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