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Erin.Grewar Communication Tools, Communication with Parents and Guardians, General

Meet the Teacher Night – Introducing Yourself to Parents

Seeing their children’s classroom environment and meeting their teacher (who spends the largest chunk of the day with them) is a top priority for many parents. As a parent myself, it’s important for me to put a face to the name and to get a read on how their teacher’s personality and how they interact with their students. Considering Parent’s Night from this perspective inspired me to vary my approach this year.

As a non-homeroom teacher with no classroom for parents to visit, I decided to insert myself as a guest speaker into the presentations of the various homeroom teachers. This has the advantage of ensuring a larger audience and giving more credibility to Core French as a subject.

In terms of content, I decided to focus less on the formal curriculum side of things and more on the different way French is being taught (once the new ministry document is released) with an emphasis on oral communication and the use of authentic texts. I also included an explanation of how a typical lesson was structured and went on to finish with a brief overview of some useful online resources that students would find useful at home.

Personally, I always like to leave parents with some kind of written handout (see attachement). Likewise, I also tried to keep the tone upbeat. At this stage, I think that both students and parents alike need to see French in a more positive light and see the fun to be had with learning a second (or third or fourth) language.

Children must be taught how to think
Carmen.Oliveira Differentiated Instruction, Diverse Learning Needs, Equity, First Week Reflections, Learning About Your Students, Professional Learning and Growth, Resources

Let’s Get This Learning Started

This year I begin a new journey as I welcome the opportunity to teach Grade 4.  For the record, I must admit that I was a bit nervous simply because I’ve been teaching Grade 6 and above for the past five years.  However, the first week has proven that if we enjoy getting to know our students and work to create engaging opportunities for them to learn about each other, the classroom environment becomes a comfortable place to be, no matter which grade we’re teaching.

Although I’ve had to be more mindful of the way I communicate by constantly keeping in mind that the students in front of me just left Grade 3, I continue to be amazed at how capable children can be when they’re given guidelines for learning and are then left to explore and build on their understanding of the world around them.

This year, my goal is to be very intentional about the feedback I provide, the conversations I have, and how I approach character education.  This goal stems out of the learning I experienced (and continue to do so) with some very powerful books I decided to read this summer.  “How Children Succeed,” by Paul Tough and “Mindset: The New Psychology of Success,” by Carol S. Dweck, really got me thinking about the way I approach conversations, feedback, and teaching in my classroom.  The books focus on the power of building a strong character based on resilience in children and how to help them understand that more than our talents or abilities, it is our mindset that influences our learning.

If you want to start off your year by exploring how a simple idea about the brain can create a love of learning and a resilience that is the basis of great success in every area of a child’s life, I recommend you take some time this year to read the books I’ve mentioned.

For a quick overview, I’ve provided an article by Carol S. Dweck below where she explains the growth mindset and how it can positively affect and change the way students learn, think, and perform.

Dweck: MiindSets and Equitable Education

Alison.Board Building Inclusion, Classroom Layouts

Preparing for the First Day

This year I will be moving classrooms and divisions. Teaching a grade 5/6 class at the other end of school from the Kindergarten section will be a big change for me and also for my students. I am sure they will be looking for glimpses of the “Kindergarten Teacher” that they saw in the halls last year. So I am planning to bring some of what I have learned as a Kindergarten teacher to my new students in grade 5/6. Statistics show that over 90% of children in Kindergarten enjoy school. This number dramatically decreases as children reach the junior and intermediate grades. I want the children in my class to be engaged in their learning and enjoy coming to school.

When starting the new school year I always look through the practical information provided in “The Heart and Art of Teaching and Learning,” to find suggestions on setting up the classroom or planning for building inclusion. On page 22, in a section on Environment, it refers to the Reggio Emilia approach, which considers the children’s development and relationships with their environment. The chapter continues with, “Not only should the classroom represent your beliefs and values about teaching, it should also support them. In order to make the classroom engaging and inviting, consider what you want students to feel when they come in and how you might communicate this in a non-verbal way.”

I always find the environment a good place to start when planning for a new group of students. The layout, the materials, even the lighting can affect how the students interact with the resources and with each other. My goal this year is to have a classroom that is comfortable and aesthetically inviting, yet organized to foster responsibility and independence. I want to encourage collaboration and provide areas for movement within the classroom that focus on particular interests such as reading, art, science & technology, and math.

