Friday, 14 March 2014

Leah Mabon - Teacher's Toolbox

Off to a Good Start: Launching the School Year - Excerpts from the Responsive Classroom Newsletter.
Summary
Chapter 1: Establishing Rules
            The first chapter discusses the creation of classrooms and how you can create a caring community with your students. There is a heavy emphasis on creating these rules by taking into account both the students’ and teacher’s hopes and dreams for their classroom during the school year. The book emphasizes that a classroom with few rules that are actually honored is much more effective than a bunch of rules that will just be forgotten. The book suggests that setting up the rules may take a large amount of time but if children are given a voice and the opportunity to explore the meaning of the rules, before they are adopted, they can be successfully used in the classroom. There were three main guidelines that the chapter focused on: 1) Rules need to provide positive direction – what you do, not what you do not do 2) Few is better than many. Rules should be posted and easy to read. 3) In a Responsive Classroom, rules need to be positive, global and constantly examined.

            Valuable Resource: p. 10-15 – A Fifth Grade Charter: A fifth grade teacher formed her         classroom rules by making a “constitution” of rules to reflect their social studies unit on the American Revolution. This involved the entire class in discussion and involved children discussing which rules they liked, disliked, and which ones they liked but found    hard to follow. Though not all rules worked, a sense of mutual responsibility was instilled. 

           
Chapter 2: Building a Sense of Group         
            The second chapter discusses various activities and resources for building a sense of community in your classroom and what teachers can do to help a class have a successful lunch experience. The book suggests that a Responsive Classroom incorporates curriculum activities that require students to plan, problem solve, express themselves, actively listen, and build important social skills such as cooperation, assertion, responsibility, empathy and self-control. The second part of this chapter was all about having a successful lunch experience with your class. The main ideas were that often behavior breaks down when children hit the lunchroom and are faced with overly long “wait times”. There are three main steps you can take to prevent this from happening. The first is to teach students that “lunch has a purpose” by discussing with your students what lunchtime is actually for. The second is to “practice doing lunch” through modeling the proper lunchroom behavior for your students, and then having them model it in turn and eventually in the actual lunchroom setting. The third idea is that “lunch is fun!” and suggests that by having a different lunch partner every day, and playing quiet games with that partner (20 questions etc.) students are occupied and engaged, resulting in avoiding the “wait time”.
Valuable Resources: 
  - Name Bulletin Board (pg. 24) where students make name cards that represent themselves in some way then all name cards are posted onto a bulletin board

  - Autobiographies (p. 25)

  -Pride Day (p.26) where students write or dictate about something they can do that they are proud of, share this “something” with the class, and then lead that activity with the entire class.


Chapter 3: Introducing Materials and the Room
            Chapter three focuses on giving students the freedom to explore by introducing them to the idea of Guided Discovery and provides helpful tips and suggestions for developing a responsive classroom environment through proper display of students’ work. In this chapter, Guided Discovery can be summarized as introducing your students to your classroom in a very controlled and structured way such as on the first day only introducing 1 large box of crayons but focusing on different ways to use the crayons, how to share the crayons and how to handle the crayons and stretch it out over a day. The book suggests that through Guided Discovery, the areas of the classroom are opened and children are prepared for different aspects of the curriculum at each age-level. Guided Discovery does not need to occur for every material. It is selective.
            This chapter also discussed that establishing a Responsive Classroom environment “reflects the creative, cognitive, individual and shared interests and accomplishments of the children” (p. 44). There should be one general bulletin board which should be uncluttered, should only have what is necessary and most useful to the child at the time, and should display important information that children refer to and interact with every day or is changed often. There should be a section for 3-D articles where students can exhibit 3-D pieces of work and “sharing articles”. Lastly there should always be at least one “all-class display” where every student can express themselves through a piece of work. Finally you should post photographs of your students engaged in a favorite accomplishment, at eye level all year long.
            Valuable Resources:
           
Art Gallery: a bulletin board that highlights two or three new “artists” each week.
            Show and Tell Shelf: section where students can display their show and tell objects

Chapter 4: Extending the Classroom Walls
            The fourth and final chapter provides very helpful tips for reaching out to your students’ parents and providing ample opportunities for them to be involved in your classroom. These tips include reaching out to parents as soon as possible by trying to schedule first parent-teacher conferences during the early weeks of school versus November and that these conferences should invite a large amount of parent input such as asking questions like “what do you think is most important for your child to learn this year?”. Teachers should respond to the parents goals by following up on the child’s progress and by documenting it throughout the year. After learning the parents goal, discuss with the parent the hopes and goals for the class and the student this year. When a parent does not show up for the specified conference, the book suggests that we still leave the door open to these parents and perhaps send a follow-up letter telling them we missed them and letting them know what the goals are for their child or the class.
            The last part of this chapter focuses on the idea of Parents as Partners and that we should provide many and varied opportunities for parents to visit and be involved in our classroom. Some examples of this include the one-to-one conferences, occasional or spontaneous visits where a teacher will send home a general invitation to parents to visit or listen in on classroom events. The book provides some general guidelines for parent`s visits (pg. 60) to assure the class still runs smoothly. These guidelines include allowing children to be independent workers, if parents have questions or concerns bring them to the teacher’s attention before leaving, the proper ways to talk to children.
           
Valuable Resources: - Letter to the Parents (p.52): Teacher sends out a letter to the parents outline the goals behind one-to-one conferences

- Parent Guideline Handout: If parents are planning to visit the classroom, provide a handout which outlines the activities that will take place during the day.

- Classroom activities to involve parents (p. 55): Family Heritage Museum, Family Projects Fair, Family Read-Aloud, Family Science Night, Family Film Night

Critique
            I definitely had mixed feelings while reading this book. I feel that it could definitely be a valuable resource but for certain age groups in particular. The basic ideas within the book could probably be applied to all grade levels, however the examples and resources within the book seem to be only appropriate for a K-1 classroom or a grade 5 classroom. It would have been nice to have some examples and resources for a range of age groups.
            I found Chapter 1 very informative and took many useful tips from it as I feel that establishing rules is a crucial thing to do at the beginning of a school year. If you create a small handful of rules, with your classroom as a whole, your students will be more likely to follow the rules and they will know why they need to follow those rules. Students are less likely to follow a list of rules with twenty-some rules that they could care less about. I also found Chapter 4 very interesting because I could apply it directly to my current experience in practicum. I feel that the suggestions in Chapter 4 are all great ideas and that they would be very useful and for the most part effective with classroom parents. I think that Parents as Partners is a great idea because not only will your relationship with the parents strengthen, and in turn benefit the student, but the parent and student relationship will strengthen as well! If you have a good relationship between yourself, your student and your student’s parents I feel that if a problem should arise, it can be dealt with appropriately and progress can continue on schedule.
            I was disappointed with Chapter 3 and the discussion on Guided Discovery. I have heard of Guided Discovery before reading this book and think it is an absolutely great practice to incorporate into your classroom. However I felt that particular examples in this chapter, such as spending the majority of the day exploring a box of crayon, would not go over well in most classrooms and that the example was a bit over the top. On the flip-side, the book does say that Guided Discovery is selective and does not need to apply to every material, so as long as person can remember that rule, I think they will be in the clear.
            All in all I feel that for such a short book (only 62 pages) it is a fantastic resource as it is packed full of tips, suggestions, examples and activities. I think that if you are a first-year teacher this would be a cheap and useful resource to add to your collection. You might have to tweak a few of the examples to suit your class in particular, but I think the majority would go over well in most classrooms.


            

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