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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!

Alison.Board Assessment, Differentiated Instruction, Inquiry

Assessment for Inquiry Projects

Alison_BoardTeachers 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.

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.

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Tammy Axt Assessment, Differentiated Instruction, General

How to Run a Recorder Karate Program

recorder belts

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:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.)
  3. 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.
  4. 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

Photo of Lisa Taylor
Lisa.Taylor Differentiated Instruction, Diverse Learning Needs, Homework

Homework – how much is too much?

Some teachers don’t give any homework, some give lots! There are lots of schools of thought on homework and if it is necessary, if it is valuable, if it serves a purpose, etc. I have had classes that had weekly homework for the whole year, and I have had classes that didn’t get homework once. It all depends on the group and what they need. I find homework is just as much for the parents as it is for the students, sometimes more for the parents! I follow a few important rules when I send homework home:

1. Never send home a new skill or concept that has not already been taught in class. Quickly explaining it in 2 minutes while you hand it out doesn’t count either – make sure the homework is a review of a skill that has already been taught and worked on in class – otherwise you are sending home an exercise in frustration!

2. Never send home something you want to use as an assessment. You can never truly know if it was done independently, nor can you be sure that it is a true reflection of the child’s ability.

3. Never penalize a child for not getting their homework completed – often it is not their fault. They have things going on after school that keep them busy (sports, clubs, etc.) or they are with a sibling or sitter for a while after school and when they do see their parents, that time is too precious to be used working on skills that they have already mastered.

4. When in doubt, send home reading!! This is universal – you know their ability, you have taught them to read the pictures, so even if the words are a struggle, there are other options.

5. Never send something home for the sake of sending something home. Have a purpose in mind. When you get something ready to send home, before you make copies or hand it out, ask yourself, what am I trying to accomplish with this? If it is not helping you to accomplish your goal, don’t send it home. Homework for the sake of homework is frustrating, especially as the parent at home struggling with your child to get it done!!

 

When  you establish a homework routine, make sure it is that – a routine. If you are going to have homework coming home regularly, be consistent with it. Don’t send things home randomly and expect parents will just know what to do. I often rely on my child to go through her backpack to find things for me, and if she doesn’t come across her homework (or more likely, ignores it), and we don’t see it until we are packing bags for the next day of school in the morning, as a parent, I feel so blindsided. If I know something is coming home, I can make time for it and be ready for it. If something is coming home randomly, make a big deal of it – make note of it in the newsletter, staple a reminder bracelet around my kid’s arm so I know to look for it, or send an email reminder to parents so they know something is coming.

If you differentiate in class, you need to do the same for homework. If you have a child working on an IEP in class and they need extra help with counting to 100 for example, you could be sending home lots of extra counting to 100 activities. You don’t need to send those home to the rest of the class if they have that skill mastered though. If the rest of the class is working on counting to 1000, don’t bother sending those activities home with your student that is on the IEP if they are not ready for that, as it is not part of their IEP goal, and it will again just be an exercise in frustration for that family.

I would often send home words of the week. No spelling test at the end of that week, just words to work on. We would have a word family to work on that week (primary). We would build our new word family on Friday afternoon for the following week and then each student would pick their words to work on and get their list approved by me from our words we created. So if we were doing -ig words, some of the lower kids might have pig, wig, dig, on their list, but some of the stronger kids might go for ignite, enigma, etc. on their list. At the beginning of the year I sent home a tic-tac-toe board that was laminated. In each of the 9 squares there was a different activity (i.e., make your words out of magazine letters, rainbow spell your words, have a family member make your words into a word search and then solve it, etc.). Each week they had to get 3 in a row. They would mark them with a marker and wipe it clean each Friday. This was great as many of them could be done in the car, while parents were making dinner, etc. They were quick easy tasks that were meaningful, and relevant, and the words the kids were choosing were at a level that was relevant to them. It is impossible to make a spelling list that serves all students in your class. This method helps to give your kids more ownership and responsibility over their words. It was always a successful system!

 

In the end, you need to make sure you are predictable and consistent, you are serving a purpose, and that you are giving them something meaningful that they need to work on. When in doubt, have a reading challenge!

