safe environment. It all adds up. Access your Employee Assistance Program if you can. You will often have access to a counselor that can help you with maintaining proper mental health. Do this early and set yourself up with healthy routines. We don’t plan to teach for a few years and then burnout, but if we aren’t careful, it could happen!

March 30, 2015April 16, 2015 Beverly Papove Anti-bullying, General, Social Justice

Safe and Accepting Schools in today’s Social/Political Climate

All teachers are familiar with the Ontario Ministry of Education’s initiative for teaching inclusion;

“A safe, inclusive and accepting school environment is a necessary condition for student success. Students cannot be expected to reach their potential in an environment where they feel insecure and intimidated. We are committed to providing all students with the supports they need to learn, grow and achieve.
Building a positive and inclusive school climate requires a focused effort on developing healthy and respectful relationships throughout the whole school and surrounding community, among and between students and adults. “

We respect this philosophy and we would not deny our students the full application of this mandate. And yet, for all the anti-bullying lessons, resources, activities; for all the lessons and discussions on civics and character education within our schools, I cannot help but feel as if I am complicit in perpetuating a myth that grown-ups know how to behave properly – when in fact, outside of our schools, our society is anything but civil, respectful, and devoid of bullies. For examples of intolerance and disrespect, we need look no further than the relentless doses of hysteria, stereotyping and racism in our newspapers and in our laws. The media is rife with stories pitting Us against Them, creating fear about Others, and discrimination based on clothing, skin colour, or mother tongue. Meanwhile in stark contrast in our classrooms, we are reading books such as “Children like Me”, promoting diversity and trying our best to ensure that our students learn about community and how Social Justice applies to everyone in our society.

Feeling overwhelmed by the latest news stories, I have been thinking about young students who, on the way to school, or once within its confines, may be unexpected targets of the divisive environment where ignorance, scapegoating, blaming, shaming, guilt by virtue of association, and racial profiling may have trickled down. Our anti-bullying initiatives may be only a Bandaid solution to circumstances of inconceivable scope and which are completely out of our control. Children who are subjected to this intolerance have to navigate through the quagmire with little or no grasp on the realities and myths that may be associated with their lives, and as in many cases of intimidation, because it is insidious nature, teachers may have no clue what these children have to endure. As visible minorities, or as minorities suspected of an affiliation, no matter how remote, children risk being targets of ignorance and vitriol from other children or adults in the community. Sadly, we have so many brutal historical examples of just this type of situation. Therefore, it is essential that, we as teachers, remember to be aware and have empathy to help all of our students feel secure and free from intimidation so that they can learn, grow and achieve, even when we may not fully understand the greater issues that they may be dealing with – politically, religiously or culturally.

And, without a doubt, the world has always been so. Danger from bigotry and intolerance existed long before the implementation of the Safe and Accepting Schools Act in Ontario. We can only hope that the effort we put into promoting diversity and ensuring students are educated within a safe and accepting school environment will eventually make the myth of a society of respectful, civic-minded people a reality. In the meantime, it is worthwhile to make sure that our students know we are an ally they can depend on for help should they need it.

March 23, 2015March 24, 2015 Tammy Axt Classroom Layouts, General

Classroom Layout Ideas- Music Room

Every teacher has talents. I, too, have a variety of talents, but organizing space is NOT one of them. I recognize that I am a very fortunate planning time teacher because I have a space assigned exclusively for music and I usually spend a week or two thanking my lucky stars for the space. However, after my football touchdown dance is over, I have to attempt to decide on a classroom layout.

In the arts, we rely a lot on community to be able to create together as a class. I believe that in order for my students to create, they need access to materials and space. They also need supportive information and guiding rules in easily accessible locations to facilitate their collaborations.

Here are some things I consider when creating my classroom layout:

Materials and student accessibility: All recorders, xylophones and percussion instruments are in places where the students can easily access them. We go over the proper use of all the materials and if we are in the experimenting phase of the creative process, then they are able to access any of the materials that we have introduced. Sometimes this makes for a noisy, chaotic environment, but for me, allowing students the platform on which to create is important.

Rules for recorders and group work: Having some information posted in the room gives accountability to the students. They understand the expectations and I can easily refer to them with a student who is struggling to help the class with their creations.

Designs and creative inspirations: I learned something this year when I put up the remnants of my Ikea curtains over the brown bulletin boards that existed at the front of the room for the first two months of school. Almost every single one of my 300 students commented on the new coverings when they entered the room. There were lively discussions about the interpretation of the design and repeated comments about how much the students liked them. It reminded me that creation is a very sensory experience. I usually spend a lot of time on the aural and oral senses in music but this experience reminded me that utilizing all of the senses heightens the ability to tap into the potential that every child has to create.

My professional library: Since many of my cupboards, shelves and tables are full of instruments or other materials for student use, I have very little space for my professional resources. However, my librarian came to the rescue this year when she was throwing out some furniture from the library. I scooped up these shelving units and they have come in very handy.

Meeting diverse learning needs: I have a student this year who is unable to physically play the recorder with the rest of class but can easily play the piano. The piano is easily accessible to her, as is the computer for some of the other students that I teach. There are very few materials that are for my use only and the layout of my classroom reflects that.