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Mike Beetham Before School Starts, Building Inclusion, Diverse Learning Needs, Learning About Your Students

Begin With The End In Mind

Welcome to another school year and no matter whether this is your first year or your 29th year of teaching (that is me), the beginning of September brings forth both the anticipation of thrills and chills.  I have spent the last 29 Augusts anxiously preparing, planning and remodeling my classroom to create just the right start for my classroom. A start that will engage my students, a start that will let them experience what a fun and active learning environment they are entering into and most of all, a start that will make them believe that they will be valued, challenged and will work together to help everyone reach their potential.

Together Everyone Achieves More Success

My name is Mike Beetham and I am starting my 29th year of teaching. I have the amazing opportunity to teach an area behaviour class in the Waterloo Region District School Board. I work with some of the most complex Junior age students in our board.

There are five things that I attempt to accomplish with each start to my classroom.

First and foremost is to make a connection with my students as people first and then as students.

Secondly, I set a tone of fun, hands on learning.

Thirdly, I dive headlong into academics by selecting a starting unit that will engage my audience. This year I am starting with a theme of  ‘Then and Now’. We will examine a variety of items or trends about the year they were born and compare them to our current year. Items will include, popular video games, winning sport teams, popular movies, and cost of items. I will be learning along with them as I model the task using my year of birth (1959). Did you know that a postage stamp only cost 4 cents back then? I am aging myself.

The fourth is that our classroom is community whereby everyone has a responsibility to make it work. I start this process through the development of a classroom agreement that is worked out by the end of the first week and the sharing of the expertise within the room. I do not nor do I need to know everything about everything. I will capitalize on the talents and skills within the class.

Finally, I demonstrate to my students that this room is going to be a safe place physically, emotionally and intellectually. The message is sent often, consistently and in a calm and straight forward way to students that in no way, shape or form will disrespect toward each other be allowed.

The plan for the above five items are a proactive approach rather than a reactive response. They are all carefully thought out, planned and put in place based on my understanding of the grade level, individual student needs and setting that I will be working in. Good luck with your start!

 

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Erin.Grewar Building Inclusion, Integration, Learning About Your Students

Matchmakers: Creative Ways of Forming Groups

I’m always looking for different ways of forming groups either for teams in games or for class projects/presentations. I like to make sure that not everyone is always working together with their friends. In a book called Energizers and Other Great Cooperative Activities for All Ages (Quest Books, 1991) I hit the jackpot. I know it’s an old book but good ideas are good ideas. I found these to be a great alternative to “Choose Your Own Partner” or randomly drawing names on popsicle sticks, etc. Not only did these provide a nice break or “energizer”, they were so entertaining that people forgot to complain about their groups!

Line ‘Em Up

Have the class line up in a single line according to the following criteria:

  • by age
  • by length of hair
  • by the time they get up in the morning
  • by how long they’ve lived in the community

Once in a line, you can then simply count off depending on the number of students you need in a group (ex 5).

Group Puzzlers

  • Select a picture from a magazine for each group you need (ex. If you need 5 groups, you then need 5 different pictures). Cut each picture into the same number of pieces as group members needed and mix all the pieces together in a container.
  • Students each draw a piece from the container and must then find others with pieces of the same picture. When they find each other, they must then put their pictures back together again.
  • *Make sure to select pictures that are distinct from one another.

Stone Soup

  • Fill a pot with groups of common items-the same number and kind of objects as the number of members needed in each group. You could use small rocks, jacks, marbles, squares of fabric, paper clips, paper umbrellas for drinks, etc.
  • Have each student draw an item from the pot. Holding up their selections, they mingle and find their fellow group members who have also chosen the same object.
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Erin.Grewar Celebrating Success, Making a Difference Through Education, Year End Activities

Appreciating the Homeroom Teacher

Often, after having spent the year together, the impact of the homeroom teacher is substantial but oftentimes goes unstated or unsaid. That in no way means that students don’t appreciate the time, energy and efforts of their teachers but perhaps don’t always take the time to actually think about it and put it into words. As a rotary teacher, this is something I like to coordinate as a class. In one of the final classes, we make something simple out of origami and insert a little personalized note (see tulip pattern below). Before writing them, we take the time to discuss what makes a message meaningful vs. superficial. I give them the following sentence starters for those who might need some ideas.

I will always remember you for

I really appreciated the time when

A valuable life lesson you taught me was

Thanks a lot for

As a person, your best qualities are

For fun, we collected them all and put them into a report card envelope and gave them to the teacher just as she was about to distribute theirs. I know that as someone who invested a great deal of time and personal energy into her class, these messages will be greatly appreciated. For the students, it is a chance to communicate a heartfelt thought that might otherwise go unsaid.

http://www.papercraftsforchildren.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/origami-tulips.jpg

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Erin.Grewar Celebrating Success, Year End Activities

Connecting as a Class

After hopefully bonding together over the course of the year, it’s always nice to get the students to formally acknowledge/remininsce about how they bonded as a class.

