instructional strategies

October 1, 2012October 1, 2012 Tina.Ginglo Literacy, Resources

Sharing Personal Narratives

I am a big fan of Lucy Calkin’s Writers’ Workshop. I have seen it in action in many classrooms and I couldn’t wait to implement it in my own program. I started using writer’s notebooks last year with some success, but I wasn’t satisfied with my writing program. I decided to give it another go with this year’s group of grade 3s and we are off to fantastic start!

Students love having their own journals for writing. During the first few days of school, we covered their notebooks with colorful paper and I allowed students to decorate their covers. I loved seeing messages such as PRIVATE KEEP OUT and PROFESSIONAL WRITER’S NOTEBOOK written in big letters on the cover. In Calkin’s resources, she recommends that you begin the school year writing personal narratives through “small moments.” Small moments are short narratives where students write about something they did with a special person or in a special place. I have not had one student unable to think of something to write about! Students know they are to write for 15-20 minutes each day without interruption. They understand that we must be quiet so we can think about our writing. They love sharing their writing in Writers’ Circle and with their peer editor. Almost daily, I will photocopy (with permission from the author) a student’s small moment. As a group we identify strengths in the writing. I then use the student’s writing to teach a specific craft in writing such as adding dialogue or words we could use instead of “said.”

We are now focusing on “zooming in” when writing our small moment. Students are encouraged to use three types of sentences in their writing: action sentences, dialogue sentences and thinking sentences. They are starting to get the hang of it. Here is one grade three student’s small moment:

I opened the square box and smelled. “Mmmmm,” I thought to myself. “You better grab a slice before I eat all the pizza Tatiana!” I warned.

By S.B.

It seems so simple, but it does take students a while to get the hang of it. Three sentences that capture what Lucy Calkins refers to as “seed” ideas rather than watermelon ideas. Once students get the hang of writing these short personal narratives, they can start to write longer personal narratives. Our goal for the first week of October is for students to take one of the small moments they wrote in September and develop it into a longer personal narrative.

These personal narratives complement the reading resource I use in my classroom. The first unit in Nelson Literacy grade 3 is personal narrative or My Story. Reading as Writers, Writing as Readers…it doesn’t get better than that!

September 30, 2012October 1, 2012 Katie Pryde Diverse Learning Needs, Professional Learning and Growth, Resources, The Daily 5

The Daily 5

This year, the initiative our Primary Team has taken on in regards to literacy, is implementing The Daily 5 and CAFE. For those of you whom are unfamiliar with the 2, they are based on books written by “The Sisters”, Joan Moser and Gail Boushey. These books are a great (easy) read and gives you a wonderful basis and understanding of the 2 concepts, and how to set it up in your classroom. The Daily 5 is a framework that allows students to participate in 5 different activities each and every day: Read to Self, Read to Someone, Listen to Reading, Work on Writing and Work on Words. CAFE is an acronym standing for C- Comprehension, A- Accuracy, F- Fluency and E- Expanding Vocabulary, and are the strategies good readers and writers need to be successful. The 2 work very well and I feel, go hand in hand with one another. If you buy (or read) both books, they give you examples of how your first few days will look like when you are setting up the program in your classroom.

Since the 2nd week of school, I begun implementing these programs, one by one, illustrating what each Daily 5 looks like. We also created anchor charts that have been posted around the room illustrating the “expectations” both students and teachers have during our literacy block. Our chart is set up with the headings Students Do vs Teacher Do. Many of the activities are very similar in what the students and teachers are expected to do. Students, for the most part, are expected to work the whole time, remain quiet, work in one spot, get to work right away, and have fun! The teacher is expected to work with students at the guided reading table, conference with students, and watch/listen to how students are reading/writing.

