Group Task Management

In my short time as a teacher, I've heard pros and cons to using Group Work as a teaching tool. Some people think it's the lazy teacher's way to get through the day, some people believe it's a way to get pupils to take charge of their own learning. If you have self-motivated pupils, then group tasks can be beneficial, but I don't think group work should be avoided just because some pupils need a little more motivation and guidance.

I'm sure I'm not the only teacher who's learned the hard way that dividing pupils into groups to accomplish a task requires more management and thought than you'd think. With no guidance, pupils fight over who will do what, or won't actually accomplish anything because no one has really taken charge or taken initiative. As a teacher, you really have to guide pupils with everything from who will collect resources for their group, to who will physically write down information. To be fair, some pupils just click and get on with it; but there are some who really need your guidance in order to accomplish the task you've set them.

Often when I divide my kids up to work in groups, I assign them roles so everyone is clear on what they need to contribute to their group. I've carried this out in several ways in the past: I've popped wee post-its on certain pupils to indicate who's the Scribe/Author, I've written the titles of each role on slips of paper and handed them out randomly, or I've allowed the children to decide who will be what. What I find to be the best method to carry out assigning roles is having these cards to use and re-use:

I created this set myself, including the illustrations. I've printed, cut out and laminated a few sets of these cards (so you can hand them out to several groups) so I can just keep reusing them. The children quickly learn what group roles are and what their responsibilities are, but I find the cards to be a good reminder. On the back of each card, the role title is written at the top with some reminders of what they should do:

I made up a separate page of the job descriptions and glued them to the back of the picture cards before I laminated them. Easy peasy.

I explained the group roles to the children as their Job Titles. For instance, my job title is "Teacher." The Job Titles, or Roles, that I use are:

1. Manager
2. Illustrator
3. Reader
4. Author
5. Resource Manager
6. Reporter

I don't necessarily use every role for every group task, and not every person in the group gets a role all the time because it may not be necessary for the task. Or sometimes, I have fewer than 6 pupils in a group, but there is a need for all the roles, so some pupils may get TWO job titles! I would slowly introduce these roles to younger pupils, but I've managed to be able to use them for as young as Primary 2 (Grade 1).

Let me know if you find this method of Group Task Management helpful in your classroom!

...and on that farm he had some chicks

All in all, the experience with the hatching chicks was very successful. The children painted pictures of chicks, we read books about how they grow and what they need to survive; the children were so excited to see them and how they changed so quickly. By the time we sent them to a farm, they were already beginning to grow their feathers under their wings! I would highly recommend doing this project with your class or school. It was such a rich topic, and the children are still talking about it a few weeks on.

Just a little freebie

I like two things: designing things in Photoshop, and sharing.

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Teachers Pay Teachers

Teachers are known for reinventing the wheel. There are teacher supply stores, ready-made products and resources, books full of photocopiables, free printables online, and yet we spend hours making our own resources from scratch. I'm as guilty as the next teacher. In fact, I'll even admit that I like making my own resources. It drives Mr. West nuts, especially when I spend time on the weekend creating things for my class!

Well, it turns out I'm not the only one who likes to spend their downtime doing teacher-y things. Teachers Pay Teachers is a site where teachers can post their personally-made resources for other teachers to download either for free or for a price. Some of the stuff on there can be pretty useful, and I've recently set up an account of my own to share my handiwork.

There are quite a few languages represented in my class, so I recently made up multilingual Days of the Week posters. You can download your own free set here. The languages depicted are Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Chinese, Bengali, Urdu, and English.

Displays: Their place in the learning process

To every teacher's dismay (or excitement), displays and bulletin boards are a necessary evil in the life of the classroom. Personally, I enjoy creating displays in my class - as long as I have the time! Through my internet travels, I've come across all kinds of displays and educator's ideas of what they should convey and how. I've happened across a lot of American teaching blogs which seem to put a lot of thought and effort into their bulletin boards and classrooms in terms of the theme:

colour scheme:

and all the tiny details to make the displays bright, cute, and fun.

There's even a website dedicated to bulletin board ideas! Great, right? I used to think so, and still do like some of those ideas (like keeping to colour scheme of backing paper consistent), but the more I looked at these ideas and gathered "inspiration", the more I thought, "Wait! Where are the kids in all this?" How were they involved in the creation of these displays? Did they get to make decisions on what the theme of the room was? Did they get to decide that all the walls were to be purple? or green? or pink? How are those pom pom things from the ceiling adding to their learning, other than, maybe, seeing how many chairs they'd have to stack before they could hit it with their hands (that's active learning, right?)? I bet that wasn't the intention when you spent all that time hanging them from the ceiling. Or did the kids help you hang them? Did they help you make them? Probably not.

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My theory is, a classroom belongs to the children, not the teacher. Yes, it's my classroom because I teach in there, but my kids spend just as much time in there as I do, and they have to have ownership over the room. Why? Because they are the ones who are learning, not me. I believe if they walk into a ready-made classroom with a pirate theme, they will "oooh" and "aaah" for the first five minutes, and then it will all become a part of the background. White noise for the eyes. You may like it, but the kids were not involved in it's creation in any way. Would you have someone else come into your home and decorate to their liking? You would feel like a stranger in your own home. You would have no ownership over the stranger-decorated room. In fact, you may even be less likely to take proper care of the room.

I put my theory to the test in my own classroom, and allowed the children to have more input in what goes on the walls, even to the point of creating their own resources, like number lines, and alphabet flashcards. How many times does a child see "A is for apple" on a flashcard in their lifetime and say, "wow! That really helped me learn!" But I digress... Let's get back to the displays, and I will explain why I believe children should be involved in classroom displays through a journey of one of our creations.