One is a new one I’m going to try called Friendship Connections (source:Energize).

Materials:

  • Large ball of yarn and paperclip for each student

Directions:

  • Sit together in a large circle in an open grassy area and have students bend their paperclips into a V shape.
  • Ask students to think about something that they would like to remember about their experiences with the group. I’m going to give them a few options to think about if they need a little inspiration. (What experience did you enjoy the most? What’s an experience that brought you closer together as a group?)
  • Start by securing the end of the yarn in the ground with your bent paper clip and begin the discussion yourself. (Ex. I loved the day we spent on our walking tour of the Humber River and our group pumpkin carving contest.)
  • Roll the yarn to someone else, have them secure the yarn with their clip and make their statement.
  • Continue passing the yarn back and forth across the circle until everyone’s had a turn and the web is complete.

Variation for beginning of Year:

Precede this activity with another get to know you game and instead of standing up and reporting something about the person, you can use this type of forum.

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Roz.Geridis Celebrating Success, Year End Activities

Class Appreciation

As the school year was coming to an end I was trying to think of an idea for the kids to show their appreciation of each other. Some students will be continuing together and some are moving on to a new school. As a class, we had completed a few activities using an electronic wordle program. It made me think about doing a wordle for each student as a class.

I had each student write his/her own name of the paper asking them to make an effort in the design, size or colours. The students then passed the paper one to the right and the new student wrote one word about that student. I asked for no repetitions and the wordle moved throughout the class so every student wrote something on each student’s wordle.  The last student sitting to the left of the student on the wordle brought the wordle to me. I then matted the wordle on a little background. Tomorrow, I will be presenting the wordles to every student. The students know this is coming and are very excited to see their own wordle.

Alison.Board Celebrating Success, Communication Tools, Communication with Parents and Guardians, General

End of Year Celebration

To celebrate the end of the year in our Full-Day Kindergarten classroom, we opened our doors for parents and guardians to share our successes. We scheduled it for a half hour in the morning at entry time. The children helped plan for the celebration by taking home invitations, creating a welcome sign for our door with the word welcome or hello in various languages that reflect the home languages of our students. The children also were invited to wear traditional clothing that reflected their heritage on the day of the open house. We were thrilled to have so many parents come to our casual event. They sat around the room and watched our morning circle – as we always start the day with sharing how we feel. Then the children moved to the tables where their writing portfolios and art folders were displayed. They were so proud to show their work! Then the children moved around the classroom as guides, showing their parents their work that was displayed and their favourite learning centres.

In the afternoon, one student drew a picture of her and her mother and wrote,”Today is Monday. That’s the day when we show and share…” She said she was happy to show and share her work and classroom with her mother.

A butterfly on a finger
Katie Pryde Celebrating Success, Diverse Learning Needs, Inquiry, Learning in a Real Life Context, Year End Activities

Life Cycles in Kindergarten

For the past few weeks, we have been exploring Life Cycles in my Kindergarten classroom. First, we started off by learning about plants. I read some stories to my class including The Tiny Seed, and we discussed how a plant is created. We also discussed the different parts of a plant. This lead in nicely to some discussions about various life cycles.

As a Kindergarten team, we ordered caterpillars (from Boreal) so that we could watch the life cycle of a butterfly occur.Our caterpillars will turn into Painted Lady Butterflies. We watched some youtube video clips so students could see what it was that would be happening in our classroom during this process. We also read a lot of various books, both Fiction and Non-Fiction, about butterflies. We were able to observe our tiny caterpillars turn into bigger, fatter caterpillars, form into their chrysalis and then into butterflies. The students really enjoyed seeing this process first had, authentic learning at its best! I allowed my students to have opportunities to observe and even read to the caterpillars. We also kept a butterfly journal, where students would record daily what stage it was in.

 

After a few days of having living butterflies, we were able to go outside and let our butterflies free into the environment. This also helped our Eco School status. Overall, my students really enjoyed this! They loved coming in each and every morning and checking on the progress. I would highly recommend any kindergarten teacher to use this in their classrooms! It was also a wonderful tool to use at the end of the year when the students are a bit “over” being at school. I felt that by studying the life of a butterfly was able to keep their excitement and engagement right up until the end of the year.