Google Classroom for Parent Communication

As I wrote in my previous post, I am in the early stages of learning to use Google Classroom. I am getting more and more comfortable with it and liking it more and more all the time. I feel like it really helps me tailor my program to individual students' needs, and also to have a much more accurate understanding of what those needs are; there is just so much feedback built into it.

Because of that I feel like it would be great to include parents into this loop. I am thinking of inviting them to use it to see what kinds of assignments I am giving to the students, as well as how their child is performing on each assignment. It would allow me to communicate so much more information to parents than I am otherwise able to do.

This week I wrote a letter that I am planning to send home to parents to explain this idea. I am including it here, in a generic form, in case it would be useful to other teachers to have something similar.

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Google-Classroom-Letter-to-Parents-1758611

Using Google Forms, in Classroom, to do Class Surveys

This week I tried something new. I used Google Forms to make a questionnaire in French for the students about their favourite foods. Like this:

It was very easy to do. A good tutorial about how to use google forms is this one, by Scott Monahan:

I used google classroom to send the form to the students as an assignment. Here is a link to google classroom.

https://classroom.google.com/u/0/ineligible

Google classroom allows the teacher to track who has completed the assignment and who hasn't.
If your board doesn't support google classroom, you can still do this activity; just stay in google forms.

Google forms automatically compiles the data from the completed forms into a spreadsheet as students submit their responses.

You can also, (and this is my favourite) view the responses in graph form, by going back to the original form and opening the "responses" window, and clicking on "summary of responses".

Using these graphs, the students can discuss the outcomes of the survey (in my case in French).
It gives a lovely pictorial representation of our class preferences.

You could also use this for any kind of voting/ opinion surveys. You could also create a form that students could use to respond to oral presentations, and give feedback.

In my case, I'm just getting started with it, and wanted to try this simple survey as a bit of an experiment. The students were really engaged- much more than if I had given them a pencil-and -paper survey, and they enjoyed seeing the responses graphed at the end. I think it helped them feel like their voice had been heard, to see their response registered within the whole.

I will definitely do it again.

Slow Down for Art

I used to work as a Waldorf class teacher, before working in the public system. Waldorf education is deeply grounded in the arts. All the subject matter is taught through the arts in order to reach directly from the heart of the teacher to the hearts of the students.

As a public school teacher, I teach French to the older students and Arts to the younger ones- giving planning time to other teachers. 

Because the Waldorf students get so much practice in the Arts, they develop comfort exploring their creativity, and also, after time, they begin to develop their own creative voice. It takes time for this to happen, and lots of exposure to different media. In a Waldorf class, there is a period allotted each week for watercolour painting, and another for drawing, another for violin. Other arts are integrated into the "main lessons". And each year, each class in the school puts on a class play- a full-scale dramatic performance- related to the content they are studying.

In public schools, there is (usually) less class time devoted to art, and art is seen as separate from the rest of the curriculum. This creates a time pressure that makes it hard to "fit art in" and when a teacher can "fit it in", it's hard not to rush.

But creativity thrives when it isn't rushed. 

This is the lesson I am trying to bring to what I am doing now. I can't always control how much time is given to art in the day, or how much art becomes part of the "regular curriculum". But in the time I do have with the students for art, I am trying to slow down. I am trying to give myself permission to spend more than one class period working on the same song/ the same piece of art. Sometimes something just needs to take longer than a single period. It's okay to use an art period just for watercolour painting for many months. This is how a student can develop enough technique with the medium that they can start to use it to express their own ideas, in their own voice.

At first it is hard to do this- hard to ignore the temptation to rush through as many different forms/media as possible. But the more I do this, the more I am able to slow down the teaching of art, the deeper and richer the experience becomes. 

This is my favourite resource for teaching art to children.

http://artprojectsforkids.org/

A daily blog with over 200 watercolour projects, 150 drawing lessons, 80 craft projects, 70 collage projects and over 200 fine art projects- all for free.

The projects are very accessible, even if you have very little experience/ comfort teaching art. And the materials are simple and inexpensive- the kind of thing that even the most art-budget-restricted public school is likely to have. 

The International Children's Digital Library: Free, Multi-Lingual Children's Literature

The mission of the International Children's Digital Library Foundation (ICDL Foundation) is to support the world's children in becoming effective members of the global community - who exhibit tolerance and respect for diverse cultures, languages and ideas -- by making the best in children's literature available online free of charge. The Foundation pursues its vision by building a digital library of outstanding children's books from around the world and supporting communities of children and adults in exploring and using this literature through innovative technology designed in close partnership with children for children.