About a month and a half ago, we were learning about the rainbow, the names of colours, and even coming up with more exciting names for colours (mauve is a new favourite). Over the course of about a week and a half, we painted in different ways, and as we talked about what we were doing, I recorded things the kids said as they worked. I took photos of the kids working as well.

Purple paint with sand mixed in made for an interesting talking point.

Driving painty cars across paper was a speedy exercise, and we even learned that red can also be called "rouge" or "scarlet."

Mixing colours to make secondary colours created lots of talk and learning opportunities. We also learned "olive" and "jade" as other words for green. We even had a discussion about our favourite veggies.

We used cotton buds to paint orange (or "peach" when we mixed in white to make it lighter).

Having really explored all the colours through colour-mixing, discussions, and different ways of painting, the children were able to come to a deeper understanding of colour and their names. I was able to photograph the children in their tasks, and record some of their conversation. Using these things, we were able to create a display of the rainbow that included their work, photos of them working, and speech bubbles of what they said when they were working:

I could have easily printed off or bought some ready-made resources and made something like this:

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which, to be fair, has some great talking points and can easily be referred to when teaching (and that website does have some great ideas for art!), but would it not be far more engaging for the children to help create a display like that? Put their own work of warm and cool colours up on the wall instead of a generic ready-made print outs, and they are far more likely to remember what cool colours are!

Through the creation of our display, I was able to engage with the children and assess their learning and progress. Once everything was on the wall, the children loved going up to it and finding their photo (kids are vain, they like to see themselves in print! Use it to your advantage!). They were reminded of the activities we did, and I have even overheard them using our "new" colour words! The display is a reminder of their learning experience, and they are able to revisit it whenever they wish. Since they were involved in the creation of the display, they take more notice of it, and it is less likely to become "part of the background."

For more ideas on child-created spaces, check out:

ABC Does... - the scrapbook approach
ABC Does... - personalising the learning environment
ABC Does... - personalised teaching displays

Early Number

Yesterday, I went to the Early Number Conference in Aberdeen. It was made up of a Keynote Speaker who introduced the Numeracy program their Council uses (SEAL - Stages of Early Arithmetical Learning), and four different workshops focusing on Addition & Subtraction, Multiplication & Division, Number Sequences, and Number Structure. Basically, SEAL is Maths Recovery which is implemented into everyday Maths so that Maths Recovery is not needed later down the road. It strives to give the child a full understanding of Number and how numbers are connected before moving onto bigger and more difficult concepts within Numeracy.

Although a little lacking in the hands-on department (teachers like to play, too!), the workshops offered practical ideas to take back to the classroom (as well as a long list of things I want my school to buy!). Here are a few that I gleaned from the Number Sequence workshop:

1. Counting together, but starting/stopping at irregular numbers (e.g. "let's count together starting at 5 and ending at 15. 5, 6, 7 ...). The idea is for children to become familiar with forward number word sequences outside of rote counting, so they have a deeper understanding of the sequences.

2. Counting with a sand timer: Have children take turns counting for the duration of the sand timer (starting at irregular numbers depending on child's ability). Children like a little competition.

3. Puppets. Like it or not, kids listen more intently to puppets than any teacher I've known. Get the puppet to tell the kids where they will start counting today. Put the number in the puppet's mouth.

4. Pendulum. Attach a tennis ball to a piece of string. Swing the ball back and forth, counting every time the ball hits your hand.

5. Treasure Box Game. Stick a number on the top of a box. Count up to that number by passing the box round the circle with each child saying the next number in the sequence. The child who has the box when you reach the number on the top of the box, gets to open the box. On the inside of the lid, there will be a new number to put on the top of the box for a new round. To end the game, pop a sticker in the box for the "winner." Extension: ask the children to choose a number to start at instead of 1. You could end up counting up or down.

6. Number Fans. Call out a number. Children have to find the number first on their fan.

7. Give each child a number flash card. They must sequence themselves.

8. Number clothing to put up on a washing line to sequence. Take one out and have children figure out which number is missing.

9. Hundred Square. Start out with a blank hundred square, have a child choose a number card and figure out where it should go on the square. Keep this as an on-going activity over the course of a week or longer.

10. Smiley Face Game. Lay out number cards face down on the floor. Have children choose one at a time and sequence the numbers as they go. Have one number out of the deck and replaced with a smiley face. If they choose the smiley face, they are out.

11. What's Behind the Wall. Work out what number is behind the wall (paper) by moving the paper behind the wall up slowly to reveal of portion of the number. Children are to guess what the number is by looking at the bit of the number that is showing. This reinforces recognition of numerals.

Happy Counting!

Free Resources - Take 'em where you can get 'em

Last year, I discovered a site called Freecycle, where you can post items that you're getting rid of, post messages of items you're looking for, and people will contact you through the site. And the best part of it all is, it's free!

Recently, I posted a message asking if anyone had a computer keyboard they were looking to get rid of. Why, you ask? I saw this little tidbit through Pinterest:

This is the explanation from the author of "3rd Grade's a Hoot:" "I just took an old keyboard and fancied it up with cutesy stickers. They "type" their words. I get a kick out of watching them do this. Some of my girls take it so seriously and act like they are at the office."

Now, I realize that my wee nursery kids don't quite have the grasp of reading, writing, or letters for that matter, but this idea was just too good to pass up (and I got FIVE free keyboards through Freecycle!). I started thinking about how I could use this idea, but gear it towards my little ones. Some suggestions from friends were to take the keys off the keyboard to use as letter blocks, or to use them to practice username and password for the computer. That's a little advanced for my lot, but some of them WOULD be interested in typing their names (and may even be able to do it!). Most of them, however, would just like to tap away on the keyboard for the sensory impact of it.

This week, I think I'm just going to put some of the keyboards out and see what happens! Kids are clever and creative. They may think up something completely different, but just as engaging.