Photo of Tammy Axt
Tammy Axt Communication Tools, Communication with Parents and Guardians

Communicating with 500 parents

I am a music teacher and I have around 500 students that I teach this year. Communicating with the parents of 500 students needs to be approached a little differently than the regular classroom teacher. I don’t send home a beginning of the year letter as I have taught most of my students for a couple of years now. I usually send home communication for other purposes. Below are two letters that I will be sending home in the next couple of months. The first letter is about recorders, and the second letter is about an upcoming concert at my school.

Letter #1:

Dear Parents/Guardians of Student in Grade 3,

As part of the music program, students learn to play the recorder starting in grade 3.  Playing the recorder is an excellent way to develop fine motor skills, hand-eye coordination and concentration.  At this level, recorders are the best tool for teaching students to learn to read proper notation on the music staff.  Studies have shown that taking music lessons increases overall academic achievement, and helps to develop self-confidence and problem-solving skills.  For your information, there is an article on the back of this letter on this subject.

At the beginning of May, students will be provided with a clean recorder for use at the school.  Each student will have his/her own instrument assigned to him/her that is not used by other students.  These recorders are property of Red Willow P.S., and will remain in the music room at all times.

Although it is not mandatory, we strongly suggest that students buy a recorder for practicing at home.  This recorder will remain at home.   Recorders will be used extensively in grades 4 and 5 as well, and sheet music will be going home for students to practice with.  Buying a recorder through the school ensures that your child has a good quality instrument.  Recorders purchased at the dollar store are not good quality and they almost always have the wrong fingering system.

Recorders cost $10.00.  Please pay in cash.  We need to pre-order, so forms with the money are due by May 7, 2015.  Please fill out the form below and send it with your child/children.

Sincerely,

Ms. Gallant

Letter #2:

The Music department at Red Willow is extremely excited to invite you to a spring concert starring your amazing children!

What will be happening?

Your child, along with all the other grade 3 and 4 students, will sing songs they have written, share dances that show different cultures, perform a black light show and much, much more.  There will be snacks available for purchase, as well as many photo opportunities.

When is this fantastic event?

The Spring Concert will take place on April 23rd, 2015.  The show will begin at 6:00pm.  We ask that your child be dropped off to the side entrance by 5:30pm.  Teachers will be at the door to greet them starting at 5:20.  Students are required to stay until the end of the show.

How do you get tickets?

Due to the number of grade 3 and 4 students who will be performing; we must limit tickets to 2 per family.  More information regarding tickets will follow.

Shawna Rothgeb-Bird Celebrating Success, Communication with Parents and Guardians, Student Ownership

Showcasing Student Work for Parents

I’m not a huge fan of Parent/Teacher Interviews. It’s not the idea of speaking with parents about their child’s progress, because I am totally on board with that. It’s not the time spent after school, either; I’m usually one of the last teachers to leave my school at night, so I’m pretty used to being around after hours.

My issue with Parent/Teacher Interviews is that the focus is rarely, if ever, on talking about what students are doing daily in the classroom. To me, that’s the important thing: seeing their work and their progress over the course of the ten months that they’re in my class. My students work hard and take pride in their accomplishments. I’ve never liked that interviews are linked to progress reports or report cards because the natural thing to do seems to be to talk about grades.

I hate grades, but that’s another story for another time. 😉

A few years ago, I did something with my class that I felt really offered my students the chance to show their parents just how much they had accomplished that year. It was a really rewarding experience for everyone.

In spring of that year, a few students in my Grade 5 class came to me and asked if we could do a class talent show. This was a congregated gifted French Immersion class with many performers of all kinds. We discussed it as a class and nearly all of them wanted to participate. We decided that we would host the talent show in June as an end of year event and invite everyone’s parents to come. I was not going to force anyone to participate, though, so I had to come up with some reason for the parents of students who were not performing on stage to attend.

My students had been amassing large portfolios of work all year. I’m a bit of a hoarder when it comes to student work and I like them to keep it all at school for as long as possible. Usually this just leaves me drowning in a pile of art projects, scientific models, chart paper, and duo-tangs, but this one year it really paid off. I had my students go through all of their work and choose five things that they were really proud of.

