Photo of Mike Beetham
Mike Beetham Anti-bullying, Building Inclusion, Celebrating Success, Classroom Management, Differentiated Instruction, Year End Activities

Celebrations

“If it is worth doing, it is worth celebrating”. That component is a significant part of every classroom agreement that I am a part of. As my classroom community evolves it becomes a priority that best effort is all that can be asked of the students and the teacher. As such, we do not celebrate grades, we celebrate best effort. Each and every child in the room knows and understands that as long as they are working as hard as they can, the result is always worth celebrating.

That belief began to evolve in my teaching about twenty years ago when I first began to understand the role of diagnostic assessment and how important it is to start where my students are and not be driven by grade expectations. I can best sum it up by saying, it is the juncture in my career where I began to teach children and not deliver curriculae.  My students (and classroom) began to lose the competitive edge and shifted toward a cooperative learning environment with a focus on helping everyone be successful. A significant aspect to that change was the need to redesign what celebrations looked like.

C– classroom community social events (Thanksgiving lunch, special days)

E– everyone gets to share their work in a public forum

L – lots of trips to connect learning to real life scenarios

E– extra high fives, fist pumps, sunshine calls home, notes and oral praise

B – board filled with weekly awards

R– regular positive visits from principal, parents and other staff

A – always asking for input from classroom advisors on new ways to celebrate

T – teacher models and then a gradual release of responsibility

E– every effort big or small is worth celebrating

How do you celebrate the efforts of your students? I encourage you to post your ideas for others to read.

A list of Mrs. Mcauley's Thing
Sangeeta.McAuley Building Inclusion, Celebrating Success, Learning About Your Students

What’s Your Thing?

The beginning of the school year always feels so hopeful and the thought of getting to know a whole new group of children is very exciting!

This year, I decided to take on a new angle to my usual “Identity” theme by helping my Grade 4 students to identify what their “thing” could be.

It all began with explaining “Identity” as puzzle pieces that make us who we are…

Each student had a chance to make an image of their identity, broken down into pieces. This led to questions such as, “How does knowing who you are help you?” and “What are the pieces that you are most proud of?”

Before I could introduce the idea that everyone has a “thing”, I decided to read, “Woolbur”, a wonderful story written by Leslie Helakoski. It highlights the unique qualities we all possess and how we can celebrate these qualities.

Afterwards, I asked students to think about Woolbur and what “his thing” might be…whether it was something he liked to do or a talent he possessed.                                               

   

Then, I asked them to try it out on me: “What is Mrs. McAuley’s Thing?” As they wrote on small white boards, I wrote my own thoughts on a hidden chart and then we compared them. It was pretty eye-opening and led to conversations about assumptions we can make about people.

Next, my students are taking photos of their “things” on iPads and putting together a collage. They are writing about one of their “things” and making an audio recording as they describe how they can use their “thing” to change the world.

If nothing else, this teaching experience has taught me that students are never too young to reflect on what makes them special. And when asked to take on a role in a team setting, they will be equipped, knowing what unique qualities they can share.

Photo of Mike Beetham
Mike Beetham Building Inclusion, Celebrating Success, Classroom Management, First Week Reflections, Learning About Your Students, Making a Difference Through Education

The Power of Believing

It is not found in a curriculum, at an educational supply store or in a university course outline. But yet it is one of the most powerful tools that a teacher has. It is the belief in yourself to handle the varying demands of the teaching role, to have confidence in your professional expertise to help students and to instill that belief in each and every one of your students. As my students arrive in my classroom in September the one common element they have (besides a multitude of at risk behaviours) is the belief that they are not smart and that school is not a setting where they will do well. My target priority becomes the mission of helping my students be successful and to believe that school is a place where they will thrive and be triumphant.  This is easy said,  but experience has taught me that it does not occur in a few lessons or a unit of study but rather exists in my teaching philosophy and must be embedded in my talk, my instructional practices and my way of life in the school. I have developed a set of teaching eyes that focus on what students can do rather than what they can’t do. That is a contagious approach that will spread quickly from adults to children.

