Starting to connect globally

September 9th was the day I sat in the office talking about my professional growth plan for the upcoming year. Little did I know then how much my teaching life would change for the better and all because of global connection.

After my meeting, I initially thought about changing my topic for growth. Luckily I stuck with global connection, and I started to connect with others; through twitter, twitter chats, direct messages, Google hangouts and Facebook. I became excited and energized with teaching and tried new activities and lessons with my class.

My students were motivated and engaged each time we made global connections. They became excited about learning and sharing with others. We worked on the Student Blogging Challenge and put our work out there for others to enjoy. We loved visiting other blogs and leaving comments for other students taking part in the challenge.

As a teacher, I took part in the Student Blogging Challenge by becoming a volunteer student commenter. I was motivated to volunteer after seeing how excited my students were last year when they received comments on their blog. I wanted to be able to get other students excited by seeing comments about their work. Each week I had the opportunity to visit many different blogs and encourage students to keep up their blogging. Through visiting so many different blogs, I discovered a terrific school in Vancouver that delivers a unique and amazing program for their Grade 8 classes. Some of the students in this program have visited our blog, and my students have visited their blogs.

The Global Read Aloud Project was another project that had the students and I connecting globally. We participated in two Google hangout sessions and found out about each other and where we live in North America. The students and I loved seeing the other classes and exchanging our thoughts and feelings about the book.

I think the connection that my students have loved the most is Global Maker Day where we watched a live stream throughout the day. My students loved watching the students from Scheck Hillel Community School make their presentations. They also loved creating and designing their projects and sharing them with other children via Flipgrid.

Twitter remains by far the most instrumental part of my global connections. I joined my first twitter chat in September and immediately felt comfortable with the whole process. I get to participate in the comfort of my home and share resources with veteran educators. I like to call a twitter chat a virtual staffroom where the ideas flow. I have participated in chats on math, maker spaces, virtual field trips, Google slides, and the hour of code.

I have also kept in contact with people I have met at BLC’19 and made wonderful new contacts because of them. These contacts have let me know about special events happening; I got to watch some sessions on digital citizenship from Russia and Texas. I had the chance to connect with a school from the Netherlands and get in touch with them to help with blogging. Global Maker Day came to me through twitter as did so many other virtual summits and chats.

Global connection helps teachers and students learn about the world around them. It makes everyone excited to learn and share their work with others. I am hoping that the rest of this school year is filled with global connections in fourth-grade. The students and I have some great ideas and projects planned and we could not be more excited to connect.

Global Connection

Global connection in the classroom didn’t resonate with me a year ago. The only real experience I had was having my class become penpals with Brian Kom’s class in Japan many years ago. Our classes exchanged a few letters and a video, and my students (the current grade 7 class) loved the exchange.

I am happy to say that global connection means a great deal more to me now. The idea of connecting my classes globally for all subjects is so appealing. The students will get a better sense of geography, gain different perspectives about the world around them, and see how much in common we have with others. They will also get to learn about new cultures and languages.

I can offer my students all of this right from the comfort of my classroom. My classes have had the opportunity to connect with other students via blogs, and mystery skypes, and book talks. Each connection has had my students engaged, motivated, and excited about learning. I must admit that I have been equally excited during each of these connections. The students have loved talking with other students about the book they have read or the work they have produced. I daresay the students listen more attentively as they talk and share over skype.

I plan to continue connecting my classes globally throughout the year. We will talk to scientists and work on number chats with other classes. The ultimate goal is to connect with another class from a different part of the world to learn about a new culture and language. Perhaps we will collaborate on a project together. These authentic experiences will enrich the curriculum, motivate my students, and make school so much fun. The students will become better digital citizens who hopefully want to change the world one day.

For the love of reading

This post has been swirling around in my head ever since I started teaching in the older grades four years ago. By older grades, I mean Grades Three and Four. I have been surprised at how many words students do not understand. Words that I thought were common often stumped my students. My students now do online reading assessments throughout the year. I have seen students panic over the vocabulary while completing the assessments. I have been reflecting on how I can shine a light on vocabulary this year and help my students acquire richer vocabulary.