Check it out:

http://en.childrenslibrary.org/

 

An Opportunity

The National Gallery of Canada is now offering Distance Learning Programs for elementary and high school students. Their interactive programs, delivered via webinar, get students discussing a range of artworks while exploring curriculum-linked themes...free of charge.

A sample: http://youtu.be/FGRr5PYt5zY

To register: http://www.gallery.ca/en/learn/reservations.php

The only art class I am teaching right now is in Kindergarten, so I registered for the Kindergarten "People and Relationships" webinar: "How can people speak to us without saying a word? Discover the role of body language and facial expression in relating stories in artworks.

I'll let you know how it goes...

Assessing Listening in French

New to the Ontario FSL curriculum this year is the component of Listening. (Before it used to be just Speaking, Reading, and Writing). This has raised the question for me, as well as for other teachers I am sure, just how does one assess how a student listens?

I am part of a group of fsl teachers who are trying to work this out. We have come up with a rubric, which I am in the early stages of using with my classes.

So far, for me, the focus has been on listening to understand, because I feel it is measurable. Based on a student's responses, I can tell whether they have heard, and understood what they have heard.

The implications are more far- reaching than I had initially understood. It's starting to become a bit of a game in the classes. Basically any time someone speaks in French I have the opportunity to ask another student to respond, based on what they've understood. They are talking to each other much more, which is a great thing for second language acquisition. We're actually in the very early stages of getting a conversation going.

Here is the rubric, in case anyone else is a second language teacher, or assessing listening as part of an oral language mark. It's free: help yourself:

https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Rubric-for-Listening-to-Interact-French-1724028

The Writing on The Wall

This idea was inspired by the Basquiat exhibit at the AGO. I don't live in Toronto, but was visiting for the weekend, and saw the exhibition. After going through the show, patrons were invited to share their impressions on a big blackboard- creating a kind of graffiti- style collage, similar in spirit to some of the works of Basquiat.

I teach core French in Ontario and have many reluctant writers.  But I think this would be an idea to get any students engaged with writing, not just French students.

I covered the bulletin board outside my classroom with brown paper, laid down a few ground rules: (what you write must be respectful of the feelings of others, it must be appropriate for school, and it must be in French), provided some markers, and (for French, some suggestions of things that they know how to say in French, like describing things about themselves, for example), and invited them to write.

The response has been overwhelming. Kids who would just sit and look at a blank piece of paper at their desk in the classroom, are happy to "write on the wall".

I also prepared a short presentation about Basquiat, including some photographs of his paintings to give some context for the activity. It ties in nicely with the building of cultural awareness that is a component of the French curriculum here. The kids were really engaged in learning about this artist and a bit about his story. And they have flocked to the wall to write in French about themselves.

I think this would also work well with emerging writers in English too. With older students it might be an interesting way to have them register and support their opinions about controversial topics.

If you are inspired to try something similar with a class of yours, I would love to hear how it goes.



If you are interested in the whole presentation it is at:
https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Lecriture-sur-le-mur-1723381

A Fearless Education

A Fearless Education is what I hope for- for myself and for my students.

I think most educators would agree about the importance of creating a classroom environment that feels safe and secure to students: a place where they can take risks, be willing to experiment, learn, and grow.

But how often do we, as teachers, take risks? How often do we move outside of our comfort zone or routine? Speaking for myself, I can say that I have definitely spent too much energy striving for perfection, and not nearly enough striving to attempt something challenging/ new/ unfamiliar.

Striving for perfection sounds like a nice idea. But it is actually extremely limiting. If you want to be perfect, you cannot, by definition, make mistakes. Not being able to make mistakes means you cannot learn. We know this for our students.

Instead of perfection, I would like to strive for excellence. I would like to let go of my fear of making mistakes, which is also a fear of failure. In order to really grow, I may have to try some things that will fail.  Yikes!

Ironically, I think that it is once I can let go of my fears that the fun can begin.  Once I can laugh at myself, and my mistakes, all that fear loses its power.

I want to start to have more fun in my job. I want to allow myself to make a mess now and again. I want to go out on a limb and stretch myself. I want to be free to explore, play, create and dream.

I'm sure it will help encourage my students to do the same.