Teacher Extraordinaire - Portfolio of a Teacher and Lifelong Learner

With the start of the Year 3 Sharing the Planet unit, we have been spending some time on our wonderful school campus, observing the flora and fauna. We are really lucky to be in the location that we are in, in terms of all of the opportunities we have to engage in learning in the outdoors. Year 3 has been spending time outside doing both Mathematical and Scientific observations. In terms of Mathematics, we have been looking at the symmetry we can find in nature. We went outside to find once living and natural materials and then brought them back to class to sketch. Students were also invited to look at pictures of other plants and animals in books, in order to further examine the concept of symmetry. Moving forward we will go back into nature (onto school campus, and the beach) to look at the different shapes that we can find. For our scientific observations, students were closely observing their environment and writing or drawing about what they saw / writing their questions. Through ...

What better way to celebrate the week before Christmas vacation than with a fun and educational activity? Grade 2 students recently read "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" and designed set pieces for the story's various locations.  From Mount Krumpet to Whoville, students collaborated on creating visual representations of the story's world. Through this process, students also honed their problem-solving skills, considering how characters and props changed throughout the story and how to accommodate those changes in their designs.  The day of the performance allowed each group to showcase their work and practice their storytelling abilities.   This activity provided valuable opportunities for collaboration, planning, and problem-solving, while also allowing students to flex their creative muscles in visual arts and drama. In addition, students practiced important literacy skills such as story sequencing, reading, speaking, listening, and writing. What a wonderful lead...

 As a part of our Grade 2 "How we Organize Ourselves" unit, students chose an essential service, created an essential service with clay and then researched that essential service. They also had to justify why they felt that service was essential to the community.  After students made their essential service, they considered which other elements were needed for their community. As a class we then co-constructed the community together. After the community was made, I introduced different variables and scenarios. For example "a robber appears" which had an easy solution as we had a police station. "A house is on fire," is another problem our community could solve as we had a fire station. Gradually though, issues became more apparent as garbage piled up, potholes appeared on the roads and sewage had nowhere to go. Our citizens were also becoming ill due to not having any clean water to drink. It was at this point that students made the realizati...

 At the end of our first unit, which was about healthy and balanced lifestyle. Students were tasked to create a balanced lifestyle day. They were placed into four groups and each group needed to choose 2 areas of balanced lifestyle to focus on / plan a 10 minute activity for. These areas were as follows:  Healthy Relationships Mental Heath Healthy Eating and Drinking Water Screentime Sleep / Rest Exercise The Arts Reading / Studying So, after students chose their areas, they were given special planning sheets to plan out what materials (if any) they would need, who would be giving instructions and what those instructions would be and they noted if they needed teacher assistance with anything (and were given reminders to ask a teacher ahead of time for anything they might need).  Students were told ahead of time that on the actual day of the activities, the teacher would not be there to teach, and that it would be up to them. Activities by students ranged from: Reading boo...

  As an educator, my teaching philosophy revolves around the belief that education is about the learning journey and how as educators, we help to steer or guide our students heightened awareness, new thinking and understanding. It’s about providing the tools and strategies for them to succeed, while engaging in ongoing assessment. It’s about being excited and creating the right environment for that excitement to be transferred to our students. Its about seeing that excitement, engagement or passion transferred to other areas of a students' life, such as in the ways that a student takes action. I see teaching and learning as an ongoing, lifelong journey. As one famous fictional teacher (Ms. Frizzle) often says, “Take Chances, Make Mistakes, Get Messy!” I often think about this quote and how it applies to my own practice, as I believe in the power of taking chances and making mistakes in terms of how this can aid us in our learning journey. Growth Mindset is always at the forefront...

 Genius Hour is not new to teachers. I first came across the concept when I was teaching in Taiwan from 2015-2017, where we had a set time every week for students to explore topics, passions and pursuits they were interested in.  The website  Teachthought  defines Genius Hour as:  "It should be driven by student curiosity and might use a clear driving question to guide inquiry.  It should Involve Research or clear 'new learning' The product, end result or other compelling artifact from the project can be shared/published." Image from  We Are Teachers In the second last week of school I thought, "what better way than to celebrate learning and a culmination of learning than spending some time devoted to Genius Hour during Literacy class?!" Of course, proponents of genius hour will state that it shouldn't be just a once-a-year thing, and I agree, but at my school students are also exposed to / use skills related to inquiry all the time (it is an IB school...