Photo of Tammy Axt
Tammy Axt General, Planning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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Beverly Papove Diverse Learning Needs, General, Learning in a Real Life Context

Water Day, Earth Day and Poetry

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

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

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

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

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

Photo of Lisa Taylor
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!

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

Sweat The Small Things

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

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

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

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

 

Photo of Beverly Papove
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.

Photo of Mike Beetham
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.

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 Mike Beetham
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 Lisa Taylor
Lisa.Taylor Assessment, Communication Tools, Communication with Parents and Guardians, Differentiated Instruction, Diverse Learning Needs, General, Planning, Report Cards

Updating the IEP

With the end of Term 1, comes the IEP review and update process. While the intention is that the IEP is regularly reviewed and updated, many IEPs lay stagnant all term and are dusted off at reporting time to be updated. Teachers are excellent at setting goals, supporting goals, working with children to achieve goals, and even revising and modifying goals along the way. We often slip up in the record keeping portion of the process. How many times have we called the parent of a student on an IEP to talk about how they are doing, what they can be working on at home to support progress, etc., and not logged it in the IEP contact record? I often forgot to include that until it was IEP review time and then I would grab my communication binder and update. It is so important to keep the IEP up-to-date always. If you set a goal for a student to be able to count up to 50 and notice that they can count to 60, that goal needs to be changed on the IEP immediately! The whole point of the IEP is to have goals that are attainable, but not too easy. The hope is that we will push the student beyond their current ability level to extend their knowledge, hopefully closing the gap between where they are currently working, and the level their class is working at.

When recording communication, goals, assessments, accommodations, etc. on the IEP, I find it helpful to include as much detail as possible. Many IEP engines have drop-down menus, check boxes, etc. This might not always provide you with everything you need to paint an accurate picture of the student. Don’t be afraid to use the “other” box and explain. If you are doing something that is “outside of the box” for a student and it is working, document it!

We like to think that those students will be at our school forever and so will we, but that is not always the case. Unfortunately, families move, teachers move, people get ill, things happen. If you are suddenly not able to be at school, it is important that those records are up-to-date. Last year, I became ill and was quite abruptly sent home from work to await surgery. I was given next to no notice that I was not going to be at work, and the duration was undetermined. In the time that I was gone, two of my students moved. Had I not had their records up-to-date, I would have had to come in off of my sick leave (which might have jeopardized my leave) to collect up my data to update their records. Keeping things thorough and detailed also means your colleagues who have the student in the future know what things have been done for the student, what works, where the strengths are, etc., without having to track down previous teachers. With Lay-Offs, School Surplus, Transfers, etc., the staff in a school can change pretty rapidly. That document might be he only thing left in the school that really knows a student by the end of the staffing process in a given year.

There are lots of sites that will help with writing goals, scaffolding to ensure goals are progressing toward a larger goal, etc. It is often easy to get the IEP completed once you sit down and get to work. It is feeling the urgency and the importance that the document holds that really motivates a teacher to keep the IEP updated on paper, not just in their daily planning.

Alison.Board Assessment, Classroom Management, Differentiated Instruction, Integration, Planning, Report Cards, Use of Technology

Starting Over

 

 

January can feel like September. It is an opportunity to initiate new routines and expectations or inject something new into your current program. For many teachers, the last weeks of school in December before the break is challenging. Students are excited about the anticipated break; programs are interrupted with practices for concerts and special assemblies; and teachers are hanging on as they maintain or try to maintain a normal environment.

With the much needed break, students and teachers return to school refreshed. Many will not admit it, but look forward to the return of a regular routine. Take this opportunity to get your students quickly involved in new learning that may have been hard to tackle in December. There are at least three weeks of school before the cut-off for term one reporting. Assigning projects the first week back will focus the students directly, and provide you with assessments needed at the end of January.

Over the holidays, I have prepared an outline for the Biodiversity Infographic that I will be assigning my Grade 6 students the first week back. It will provide assessment both in Science and Media Literacy. I have also been considering an autobiography or biography project for my class. I am still working on the outline but I am thinking about a booklet that will include entries in writing and art. To differentiate to all levels for both projects, I will provide graphic organizers, allow choice of topics, and encourage students to create their works in print or with technology.

Take something that has inspired you over the holidays, (travel, nature, art, movies) and find a way to bring that interest to the classroom. It is surprising the connections you will make to the curriculum and the enthusiasm that you will share with your students.