As a K-5 international educator it’s not often that we’re discussing ways to promote safe spaces for LGBTQ members of the community. It’s almost as though it’s a taboo subject for elementary educators and you only start to see Rainbow flags appearing when students enter middle school. Where does the teaching of Diverse Family Structures…
Collaborate / Early Years / Grade 1 / Learning Spaces / literacy / Play / Wellness / Wrtiting
How can we minimise mid-year teacher burnout? Every teacher can articulate at least one moment in the year where it all feels like too much. Typically, it hits us sometime in November (near report-writing time) and/or in March/April (when we’ve passed the halfway point but there is still so much left to do!). A few weeks…
Arts Festival / Drama / Early Years / EdTech / Grade 1 / iPads / literacy / Play / Reading / SeeSaw / Visible Thinking / Wrtiting
How can we build more play into our literacy units? In preparation for our Grade 1 Arts Festival students were exposed to familiar stories. We are fortunate that our narrative reading and writing unit also align with this performance & arts-based Unit of Study, so I structured this literacy project to include a lot of…
As I was reflecting on my coaching practice, I thought about some of the points mentioned by Jill Jackson in her article “4 Steps to Your Successful Coaching Model“. Her advice definitely resonates with my experience in my first year of coaching. However, I do disagree somewhat with her second point: Know Your Content. While…
How can we #cultivate effective learning spaces to start the new school year? After my first attempt one year ago at using a theme to guide my classroom design (see previous post Dare to Ditch Desks) I decided to build on my previous learning and incorporate a more purposeful design approach based on ideas from…
[This post is an excerpt from my EDURO: Coaching from Theory to Practice certificate course from 2015] Every year our school picks a whole-school goal. Last year (my first year at ISZL), we were fortunate as the goal was ‘Technology’. The two PD days in February were designated to the EdTech Team to design and facilitate, and…
Part 3 follow up from: Coaching Collaboratively This week I had my first post-observation meeting with Mrs. H and it went really well. During her lesson last week, I sat off to the side and documented the lesson in a google doc. I simply made observations, noting what the teacher said as well as the…
Part 2 follow up from: Coaching a Self-Proclaimed “Dinosaur” This week, as part of my Eduro Course Challenge, I observed Mrs.H introducing blogs to her grade 1 class. I was so pleased she chose to do this lesson, as last year it was an area of tension for her: whether blogs would enhance the community…
EDURO Coaching Challenge 1: Identify a colleague at your school that you feel comfortable working with. Initiate a dialogue with that person to see if they would feel comfortable with you practicing your coaching skills with them. [This post is an excerpt from my EDURO: Coaching from Theory to Practice certificate from 2015] I’m really…
Mrs.H and I had our second meeting this week and referring back to our original Google Doc meeting minutes was an effective way to start. Before meeting, I went over some of the topics we’d covered and also the action we’d agreed to take. We both realised many of the tasks are more long-term and…
Where do math and technology fit with play-based learning? As the EdTech Coach at ISZL, Switzerland I decided to explore this question further. Arming myself with the new resource book Technology and Digital Media in the Early Years (Edited by Chip Donohue), I embarked on an 3 month journey exploring the benefits of different new tech…
Is it ever ‘too soon’ to take the training wheels off? “Change Tomorrow Today” is the 2017 title for our Grade 5 Exhibition at UWCSEA. But I’ve been wondering…how might teachers use this mantra in our own pedagogy? Can we change TODAY to better prepare students for TOMORROW? Although I’ve been teaching for ten years, this was my first…
“Look at your learning space with 21st century eyes: Does it work for what we know about learning today, or just for what we know about learning in the past?” Sir Ken Robinson: The Third Teacher (2010) This year I decided to take a big risk… I removed half the desks from my classroom. [This…
Is coding the new literacy for 21st Century Schools? If so, how can it enhance a transdisciplinary program of inquiry? This past December I initiated our school’s first ever Hour of Code, the global event that introduces coding through games and activities, both online and offline. The Early Years to Grade 5 classes who participated…
Last month our school received a new shipment of BlueBots…the 2015 version of the former BeeBots. These bots have only just been released and provide the added feature of being programmable via an iPad (using BlueTooth). The bots also have a transparent cover, allowing children to see the computer inside as it works. Otherwise, it…
Innovative Learning 