Welcome, Parents!

Dear Parents/Guardians,

As your child’s teacher for the upcoming school year, I would like to introduce myself and welcome you and your child into our class.  My name is Miss Erin Brown and I will be your child’s Grade 5 teacher this year.  Teaching is my passion, and I am so excited to have the opportunity to work with you and your child.

I thought you might like to know a little bit about me.  This is my first opportunity to be a classroom teacher.  I graduated from Brock University Teacher’s College in the spring of 2015 where I studied to teach grades 7-12.  I am now an elementary school teacher here in the Halton District School Board because I am passionate about teaching students of all ages.  I am originally from Sarnia, ON, lived in the Niagara region for four years as a Brock University student, and am now living in Hamilton, ON.  Teaching in the Toronto area is a new adventure for me!

As an educator in the 21^st Century, I recognize that today’s students need to learn skills such as teamwork, critical thinking, problem solving, flexibility, creativity, communication, and so much more.  In our class, we will be working on these skills in a variety of new, exciting ways.

If you would like to speak with me about your child’s progress or discuss any questions you may have, please contact me via email at eb10og@brocku.ca.  You can also check our class website for updates at http://missbrownclassroom.blogspot.ca/.

Sincerely,

Miss Brown

Inspiring Educators

Hello everyone,

Here are some educators that I find inspiring.

Joan Young

Joan Young is a teacher and therapeutic coach with 10 years experience teaching Kindergarten, Grade 1 and Grade 4 and 25 years experience tutoring students of all ages.  She works and teaches in Northern California.  She is the author of the book Encouragement in the Classroom: How do I help students stay positive and focused?  As an educator, her passion is helping students discover their strengths and become excited about learning.  She works one on one with students who struggle with learning due to a variety of different needs and abilities.  She is an inspiring leader in 21st century teaching because of her efforts to help individual students figure out how to learn in their own way, despite any different needs they might have.

Twitter: @flourishingkids

Blog: http://www.allkidscanflourish.blogspot.com/


Sabrina Stevens

Sabrina Stevens is a former Grade 4 teacher who began teaching because she was passionate about helping students of colour living in poverty become powerful members of society.  After some experience teaching, she left the classroom to become an education activist.  Now she teaches and learns with people of all ages (teachers, students, communities) to stand up for themselves and their schools.  She also speaks regularly about public education, labour, democracy, and other issues.  She is an inspiring leader in 21st century teaching and learning because she works to empower people and communities in an effort to encourage people to get their best possible education.

Twitter: @TeacherSabrina

Website: http://www.sabrinajoystevens.com/

Shannon Miller

Shannon Miller is a teacher librarian and Technology Integration Specialist who uses social media to share resources for teachers and librarians and ways to integrate technology.  She encourages students and teachers to have a voice while learning and connecting to others globally.  Shannon has many different roles, including educational consultant for Mackin Educational Resources, Skype’s Education Ambassador, speaking and consulting around the US, author of The Library Voice blog, and much more.  She is an inspiring leader in 21st century teaching and learning because she advocates for each student having a voice in their learning, using technology as part of the learning process, and connecting globally, which are all important aspects of learning in the 21st century.  She also finds and shares practical ways to accomplish these new ways of learning.

Twitter: @shannonmiller

Blog: http://vanmeterlibraryvoice.blogspot.com/

21st Century Tools: Teaching with Technology

Hello blog readers,

Here are some technological tools that teachers and students can use to support the learning process.

Videolicious : https://videolicious.com/

This is an app that I saw students using during my first teaching placement this past year.  I know it’s available for Apple, and I’m not sure about Android.  The app allows students to create videos in which they can film each other/themselves, narrate or include music while a photo or artwork is shown.  I haven’t used it, but believe it is fairly simple to use.  In reading about the app, I think that the free version limits videos to 60 seconds and 10 shots, so it can encourage students to include only the most important information in their videos.

Suggestions for use:

• Instead of presenting in front of the class, students can demonstrate their knowledge or oral communication skills by recording themselves speaking ahead of time, and even put pictures related to what they’re presenting instead of simply recording a video of themselves standing and talking.
• Create a documentary or news segment to present information.
• Book reports/chapter summaries (students can include pictures they have drawn while speaking about what happened in a chapter)
• Weekly new segments about what is happening in the school, created by different groups of students
• Presenting/explaining a piece of art they have created

Storybird : https://storybird.com/

This is a website and an app for Apple and Android.  It allows students to select a piece of art, and write stories or poetry, piecing the two together so students can create writing pieces that look great.  When I learned about this app during a PD day at Brock, I tried creating “found poetry,” which would be great for junior students.  I was able to select a piece of art, was given a bunch of words, and could arrange any of the words on top of the art to create a piece of poetry.  I haven’t tried the story writing mode, but Storybird is a creative way for students to put together a polished-looking piece of writing and share their work with one another.  I believe as a teacher you would create an account, then create a “classroom” with the number of students in your class, then give each student their login which Storybird generates within your classroom, then their work can be shared with classmates after creating a piece of writing.