The first concept I introduced to my class was Read to Self (independent reading). When we were practicing,
we were working on our stamina. This means, how long our brains are working without any breaks. Students should be reading for 20 mins each day, but first, we needed to build up our stamina, to reach the 20 mins. My students are quite fabulous, and really enjoy reading and it only took us 7 days to reach of goal of reading for 20 mins consecutively without any breaks. I encourage my students to have 2-3 books with them at their desk so if they finish a book before the 20 mins is over, they will have some more books at their desks so they can continue to read without stopping and interrupting others by getting a new book. Then, we moved to Listen to Reading, which is when I introduced our class read a loud. I brought in all my old Goosebumps Books for our classroom library, and my students are now obsessed with them. So, we took a classroom vote, and our first read a loud book was a Goosebumps Book- The Ghost Next Door. Then, we moved on to Read to Someone. How I set this up in my classroom, was by practicing buddy reading. We discussed how it looks like when you are reading to your buddy and EEKK (Elbow to Elbow, Knee to Knee). We did this for 2 days, and built up our Read to Someone stamina of 20 mins. Then, I introduced Work on Writing, where students had the opportunity to write in the writing journals. We created success criteria for journal writing, so students knew exactly what was expected of them when they wrote in their journals. Finally, I taught a mini lesson on syllables, and our Work on Words introduction allowed students to add their names to the class word wall, and they needed to sort all the students’ names based on the number of syllables in each name.

Once we went through all of the lessons and talked about what each Daily 5 looked like, as well as modelling some of the CAFE strategies (such as Check for Understanding, Choosing Good Fit Books and Go Back and Re-Read), we started our Daily 5 centres last week. The Daily 5 is all about choice, but for the first week, I decided to split my class into groups and they rotated through the Daily 5 centres so they could become familiar with the whole process. In our 100 minute literacy block, my students have the opportunity to be engaged in the Daily 5. My students first start off with Read to Self, where they read independently for 20 minutes. Then, I ring the bell which is an indicator to my students that they need to quickly tidy up and meet me on the carpet. Then, I teach a mini lesson on the CAFE strategy that we are currently working on. Sometimes, I read a read a loud picture book to my students and either model how to use the CAFE strategy, or get students to help me with it (so it becomes a shared reading and shared use of the CAFE strategy).
Once the lesson is complete, students are told which centre they will start off with. Students will rotate through 3 centres in one day. Last week, our centres were: Read to Someone (Buddy Reading) or Read to Someone (Guided Reading with Ms. Pryde), Work on Writing (journal writing which integrated with Social Studies- If I were a First Nations person, I would live… I would eat… I would travel by…), Work on Words (Read and Write the Room) and then I would finish off the 100 minute literacy block by reading a few chapters from our chapter read a loud book. Students spend 2 min at each centre. Next week, now that the students have had the opportunity to complete one complete rotation of our Daily 5 centres, students will be able to choose which centre they will go to and will keep track of which centres they would like to go to (a great Responsibility indicator, for students to make sure they go to each centre at least once, as well as keeping track of it on their own).

So far, it has been a success in my classroom and I look forward to seeing how it will look like in my classroom this week!

September 24, 2012September 24, 2012 Roz.Geridis Classroom Management, Learning About Your Students, Planning

Flexibility

I have part of a new assignment this year. In the morning I am covering prep. Due to re-organization, my schedule is changing again for Monday. I have completed many get to know activities, learned students’ names and just found out some classes I still have and others are new for me. That being said, it will all work out! Everything does. The students get attached very quickly and now I will get to know even more students.

My afternoon, I teach English, Math, Health and Pool to a grade 6 extended French class. The grade 6 curriculum is the same for me but now I teach a smaller portion of it. I will be busy sharing my plans with the other teacher who now has my class for Science.

That is teaching; change and flexibility. My morning will work out and I have worked out my plans to have the next days covered. I just needed to adjust a few items and have been able to use my current plans. As a school, you may have to go through re-organization. It is difficult. Deciding which students will excel in which environment, which students need to be separated from each other, balancing the girls and boys, special education and ELL needs. It is a very difficult task which also needs to be completed after a long day of teaching a class of 52 kids.

