Oct

16

An easy way to help students get and stay organized

Filed Under Graphic Organizers, Learning Strategies, Organization, Special Education, Useful Handouts | 2 Comments

uploaded by steel wool

Some students have great difficulty gettng and staying  organized while others seem to have no problem at all.  I’m always looking for ways to make organizing seem easy so my students will do it , and I think I’ve found a way.  I’ve created a chart “I Will Organize One Thing Today Chart” that I adapted from something I saw called “I will do one thing”.  I’m going to have my students who need organization coaching to give this a try. Come to think of it, maybe I’ll have all my students in my Advanced Learning  Strategies Class do this on a regular basis.  I’ll let you know what happens in a couple of weeks.  Let me know how it works if you give it a try or if you have something that you else that use that’s quick, easy and effective.

Feb

3

Blogging in the Classroom- By Invitation Only

Filed Under Behaviour Management, Blogging in and out of the Classroom, Computers In The Classroom, Dealing With Stress, Engaging Assignments and Activities for Students, Goals, Graphic Organizers, Uncategorized, Useful Handouts | Leave a Comment

welcomeSince my last post about setting up a classroom blog and after speaking with my blogging consultant extraordinaire, Lisa, I’ve made some changes. As Lisa so astutely pointed out with the blog setup I’d chosen for my classroom blog, my students’ posts would not be private. Anyone could access the them. Given that I wanted my students in my Learning Strategies Class to publish their personal reflections on a variety of topics and issues, she felt that they might not be comfortable doing this if their posts were accessible to the entire net. I have to say, I think she’s right. My students would be more likely to share their thoughts with their classmates. than with the whole world. So, Lisa did some further research and offered me some other options. After some deliberation, I decided to go with WordPress because it offered the option of having a private blog where I could invite participants. The students would go to WordPress and register a user name, and then I would invite them to participate in the classroom blog. I can invite up to thirty-five students , so that’s not a problem. Only the students I invite will be able to participate in the blog. I want that element of control because I don’t want too much to have to apologise for!

Now, I am developing an assignment that would have my grade eleven and twelve students create a pamphlet aimed at kids in grade four and up on surfing the net safely. There’s an elementary school nearby, and we could distribute the pamphlets to those kids. I’ll get in touch with the principal and check out the possibility.

I’ll have my class do a placemat activity (see link below) to brainstorm ideas for the contents of the pamphlet and the rubric which will be used to evaluate it. Some of my students have younger siblings so they’ll appreciate the value of such a pamphlet. We’ve all heard the horror stories about unsuspecting kids and the internet. I’ll also have them post their reflections about the assignment on the class blog. I already have handouts for some of those reflections , one for before (see link below) they start the assignment and one for after (see link below) they have finished it. They can use the handouts as a starting point.

Graphic Organizer- Placemat

Handout- Thinking About the Completed Assigment

Handout- Assignment Planning

Jan

29

It’s Deja Vu All Over Again

Filed Under Behaviour Management, Blogging in and out of the Classroom, Computers In The Classroom, Dealing With Stress, Evaluation, The Way I See It, Useful Handouts | Leave a Comment

homeworkHomework
It seems that the debate about homework is gathering speed. I wrote about it here last December, and I was interested to read Doug’s idea for taking the sting out of homework. He has his students blogging their History homework! I think Doug is going to have a problem: he’s going to kids lining up to take his History class.

Taking Care of Yourselfjumping through hoopd
It’s the end of semester and tomorrow is the deadline for marks so of course there would be problems with computers and printers. What did we expect? Teachers were running around everywhere (not me thankfully) looking for computers and printers that would work. Talk about stress. I wanted to grab them and have them read David’s post “How to Be Good to Yourself”, but that would have just added to their stess. So, I think I’ll just wait until things calm down a bit.

Reflecting Back (Can you say reflecting back, or is that redundant?)
Today I was reflecting upon the past semester and what worked well and what could have worked better. In all the hurly-burly of the last day of classes, I forgot to ask my students to give me my report card on how I did as a teacher. Mind you my group of kids don’t hesitate to tell me what they like or don’t like and that’s ok with me because as long as we get the job done I don’t really care how we do it. I’m open to suggestions if they don’t like my suggestion. I just tell them what the outcome has to be, how we get there is open to discussion. The only stipulation is that we get there. I like Dustin’s philosophy for managing his classroom and his Course Evaluation Handout, too. It would give valuable feedback. In fact, I like it better than the one I was using. Thanks for sharing, Dustin. A+

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