Online-Stopwatch : http://www.online-stopwatch.com/

This website is pretty self-explanatory, and I’m sure a bunch of you have used it already.  It’s a great classroom management tool that visually displays the amount of time students have left to complete a task.  It can be used to encourage students to use their time effectively when working in groups.  It’s a good way to keep students on track during noisy group work time without trying to announce things like “You have 2 minutes left!” and not having everyone hear.

Explain Everything :

App: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/explain-everything/id431493086?mt=8

Video Tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b00ZeszvjP4

This is an app for Apple that I have not seen in action, but it looks like it could be a good teaching tool.  I believe that you can create slides, images, videos, draw, add pictures, and write on your presentation to create lessons.  This looks like it would be a good tool to use in a flipped classroom, or just to create extra lessons/tutorials/instructional material for students.

Project Based Teaching/Learning Theories

Hello everyone,

Here are some project based teaching and learning approaches on which I've done some research.  I'd like to share some ideas on how these theories can be used in the classroom.

1) Project Based Learning: an approach in which students actively explore real-world problems and challenges to acquire a deeper knowledge.  In this learning process, students gain knowledge and skills by working to investigate and respond to a complex question, problem, or challenge.  Project work is focused on an open-ended "driving question."

Example: In a French class, students can create a children's book.  During the learning process, pairs or small groups of students can be assigned different groups of basic vocabulary (e.g. colours, animals, etc.), create a list of commonly used words in this group, and present a mini-lesson to the class.  Students can use their newly acquired vocabulary to work together to create children's books and possibly share their books with another class (for example, write books for younger kids and share with them, share with a younger French immersion class, etc).

I got this idea from a similar project done in a Spanish class: http://www.hightechhigh.org/unboxed/issue3/cards/8.php

2) Problem Based Learning: an approach based on solving complex problems in the real world.  Problems are raised at the start of a new topic, before students have been taught some of the relevant knowledge.  Students develop skills around finding information, identifying what information they need, and possible sources of that information.

Example: Students can investigate this guiding question: “How can we use our knowledge of math to convince our families, our school, and our community to go solar?”  This problem-based investigation can give students a real-world application for math and science.

I found this idea and a list of others here: http://www.edutopia.org/blog/a-world-of-project-ideas-to-steal-suzie-boss?crlt_pid=camp.Z8ONXRQKaZzO

3) Inquiry Based Learning

Examples:

1) During one of my teaching placements, an associate teacher who I worked with did this inquiry-based activity with her Grade 9 enriched English class.  They read the short story “The Sniper,” which is set during the Irish Civil War.  Then they completed an inquiry cycle: first, students asked questions about things they wondered about the text or issues raised by the text, then they did individual research to try to answer these questions and learn more, each student created a unique display of their new knowledge (I saw some timelines, posters, etc.), then as a class they shared their new knowledge.

2) During the same teaching block, I introduced this inquiry-based project to two Grade 10 Applied English classes, but only got to see the beginning stages.  The project is called Genius Hour or 20% Time, and the idea is that students get an hour a week to work on anything they’re interested in.  First, I showed a Ted Talk video explaining the project, then students brainstormed “bad ideas,” then brainstormed good ideas.  Next, they worked on a project proposal focused on a guiding question about their topic.  This was as far as the students got in the process while I was there, but after that they would have an hour a week to work on their proposed project, recording their learning each week (they could record it on a blog, in a journal, etc.).  One example of a question some students had was “How can we improve our physical health?” so they designed a project where they would go running together each week and try to eat healthier.  Another student asked “How can I start a business?” and designed a project centered on that question.

The project proposal that students did for Genius Hour looked something like this:https://www.pinterest.com/pin/415879346816444508/

Here are some Ted Talk videos about Genius Hour; I started the project by showing students the first video:http://www.edutopia.org/blog/five-minute-film-festival-genius-hour

4) Design Learning

Example: Students can learn about earthquakes and how to minimize the damage they do by doing a design challenge in which they work in groups to design and build earthquake resistant structures using index cards, tape and paper clips.  Then, they can evaluate their structures’ effectiveness.

A detailed explanation of this design challenge can be found here: https://gse-it.stanford.edu/research/project/dbl

5) Experiential Learning

Example: Students can plant and tend to a school garden or classroom plants, depending on resources that may be available (I recently did a teaching placement at a high school that even had a school greenhouse and a course where students worked in the greenhouse).  This can be linked to science, environmental studies, healthy eating, and more.

6) Makerspace Learning

Students are given materials and a space to make things.  Some examples of things students could make are anything related to woodworking, robotics, rewriting books, making things from cardboard, etc.

I found this explanation of what a makerspace is and how you could go about setting one up:http://www.edutopia.org/blog/designing-a-school-makerspace-jennifer-cooper