As I need to get teaching (with the new classes) in order to have enough assessment for the Progress Report card, I have decided to incorporate my get to know activities with the curriculum. I am planning to find ways to incorporate these activities as much as possible with my new classes. I plan to start with appreciation fans to help build the community within the classroom. The students all know each other and many know who I am but I need to get to know their names (better).

June 23, 2012June 25, 2012 Roz.Geridis Celebrating Success, Diverse Learning Needs, Planning, Use of Technology

End of the Year is Near!

Summer is almost here and the kids know it. Their lack of attention and wanting to be outside in the beautiful weather is hard to compete with. What do I do to keep the boys attention? How or what do I keep teaching when my reports are completed and in? No air conditioning or fan – my room is known as one of the hottest in the school. Why fight it – I take their learning outside and still teach curriculum.

I try to keep them inside as long as we can handle it; which means sometime between morning recess and lunch. At this point of the year, I am changing my day plan slightly. It is based on which lessons do I need the whiteboard or computer connection for? I teach those lessons first. For language, I take a book and read it to them while the boys are lying down under a tree. I ask questions about inferring, point of view, comprehension and relating the reading to their own life experiences. However, this is all completed orally, some questions are discussed in partners (while I go to every group and engage the students) and some are large group discussions.

For Math, I may take them on a walk looking for 3D shapes or angles in nature. This can also be done in your playground. I also may play a game with them related to probability or multiplication baseball. I look for ways to connect Math to their real world experiences. Having the students show me and themselves why we need Math in our everyday lives.

For Art, we have gone out into the community and sketched trees and flowers; items in our environment. We also have used digital cameras to take pictures of structures in our environment and used photoshop to add to their pictures.

I also am finding ways to take the kids on affordable field trips. While planning field trips, the boys have an input and have often asked for the trip to be just our class. We have one planned for the division to go to a Park, and my class want to go to a different area of the park. We are taking the TTC and exploring our city. Doing a walking tour of the city (while taking pictures) was one of the boys’ most favourite trips this year.

At this point of the year, I am finding ways to have fun with the class and also relate it to the curriculum. They seem to be enjoying it and even understand why we are learning certain aspects of the curriculum. The community environment we have developed is one I hope the boys will always remember.

June 4, 2012June 19, 2012 Erin.Grewar Celebrating Success, Classroom Management, Planning, Resources, Year End Activities

Summer’s Here! Oh yeah, it’s only the beginning of June (Part 1)

At this time of year, there seems to be a most distinct correlation between hot sunny weather and a drastically decreased output on the part of students (and if we’re being really honest, teachers as well). It’s been my experience that anything that doesn’t involve soccer baseball is met with a combination of disbelief, outrage and downright disgust. The secret is to engage your students in projects that are just too much fun to pass up. One such activity upon which I rely for such occasions is the “Annuaire” or class yearbook. With enough hype and enthusiasm on your part, they will buy into it as well. I usually give them a rough copy template with the following headings:

Nom
Sobriquet
Classe
Moment mémorable
Bête noire
Ambition personnelle

As with all assignments, it’s important to give students an exemplar for reference, brainstorm useful structures/expressions together and have all information visually accessible in the form of anchor charts. Again, you could also help them out by giving them sentence starters as well. Something that will no doubt grab their attention is if you fill out the sheet as you would have in grade 8 and of course, provide a picture of yourself at that age. In the past, this is what I have used as an exemplar so it serves a dual purpose. I think you’ll find this project will get them focused and productive and also provides a great opportunity for review if you’re discreet about it (le passé compose, le futur proche, les constructions avec deux verbs, etc).

Once complete, you can have the yearbook of each of the separate classes on display (and even use the yearbooks from previous years) – they are naturally curious about the work of their peers and love to reminisce about former students.

*For this to be really successful, it helps if you provide them with the materials they need such as bright, coloured paper, watercolours, markers and pencil crayons. What I also found is that it was much easier if I took their pictures and had them developed so that each student had a picture to accompany their page.