We discussed why they might choose certain pieces over others. Some pieces were chosen because students had worked particularly hard and had done a really great job with them. Others were chosen because they were really fun and exciting. Others still were chosen because students felt that they had made a lot of progress that year. The highlight, for me, was when one of my students chose to showcase her Mathematics notebook. When I asked her why, she said that it was because she started that year hating math, just like every other year, but by the end of the year she felt really confident in math and it had become her favourite subject.

Validation! My teaching is working! But that’s not what this post is about.

We ran the entire event in the school’s gym, which had an attached stage. I pulled out some tables and set them up, then gave each student a space to display their work. They decided how to display it. As parents came in, they were able to wander around the tables and see the work all of the students had put out.

The talent show itself was what I expected: a seemingly endless parade of ten and eleven year olds playing musical instruments, telling jokes, dancing, and doing whatever else they had come up with as a talent. It was really sweet. They did a wonderful job. All I really did was invite the parents; they coordinated who did what and when, rehearsed on their own time, and ran the whole show for parents.

After the talent show, all of the students went and stood by their work. They were expected to explain to their parents why they had chosen to include each piece. I was there and able to answer any questions and chat with the parents, of course, but the students were the stars of the afternoon. I got a lot of positive feedback from parents on the event and they were happy to be able to hear their child talk about his or her work in a positive light.

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Mike Beetham Assessment, Before School Starts, General, Learning in a Real Life Context, Planning, Student Ownership

Zipper Club

I truly admire and hold deep appreciation for all of you who teach Kindergarten or Junior Kindergarten. You establish the foundations that will support a child’s academic life and that will allow the rest of us to build upon.  I had to share this great concept that I watched evolve from one of my colleagues who teaches Kindergarten. It is called the Zipper Club. The premise is that he is trying to develop and foster independence in his children (which can be transferred to all aspects of school life).

As his children grow from an academic, developmental and gross motor standpoint they are provided with success that fosters a belief of “I can do anything’. So as each child masters the famous jacket or hoodie zipper, he posts their picture in a public display in the hallway. This is then shared with our school so that all can see and celebrate. His students start to feel all grown up and this new found independence fosters many additional side benefits to his class such as less time dressing equates to more on task time.

I have adapted this style of setting targets and working toward those targets with exemplars of what success looks like, sounds like and/or feels like. To this point I have enjoyed many types of both individual and group success. By far the most beneficial has been in my understanding of how important targets and success criteria is.

Photo of Tammy Axt
Tammy Axt Communication Tools, Communication with Parents and Guardians

Spring Concert Preparation

 

Last year, my school had our very first evening concert. It went so well in December that we did it again in May. It was the first time I had ever organized a large evening event and I learned a lot. As I am getting ready to do another concert this spring, I have been reviewing my notes from the previous year to prepare. Below are some of the questions that came up and how we decided to deal with them. Hopefully, this can be a starting point for preparing a concert at your school!

What kind of budget can we have?

My principal suggested that we should stay around a couple hundred dollars. We did one shop early in the process for things like cotton balls or glitter. Closer to the show, we did one more big shop. It was easier for our secretaries to do big shops and hand in one or two receipts instead of multiple small purchases. We did not ask parents for money.

How will we communicate information to parents?

A letter went home introducing the concert and a follow-up letter went home with tickets. A Synervoice call (robocall) was made to homes the day before the ticket information went home. Another Synervoice call was made two days before the concert.

How will we control the crowds and ensure the safety of the students performing?

Benches were placed across the front of the gym to prevent parents from coming too close to the classes performing. The principal made it part of her opening remarks to remind parents to stay behind the benches.

Can we sell food?

We asked permission from our custodial staff before we went ahead with food sales. Once the custodial staff gave us the okay, we bought popcorn, cookies and water from Costco. I also told the custodial staff that all volunteers would assist with the cleanup after the concert. Obviously, the teachers’ first responsibility was to ensure that the students were safely picked up by their parents, but after the students were all gone, everyone helped with the cleanup.

