Welcome to Teachers At Risk
-
Sep
1
School starts next week so it’s time to dust off my Web 2.0 tool kit.
Filed Under "At-risk" students, Behaviour Management, Blogging in and out of the Classroom, Computers In The Classroom, Engaging Assignments and Activities for Students, Learning Strategies, Reading, Special Education, Web 2.0 tools and technologies, motivating students, underachieving students | 1 Comment
School starts next week, and it’s time to dust off my tool kit I use to engage my reluctant and struggling readers and writers. I need to remind myself that there are lots of reasons why my students are reluctant to read and write- learning disabilities, competition from other activities, lack of interest, school not valued. Some of my students have told me they don’t read and write outside of school. Of course they do. They just don’t realize it. I have to make them aware that they read and write outside of school everyday. I need to help my students make a paradigm shift and so they can realize when they text message, email, surf the net or are on YouTube they are reading and writing all the time. My students are very comfortable online. they spend hours and hours on line. I try to use that to my advantage when trying to engage my more struggling and reluctant students.
Good pedagogy states that I should start where our students are. Where are my students? The BBC reported recently that today the average kid spends 44.5 hours a week on-line. Imagine. I can hardly believe that, but when I asked my students whether they thought the statistic was accurate they seemed to think it was pretty accurate.
given that my students practically live online, I decided to build a Web 2.0 tool kit to use in class.I’m going to share with you a slide show I used at a presentation last year to introduce the Web 2.0 tools I use and why I use them. I also give an example of how I used them. Hope you find the slide show useful.
View more presentations from Elona Hartjes.Oct
5
The buddy system is working well in my math class.
Filed Under Behaviour Management, Special Education, motivating students, positive climate, underachieving students | 1 Comment
I love using the buddy system in my math classes because it’s such an efficient way to help kids get answers to any questions they have about the day’s lesson and makes monitoring their progress much easier. The students like the math buddy system because it enables them to meet needs in the classroom more easily.
At the beginning of the semester, I asked my students in my math classes to pair up with another student. I call these pairs math buddies. Sometimes three kids end up working together, but that’s OK too. Sometimes I “help” form the buddy groupings. Usually it all works out. As I’m typing this, it strikes me that the term math buddy might be a bit old fashioned. I guess it is in a way. I first heard about math buddies about 23 years ago. If anyone knows about a more up to date term for math buddies, I’d love to hear it.
Once the students form into buddies, I tell them that they are to work together helping each other by answering any questions they may have. I will only answer group questions, that is questions that their buddies can’t answer. If they have a question about anything they need to ask their math buddies first and if their math buddies don’t know the answer then it’s a group question and they can ask me. This cuts down on lots of questions like what page is the work on or what’s today’s date. I do have this information on the board, but it seems that some kids prefer to have someone tell them this informationn instead of reading it. I think that’s a huge waste of my time and it drive me crazy.
The buddy system with it’s group questions helps me be more effective. It seems to cut the class size in half. Without the buddy system I might have 22 kids in my class, 22 individual units if you will. That works out to a little over three minutes of time for each student. With the buddy system, I have only 11 units. That gives me twice a much time to help each pair of students and not all the pairs need help all the time. I think it’s a wonderful way to use the resources I have available- the student themselves. Since I have more time because the students are helping one another, I can give more in depth help to those students who need it or to those students who quietly sit there and do little.
My students like working together as buddies. There’s a nice vibe in the air while they work away on the day’s assignment. There’s joy and laughter in the class, and the work gets done. I can’t ask for more than that. After I’ve taught the lesson, someone always asks do we get into our math buddies now. I’ve yet to hear a groan. It’s rewarding to look down and see my “at-risk” students working so well and enjoying school, if only for a few moments.
I like the math buddy system because it frees me up to help those kid who might not normally get the help they need. You know those students who sit quietly and hope you don’t notice that they aren’t working. Sometimes they don’t want to ask the teacher for help or sometimes they lack motivation. I can go around to each team and monitor students progress and give them feedback quite easily. If a student it just sitting there, I’m more likely to notice and find out what the problem is. Students can’t “disappear” so easily.