June 1, 2012June 1, 2012 Samantha.Perrin Occasional Teaching, Professional Learning and Growth

My Continuum of Professional Growth – An Attitude of Gratitude

Over the past couple of months, I have had the privilege of teaching in numerous schools and classrooms throughout the TDSB as a daily occasional teacher. I have been the ‘new kid at school’ so to speak, meeting new principals, other teachers and more students than I can count. The greatest benefit to meeting these new people and working in different classrooms has been being able to witness and learn from the great practices that are going on in the classrooms throughout the board, and taking these ideas with me as something that I might later implement in my own classroom.

In my conversations with other teachers, I am reminded of how lucky I am to be doing this. Some teachers were hired straight from pre-service, and developed their programs using the knowledge that they gained in pre-service and through the support of the school and board. One thing that I (and many new teachers that are navigating daily occasional teaching and LTO’s) have, that many experienced teachers did not have, is the opportunity to see and practice the other great ideas, lessons and systems that are going on in other classrooms. Some of the teachers that I have met in my day-to-day encounters expressed that feel that they ‘missed out’ on daily occasional teaching and getting to see great ideas from other classrooms that they could later experiment and make it ‘their own’. I have been fortunate to learn from so many of the great teachers and classrooms that I have taught in as an occasional teacher.

Referring to the ‘Continuum of Professional Learning and Growth’ in Chapter 8 of The Heart and Art of Teaching and Learning (ETFO, 2011), I have reflected on how I have evolved through the stages of the Continuum of Professional Learning and Growth. The stages of Orientation and Beginning Practice in my first year of teaching as a full-year LTO were challenging and rich in new learning. Taking in a multitude of information and making sense of how it applied to myself as a teacher was an intense and rapid learning curve- one that has resulted in a steadfast commitment to my own learning and improvement as a teacher.

Over the last couple of years in my continued work as an LTO, I have journeyed through the examination of my own practice, working to find the right fit of strategies that can be used for planning, managing my time, establishing an organizational structure, developing lessons, developing community in my classroom, utilizing school and professional supports, and the list goes on. For me, the Examination of Practice is the ongoing reflection that I do to help me identify how I can best serve and lead my students, and improve my practice. I feel that this is something I will never, and should never, stop doing for as long as I am an educator because it plays a large part in my commitment to being a better and more effective teacher. I have worked alongside great experienced teachers who make this a part of their daily and weekly practice, so that they can make improvements and adjustments daily and yearly. This is probably one of the things that contributes to how great they really are! I have taken note and learned so much from them.

Now, as a daily occasional teacher, teaching in other teacher’s classrooms, I get to observe, practice, and execute the great ideas that I haven’t yet learned or seen over the course of my teaching journey. It is inspiring to see the creative approaches to classroom management, community building, collaboration and so forth, seeing the things that I can later experiment with. Having such exposure, and the opportunities to Experiment and Apply are helping to inform my teaching identity and style (on a course to establishing my Embedded Practice), and I am grateful for having these opportunities.

There are many ways in which a teacher can arrive at opportunities for new learning, experimentation and application. We can collaborate with one another, attend workshops, take courses, read books, follow online blogs and we can also poke our heads into each other’s classrooms and find out what is going on ‘in there’. I have been fortunate that my teaching journey has led me to poking my head into many people’s classrooms, and learning from other teachers through my occasional teaching.

I am also thankful for the opportunity to write for this blog, where I can intentionally share my knowledge and practices with other beginning, experienced and occasional teachers. Intentional Sharing of Knowledge and Practice is located on the end of the Professional and Learning and Growth continuum (p. 122); I am able to do this now through this forum. This is just the beginning for me in the early stages of my career, but sharing knowledge is embedded in my practices as a teacher and as a colleague and it will continue to be a large part my approach in wherever my teaching career takes me. The other loggers have also broadened my perspectives, I have been mentored by their posts and they have helped me to identify other learning opportunities and priorities that will inform my embedded practices. Thank you! This year has been another vast learning opportunity, and I feel it is only just the beginning as I continue to navigate the challenging, rich and rewarding path of teaching.