In my own family, vocabulary and reading have been important focuses. My husband and I wanted our children to love reading and have rich vocabularies. We vowed to make this a priority. Our children were exposed to sophisticated vocabulary in family conversations. Books were also a priority and we spent valuable hours reading good books and talking about them.

As my children reached Grade Four they lost interest in reading. We let them buy lots of comics and magazines, anything to get them interested in reading on their own. It worked! My children started reading for pleasure on their own. We visited libraries and bookstores and let them choose whatever books they wanted. The bookshelves at our house are overflowing and my children have rich vocabularies. I have the same expectations for vocabulary and reading for my own students.

Last year was my first year teaching Grade Four and I noticed how some students lost interest in reading. I signed my class up for the Ottawa Senators reading program in conjunction with a school-wide reading challenge. I wanted to get my students interested in reading again. We won a pizza party from the Ottawa Senators for reaching our reading goals for one month. Many of my students were voracious readers and continued to read all year. Sadly, a few of my students did not start reading regularly.

This year I have made a concerted effort to make reading a priority in my class. I have my students entered the same Read to Succeed Program with the Ottawa Senators. We are also taking part in a school-wide reading challenge. I hope that all my students will learn to love reading this year. I have even donated our family collection of Archie comics to the school library so children can read something quick during morning care or their recess time. Our amazing school librarian Brigitte and I have talked at length about ways to get the students to fall in love with reading and read good books with rich vocabulary. I am going to start taking lots of different books to the class to encourage the children to pick up during the quiet reading time. We are going to try our best to get them away from graphic novels and encourage wonderful chapter books instead. My original plan was going to involve collaboration from the administration but I have not approached anyone yet.

We started the year off with a bang as we set a goal for reading 5000 pages in September. Most children thought it was an unattainable goal at first but we broke it down to about 225 pages a student. Everyone agreed to do their part for the class community. The looks on my students’ faces when they realized they had surpassed their goal by 12,000 pages were priceless.

Our November goal was to read 20,000 pages and the students have read over 54,000 pages.

All of my students are trying their best to read each night and contribute to our reading goals. Some students are reading hundreds of pages and some are reading 15-30 pages. I am happy that they are all reading. I hope the two reading challenges will help all my students become avid readers this year.

 

I am also reading novels aloud to my classes and using richer vocabulary in class daily. I am hopeful that vocabularies will expand and students will be talking about all the different books they are reading. I will keep repeating The more you read the more you learn and hope for the best. I will keep up my high expectations for reading and hope my students strive to meet those high expectations.

Reflecting with my students

I am finally writing about reflection. My students have had the chance to really reflect on their learning. The reflection process turned out to be very meaningful and empowering for my students. I introduced the activity by letting students know that I also stop and reflect on my teaching and learning twice a year with my Head of School. I explained that we all have areas we need to grow in, and it is good, to be honest about where our strengths and weaknesses lie.
Both of my classes were honest and open with their reflections and so many meaningful conversations took place. I had the opportunity to really get to know and understand my students on a different level. Shy and quiet students admitted on their papers that they don’t seek assistance from teachers when they need it. Students who were strong in the area of science and math opened up that reading and writing does not interest them too much. One student talked with me and let me know that he really has trouble getting his ideas into writing. The most powerful reflection came from a student that has had a difficult time getting along with classmates in the gym and at recess. I have been going the extra mile for this student for the last year and a half. She came up to me and showed me her sheet and pointed to the word flexible and told me how being flexible is so hard for her. We talked together and I told her that I would help her work in this area and she smiled the biggest smile.
I am so pleased with how this reflection went so smoothly with my students. They felt safe, to be honest, and open. Hopefully, this first reflection sets us on the right path with growth mindsets for a terrific year. Will I be doing ongoing reflection throughout the year? Absolutely!