All in all, I love the math buddy system. I’d say it’s right up there with the class blog for motivating my students. I think the math buddy system helps meet the needs of my students in many other ways, not just the obvious one of helping get the work done. The buddy system allows for completion between the buddies. Some students like that. Other students like to help. They certainly can do that. Some students like to work in groups. They can certainly do that. Even those students who like to work alone don’t seem to mind working with just one student. Given all this about the math buddy system, what’s not to love.
Oh yes, it helps keep me sane. I’m not running around like crazy trying to meet the needs of my students and wondering if I’ve missed helping someone.
Feb
25
It’s not literacy any more; it’s literacies.
Filed Under "At-risk" students, Engaging Assignments and Activities for Students, Learning Strategies, Web 2.0 tools and technologies, motivating students, underachieving students | 1 Comment
It’s not literacy any more; it’s literacies. In the past, we may have understood literacy to mean “the quality or state of being literate, esp. the ability to read and write” But today literacy is much more than that.
“Literacy is about more than reading and writing – it is about how we communicate in society…[It] takes on many forms: on paper, on the computer screen, on TV, on posters and signs.” (UNESCO -statement for the United Nations, Literacy Decade 2003 – 2012)
Chris Vanellis in “Help your teen develop literacy skills“ writes about the multiple literacies that students need to master. These are
• computer literacy (using software)
• web literacy (surfing the internet)
• digital literacy (cells, email, MSN)
• visual literacy (graphics, text, TV)
• auditory literacy (radio, conversing)
• home literacy (routines, chores)
• community literacy (bus schedules)
• social literacy (manners, etiquette)
• work literacy (procedures, routines)
• curriculum literacy (school subjects)I think we need to help kids see how these multiple literacies are really relevant to their lives not only in school and beyond but also in their personal lives. Mastering these litercies can improve the quality of theri lives. Sometimes kids can’t connect the dots for themselves, so we have to help them do it.
All of these literacies involve reading/writing or communicating in one form or another , so students need to be able to read/write/speak well enough to be able to understand and to be ale to be understood. They can improve all of these skills on-line or off .
I’ve found that my reluctant/struggling readers are engaged by and yes, even look forward to reading things like
- newspapers, flyers/magazines (on-line and off)
catalogs
comic books
cartoons
graphic novels
instructions for building models
TV guides
e-mails
CD/DVD covers
poems/song lyricsMy reluctant/struggling writers are willing to write things like
- e-mails
blog posts
comments to posts
journals
letters to friends
songs/poems/raps
even paragraphs and essays on-line.My students who are shy or fear public speaking or even just need to improve their oral skills are more willing to participate when they can use computer applications like VoiceThreads, Voki and Audacity that let them practice and then record what they have to say. They can gain skills and confidence in a low risk setting.
Just to wrap things up here,(I’m getting that feeling I’m starting to go on and on as my cold gets worse and worse) I want to emphasis again that today literacy is not just about the ability to read and write. It’s much more than that. It is true though that the ability to read and write are necessary prerequisites to being able to develop mastery in the other literacies. It’s important for students to see that these literacies are relevant and will help them improve the quality of their lives in and out of school, and if they have trouble seeing or accepting this, we need to help them.
Jan
31
There are lessons to be learned about dependent underachievers in the most unlikely places
Filed Under "At-risk" students, Behaviour Management, Special Education, underachieving students | 3 Comments
If you’re anything like me, you’ve probably noticed from time to time that there are lessons to be learned about all sorts of things in the most unlikely places. Today, while I was dividing and repotting my orchids because they’d finished blooming and had really outgrown their pots, (see photo) I realized that they had a lesson to teach me about my dependent underachievers.
You see, if you give orchids too much care and fuss over them a lot, they don’t thrive despite your best intentions. In fact, the more you fuss over them the worse their performance will be. Orchids given too much tender loving care in the form of too frequent watering, too much direct sunlight, too much warmth, too much of anything really will stop growing and just sit there and do nothing. My dependent underachieving students are a bit like my orchids- too much TLC from people around them and they stop flourishing and just sit.
The best thing I can do for my orchids and my dependent underachieving students is to step back a bit and give them enough space and just enough support to enable them to blossom on their own.
-
-
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Improve the web with Nofollow Reciprocity. -
Edublog Awards
Toronto Reading Council
