Teacher Extraordinaire - Portfolio of a Teacher and Lifelong Learner

 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 books about healt

  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),

One often forgotten about aspect of teaching is the importance of the school / home connection. The question is then, how do we bridge the gap between home and school?  Of course, the essence of trying to forge this relationship always comes down to clear and respectful communication, centered around the idea that we are on the same team - the team that is looking for their child to be successful and fulfilled, the team that wants their child to develop and grow into the best person they are capable of being.  We also have to remember that with some parents we may never be able to "win them over." Furthermore, some parents may want to be more involved in their child's school life but have factors that make that difficult (such as working multiple jobs, being a caregiver or having mental health issues). At the end of the day, it is important to remember that we are the professionals, and that some perspective taking and empathy may be needed to understand a parents' po

Given that I am currently doing my Masters program, we are constantly in the process of learning, discussing and producing artifacts. The most recent course that I completed was PME 841 Critical Foundations of Literacy. For our final assignment we needed to produce a 9 slide assignment (barring the title page and resource page) outlining three different Literacy concepts, what they are, why they are important and then outlining one or more teaching strategies for each.  Since the school that I teach at is comprised almost entirely of students learning English as an Additional Language, and we frequently get students who are new to English in our classrooms, I thought I'd focus on the K-Grade 3 audience, and the audience of those teaching students who are new to English.  The first two concepts I looked at are related: "Phonological Awareness" and "Phonemic Awareness." My slides define Phonological Awareness, Phonemic Awareness and Phonics, so that practitioners