Teacher Extraordinaire - Portfolio of a Teacher and Lifelong Learner

Every year when classes are writing description, they have an opportunity to bring a toy into school, take a picture of it and print it in ICT class. As my students are second graders, they are learning I.C.T skills with this project. Another use for taking pictures of their toy, might be taking pictures of two or more toys in different positions, printing off three different pictures and then writing their own "toy story" based on the sequence of pictures.

I believe in the importance of classroom books, as they allow students some ownership over their classroom and learning. With a class book, students can go back and look at their own work and ideas as well as that of their classmates. There are two books in particular, that I'd like to talk about in this post, because the fist fosters problem solving in children and the second is all about respect. One book that I like to make every year is a classroom Yellow Pages . The Yellow Pages is a reference book for children, and an attempt at helping them to solve certain problems they might encounter in daily life. Can't tie your shoe laces? Look in the yellow pages. Need some ideas for how to solve a math problem? Check the yellow pages. Looking for a friend to play with? Ect. Now of course students are self-reporting, so sometimes they are not actually experts in the fields they deign to be experts in, but have a chat with them before you do the activity and

Currently I teach in Al Khor, Qatar. There is not a lot of English media that honours and educates about Qatari culture. As a result, I make a lot of material myself, which is used during Qatar National Week . Last year I made Reader's Theatre scripts. This year I wrote new lyrics to the song "Shoo Fly Don't Bother Me", entitling the song "Past Qatar Jobs". I have also created homework pages that support non-fiction learning about Qatar. It is very important that students feel that their origins, ethnicity and culture are honored, and sometimes creating new material is necessary to achieve this end. Below is Past Qatar Jobs , a song sung to the tune of Shoo Fly : Youtube karaoke track to go with it: The song performed at National Day had 6 verses in total, with three in Arabic and three in English. An mp3 was created in Garageband with the help of an ICT teacher at the school, that had a full 6 verses. Here are the Reader's Theatr

I find displays a fundamentally important part of teaching, as they give students a place to look to double check concepts or vocabulary. One thing that I've found of utmost importance this year, is putting up grammar displays, placing them in visible places and putting the same displays into grammar center boxes. The reason why I find these displays so fundamentally important, is that they act as a crux to help support students who don't yet have the concept down pat, as they complete tasks that support the learning of the concept, not only in class but also in centers. It helps them be problem solvers, as it gives them a place in the classroom (or center box) that they can use to help themselves. Students do in fact make reference to the displays to support their own learning. Below are just a few of the displays I made this year. If you would like, you can print them off and laminate them and have them for your own classroom use. The ones below are all for grammar, however

“ Math Math Baby” is a collaborative effort done by myself and three colleagues in teacher's college, that replaces the lyrics of Vanilla Ice’s Ice Ice Baby with concepts from the grade 6 math curriculum. Given the length of the song and necessity to create rhymes, we decided to focus on several concepts. These concepts included shapes (2D and 3D), measurement, graphing, operations, numeracy (fractions, decimals and whole numbers) and problem solving strategies. Each verse reviews two or three of these concepts. It is our hope that this song and performance would serve to convince students that math can be fun, and that any subject can come alive. The song could be played as a transition for math class or as part of a lesson to help us learn and remember the different units of grade 6 math. We felt that a rap would be an appealing medium of communication, and appropriate for an older elementary school audience. Many Grade 6 students are in the process of maturing, and sometime

Literacy Centres are such a huge part of what I teach and how I teach at the moment! I was almost unsure of how to approach this broad topic but knew I had to include something about them in my portfolio. They are a firm and entrenched part of my reading program and English program. This is just to give some information about how my centres run (although you can also find some fantastic videos on youtube and curriculum.org as well as find out more on The Daily Five ) I do not propose to be an expert on literacy centres, and am in fact learning new things all the time from colleagues and other resources. My centers are essentially divided up as follows: Reading Raz-Kids Writing Guided Reading Handwriting Drama Spelling Pocket Chart Big Book Detective Sight Words Grammar   Special/Fun Reading, Writing, Guided Reading and Raz-Kids are constants. The other centers might be switched in and out week to week. Children are divided into groups based on reading level (this is

Earlier in the year, students had an opportunity to create their own setting from Dr. Seuss' The Lorax.  We were studying setting at that time, and at literacy centres they had one period to finish their diorammas. This was an opportunity for students to transfer their knowledge of the book, the story and the colors into a beautiful piece of art. Not to mention, students were given a certain amount of play dough and one piece of cardboard to mount it on per group, so they had to talk about what they wanted to do and compromise. All of them chose to do the more pretty/colorful settings, as opposed to The Onceler's House , which I think just speaks to the settings that appeal to them as young learners. If there was more time, we could have done paper theatre plays within the settings where the trees were upright. Of course the book also ties in beautifully to themes of environmentalism, and thus could be used in science or social studies units about the planet and impa

At the end of my past two years of teaching, I've done fairy tale drama projects with the students. They are in grade two, and for some it's their first real exposure to acting by moving their bodies and manipulating props. They have however worked on voice projection, expression and eye contact before both in reading and during oral presentations. This project is always fun for the students, as they see how various oral and presentation skills can come together in a different way. Not to mention, the video is burned to a CD and it's a good memento for students at the end of the year. This year, we performed The Snow Queen . Last year it was Aladdin, Rapunzel and Jack and the Beanstalk. Students themselves get to choose the story they'd like to do, so they have a very vested interest. We will first brainstorm ideas, then choose one or several ideas. Afterwards they are put into groups, then cast into parts (with their input) and we brainstorm a list of props they can

Back in January I attended a NESA (Near East South Asia Council of Overseas Schools) Conference in Oman. I went to go see Debbie Silver and her presentation about building resilience in children. One of the reasons I chose this, is that I feel it will be relevant to whenever or wherever I am teaching in my life. It's also a topic that interests me a lot. I wanted to know how to best help children to have a growth mindset (this concept was introduced to me in the conference) and not a fixed mindset. I wanted to know how to help them develop grit and to want to try again / try different methods. I also wanted them to be able to listen to descriptive feedback and respond to that with a "Can Do" attitude. While we can't change completely every child and every circumstance, she did give a lot of fantastic tips on what we as teachers can do. It was great food for thought, and we walked away with easy tips that would make our teaching and our students' responsiveness

Envision the classroom you would like to have in the future. Are all the students learning at their own pace, using the information of where they are right now to inform your practices and groupings OR is it only whole group with very little addressing of individual needs or skills that need to be developed? It is my hope that your answer was the former, as this is the way that the highest number of student needs can be addressed. This kind of classroom can only be achieved with excellent planning, assessment and classroom management at the forefront. Developing reading skills should be a core element of elementary school teaching. In order to gain the most mileage from planning, including the three kinds of assessment is necessary in your classroom. You can only reliably implement/impart assessment if you: 1.  Know your material and standards. 2.    Begin with the end in mind. 3.    Design material to appropriately meet and measure achievement of these standards / le