May 25, 2012 Erin.Grewar Assessment, Diverse Learning Needs

Assessment Strategies for the Communicative Approach

I’m not sure about the rest of you but I’ve sometimes found that it is difficult to assess a summative speaking task. In response to sitting through the umpteenth (sometimes tedious) round of presentations where one has to equally focus on assessing the presenters while keeping the rest o the class quietly engaged, I was forced to diversify my methods. To deal with the latter problem, I found peer assessment to be an effective and useful tool. I constructed a rating chart with levels one to four focusing on the following criteria: spoke clearly with confidence and expression, spoke using vocabulary and language structures taught in class, spoke with natural flow and only minor hesitations, spoke using a variety of communication strategies (asking to repeat, using gestures, asking for clarification), came prepared to present and was focused during other people’s presentations.

I divided the class into strategic groupings beforehand to balance out the “distracted” students, varying levels of ability and particular dynamics. Once in their groups, students took turns presenting while the others evaluated and provided feedback. At the same time, I was circulating around the class and also simultaneously evaluating those students who were presenting. If I missed someone, I came back and asked them to repeat a portion of their presentation. To finish off and showcase some of their work, I asked each group to nominate one person/group to present to the class. At the end, students handed in their written evaluations providing myself and each other with valuable feedback and insight. What was also a major accomplishment was we had also managed to have everyone present in one period as opposed to the course of a week.

Using the same rating scale (minus the bit about being focused and on-task during other presentations), I also had students come up to see me individually. Asking them 4 to 5 theme-related questions, they had to answer them spontaneously. This allowed me a true insight into their level of speaking and an opportunity to hear them talk without any kind of prop. At the workshop I attended, they had suggested videotaping each student so that you could go back and evaluate from the footage but I found that this would make many students self-conscious and thus impact the results and in all honesty, I knew I wouldn’t have the time to do so.

The results were definitely interesting and in some cases surprising. I would strongly recommend attempting this as a final assessment once students had frequent opportunities to become comfortable and familiar with the vocabulary and pronunciation through the many opportunities of practising in class.

April 26, 2012 Erin.Grewar Assessment, Diverse Learning Needs, Learning in a Real Life Context, Professional Learning and Growth

Communicative Approach – On y parle!

In my recent blog, I commented on the latest approach ripping through the world of Core French like an F5 tornado. In all honesty, it might not be all that avant-garde since many of you are probably already covering some of the basics. What makes the communicative approach interesting to both students and teachers alike is that it is quite practical and offers kids an opportunity to actually speak French. I say “actually” because having students speak in French can sometimes seems achingly futile when, once dialogue scripts are removed, they seem not to be able to say much of anything. However, based on some suggestions from the workshop I attended and feedback from my students, we came up with a summative task that was quite successful for all.

For the past month, we had been working on a music-related theme and focusing largely on the grammatical concepts of adverbs, making comparisons and opinion-based statements. For our speaking assessment then, I proposed 3 options for having them create a natural, authentic dialogue between two/more people discussing their musical tastes:

(A) meeting in a music store
(B) calling in to a radio station and debating between two newly released songs
(C) scenario of their choice.

After handing them all a sample dialogue, I had them find and highlight the grammatical concepts (e.g., find and underline all the adverbs) to draw their attention to familiar elements. I find that always handing out an exemplar is fundamental in establishing your expectations and getting them to use vocabulary and language structures taught in class instead of ending up with a bad Google translation. What I did a little differently after that was ask the class what could be incorporated to make the dialogue sound more realistic and authentic. At that point, we brainstormed a bunch of expressions and inserted them appropriately and by the end, had come up with a great conversation.