How can we deal with people who show up without tickets?

The directive from my principal was to just let it go. We had a couple of people show up without tickets so plan for a few extra spaces in the gym. We didn’t want the evening to be about anything except celebrating the students so we didn’t make a big deal about it.

Can we give high school students volunteer hours for helping us?

Yes!

What time is the dress rehearsal?

We ended up having two different dress rehearsals. (I would do more with a kindergarten performance). I tried my best to move classes around so that no one lost their planning time and I invited the classes that were supposed to have phys ed during this time so that the gym teachers didn’t get displaced.

Will there be dinner for volunteers?

Yes, pizza and salad were provided.

Will we have access to walkie talkies?

We used the walkie talkies on the night of the performance to communicate with each other.

How do we photocopy communication about the concert?

Anything photocopying for the show was done using the office code.

Should we prepare a video recording for sale?

We opted not to have anyone videotape the concert to sell to parents. Most people carry video recorders in their phone and had the ability to record the performance.

How will we do the drop off and pick up of students?

The kids were dropped off and went directly to their classroom. The parents picked up their children from their classroom at the end of the concert.

Can we have an extracurricular club to help with the preparation of the concert?

Yes, the club was a fun group of older kids who helped with everything from decorating and costumes, to holding the doors and helping to collect the tickets. They were amazing.

How long will the concert be?

After putting two classes together to perform, there were 10 performances in total. The concert lasted about one hour.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo of Alison Board
Alison.Board Communication Tools, Communication with Parents and Guardians, Equity, Learning in a Real Life Context

Technology and Social Media for Communication

For years I have maintained a class website. I found as parents became more tech-savvy, they enjoyed seeing the photos of student learning and reading about what was happening in the classroom. This seemed more timely, environmental and cost-effective than a monthly newsletter (as I was in a community that all parents had access to a personal computer). It also allowed parents the option to log on to the site at any our to find information or revisit an earlier post. Websites allow for documentation of the learning and growth of students.

This year I wanted to try Twitter. It was a new learning curve for me, but I could see the benefits of its immediacy. So last fall I started a Twitter account for our grade 6/7 classroom and invited parents and students to follow. Students created a logo contest in the class and selected a piece of student art to represent our account. I have found many benefits to Twitter instead of a classroom website. They include:

  • Timeliness – I usually take a photo and send a message once a day from my classroom. It is so quick and simple from my smartphone that my posts are more frequent than logging into a website and writing a post for a class website.
  • Focused – I find that my tweets are focused and meaningful. For example, I select a specific moment during math or science and take a photo that makes the learning visible. When I would write posts for my website, I often felt overwhelmed in covering all the subjects and providing enough detail.
  • Connections/Information/Networking – Sending tweets and using hashtags from our classroom has created dialogue with other educators, students, and interest groups, that would not be possible through a website. For example, my class was excited to be retweeted by Bird Studies Canada when we shared a photo of one of our students feeding a chickadee from his hand. This introduced us to information about the Great Backyard Bird Count, an accessible activity that interested students could learn more about. It also initiated an environmental leaders project to make and maintain bird feeders at our school.
  •  Reflection/Assessment – As a daily activity, tweeting from the classroom provides me with a purpose to capture learning and document it. I am then able to review my tweets weekly and reflect on the highlights or areas of need as assessment for learning.
  • Social Media Etiquette – Tweeting with my students allows for authentic discussions about how to conduct ourselves with appropriate image use. We also review our messages and discuss what they can convey.
  • Accessibility – Although my school is recognized as higher needs due to lower family incomes, some students have access to smartphones that they can use in the classroom with our Bring Your Own Device program. Others can share the iPads and netbooks that are available to our class.
  • Engagement – Each month, more students get their own account or encourage their parents and become excited about our classroom tweets that are retweeted by the Principal or the board to an even wider audience. We have participated in tweet chats with other classes, using a visual display of the tweets so the whole class can be involved in the discussion.

I have found Twitter to be an effective tool for increasing engagement and communication. I can use it to feature student voice and reach a community larger than our classroom or school. It also informs my own practice as I follow educational posts to inspire me!