I would like to introduce you to J who arrived in my classroom with a very closed attitude toward school despite not knowing me, the school or the classroom he has been forced to attend. Before I could begin to help him I had to get to know him as a person and not a student. What are his interests, his talents and his challenges? Our journey of learning is now underway and it will have its ups and downs, joyous moments and sad times but we are coming together with the understanding that he will be successful, he is smart and that school is a not so bad place to be. I will keep you updated on our progress.

Photo of Erin G
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

Photo of Erin G
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.

Photo of Roz Geridis
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.

we made it
Carmen.Oliveira Celebrating Success, Literacy, Students as Teachers, Year End Activities

Celebrating Learning as the Year Winds Down

As our school year winds down, I thought I’d share a few ideas I’ve used in the past along with some I’ve recently come across that can create fun and meaningful opportunities to reflect on the learning and  overall experience in our classrooms this year.

END OF YEAR BOOKLET: This booklet is geared toward junior students but can easily be modified for primary grades.  This booklet is a way for students to think back on the various aspects of their year and includes tasks that involve creativity by adding artwork.  Students enjoy reading each others’ booklets and sharing them with the class at a year-end party.

END OF YEAR AWARD: Students create their own award to present to anyone they wish.  They decide what the award is celebrating and the recipient can be someone in the class, the school, their family, or community.  You can make it fun by having students draw each others’ names and create an award for their classmate which they present at an end-of-year award ceremony.  This often becomes very humourous with some silly awards being created.

TEACHER REPORT CARD: I can understand why some teachers would be wary of having their students do this but I actually find it very helpful and the students love giving me feedback.  I spend so much of the year assessing them and sharing descriptive feedback about their learning so why shouldn’t they do the same with respect to my teaching?  Students are quite insightful and honest.  Some of the reports I’ve received have been eye-openers and got me thinking about how to better my program the following year.

LETTER TO NEXT YEAR’S STUDENTS: This gives the current students the opportunity to reflect on their year and think of advice to give to the students for the upcoming school year.  Both the students writing the letter and those reading it the following year really enjoy this opportunity to get a sense of what can be expected.

LET STUDENTS TEACH A CLASS: You can split the class into groups and assign each a specific topic you studied this year. Give them time to go over their topic and invent a good review activity, which they have to grade (or not, if it’s too much for the end of the year). You assess them on whether they were able to re-teach the concept or skill and how effective their review activity is.

STUDENT CREATED QUIZ SHOW: Have students come up with questions for a quiz show about concepts, skills, facts, or anything they learned throughout the year.  Create categories (ie. like Jeopardy) for each subject area and have students organize their questions.  Enjoy the quiz show as a class competing against the teacher or form teams of students to compete against each other.  Prizes can include a longer recess, extra gym time, or some frozen treats at the end of hot June day.

end of year booklet part 1

end of year booklet part 2

end of year award

Teacher Report Card

letter to next year students

Katie Pryde Celebrating Success, Literacy

Seeing Growth

As it is April, I always feel that this time of year is when you really start to see the growth/progress in our students, especially in Kindergarten. Since taking over my current Kindergarten class in February, I am really starting to see the growth in my students and their learning, Shortly after obtaining this LTO, I put up a word wall in my classroom, created an interactive popcorn word word wall, as well as incorporating the Sight Word Caterpillar in our classroom (see below).

I have worked really hard with my students about what the word wall is for, and how we can use all these resources when we are writing. Each week, my students get an opportunity to write in their Writing Journals. To differentiate for my learners, I encourage ALL students to use at least 5 different colours in their pictures to add more detail. I encourage my SK students to write the sounds/letters they hear. I encourage my SKs to stretch the words so they can hear/write all sounds they hear. We have talked a lot about the use of the Writer’s Rainbow (see my previous post about this), and have modelled for students the various stages of the Writer’s Rainbow.

This past week, some of my students have really started to use what I have taught them and have started to use the word wall, popcorn words and our sight word caterpillar to help them in their writing. All my efforts have finally paid off. There is nothing better than seeing your students use the tools you have provided for them in our classroom! Such joy!