Lastly, here are two suggestions that I have also found to greatly improve the quality of work (to be used also with written assignments). Make sure to continuously reference anchor charts posted around the room which for me, included how to structure a comparison, adverbs that add meaning, phrases related to expressing an opinion and brainstormed vocabulary. Finally, as a daily shared speaking activity, have four to five students answer various questions orally that could relate to the dialogue to get them accustomed to spontaneously speaking in French. Take a sample level 3 answer, write it on the board, and then modeling the use of anchor charts, insert expressions to demonstrate how to construct a level 4 reply. By the time of the dialogue, students will feel more at ease with the vocabulary/pronunciation and they will independently be able to add more complexity to their speaking. Bonne chance!

April 18, 2012 Erin.Grewar Assessment, Classroom Management, Diverse Learning Needs

Response to Tina’s Idea of Stations – a Great Teaching Tool

I was really excited to see Tina’s blog on using stations as a teaching tool. I echo that when I’ve used them, the students have been engaged, on-task and really enjoyed the variety of learning experiences offered to them. I also agree that they are a lot of work to set up but the end result is definitely rewarding.

Stations are valuable because they can be used for all levels of assessment – diagnostic, formative and summative and also are ideal for differentiated instruction. Depending on how often you use them, it can definitely be worth the investment of time and money.

In Core French, it would be interesting to have a listening station and related activities especially if you had access to a wireless portable lab. Even reading stations could be a really creative way to focus on different types of texts and useful strategies. In fact, as long as you have gone to the trouble of setting them up, stations don’t have to just be used for one day but could even last for a week-long investigation/activity.

I could also see them being used as a way to keep the rest of the class productively occupied while affording you the chance to work with a small group of students (that in itself could be one of your stations) and a golden opportunity for differentiated instruction/assessment. I think that if you were to use them on a regular basis, it would also be beneficial and efficient to practice each activity with the whole class beforehand so that, on the chosen day(s), they would know exactly what to do and no long-winded explanation would be necessary.

As a final inspired thought, you could also chose selected students who were trained in advance to run and supervise each station as a leadership opportunity which would free you up to kick back and relax – enjoy an extra large cappuccino and the front section of your morning paper while the class virtually runs itself like a well-oiled machine;).

April 13, 2012April 13, 2012 Samantha.Perrin Diverse Learning Needs, Planning, Resources, Use of Technology

Teaching Music When You’re Not a Music Teacher

I did not have a very extensive musical education as a student. I could tell you that every Good Boy Deserves Fudge: and FACE are some things to remember when you are reading notes. I may not have an extensive musical background, but that’s not to say that I can’t teach music:

I truly do appreciate music. I like a variety of melodies and enjoy paying attention to lyrics, instruments, beats and rhythms of songs, and I believe that discussing an appreciation of music can be educational and fun for students and the teacher. From time to time I incorporate this kind of music appreciation into my classroom, and now that I am daily occasionally teaching, I find it an excellent back pocket idea for instances when I am called into teach Music for the day or when I have some time and need to settle an active class.

I found ‘music appreciation’ to be successful with the students that I was teaching, because they like to sing and they can move to the rhythms. Music has also been shown to improve cognition in younger students: http://alumni.news.yorku.ca/2011/10/27/york-study-verbal-iq/?utm_medium=Email&utm_source=ExactTarget&utm_campaign. And let’s be honest, it’s fun to just groove out sometimes.

In my planning, I identify a genre of music (e.g., Jazz), read up on its history, instrumentation etc. and after playing some music for the students, we just discuss it. My I phone is very helpful- I can YouTube some music and Google additional information on it and play it for the students. We talk about how it made us feel and what we liked about it or didn’t like. Later, we learn to sing the song, we analyze the lyrics and research the genre some more through media literacy (e.g., I’ve had the students learn more about Jazz styling by exploring websites like http://pbskids.org/jazz/join_the_jazz_band.html.)

I hope this gives some beginning teachers some inspiration to make the most out of music instruction, even without a formal background in it. Good luck!