Portfolios

I know I briefly mentioned PYP portfolios in my student-led conference post, but I wanted to elaborate a little bit more on those.

First of all, whether you are a PYP school or not your students should have some type of portfolio to display their work over time. Many teachers keep student writing pieces throughout the year so that they can show parents at conferences and students can see their own growth. I know our middle school (which does not use the IB curriculum) uses online portfolios and this is a huge part to their student-led conferences. 

What I like about the portfolios is it allows students to visually see that they have learned a ton over the course of a year and even parents can say "hey, my kid has learned something this year!" 

 

What is unique about the PYP portfolios is that there are artifacts from each unit that get stored in this binder. The artifacts we choose to put in at our school is their summative project (or picture of it) and a reflection about what they learned from completing that project as well as an activity that the student completed during the unit and a reflection about what they learned from completing that activity. The second set of artifacts are what we call 'student-pick' reflections. 

From kindergarten all the way through fourth grade (at our school elementary ends in fourth) students collect artifacts from each of the six themes that are covered each year in the PYP programme. So not only are students seeing what they learned and how they grew throughout the school year, but they are also can see how what they learned in kindergarten in the theme 'Who We Are' connects to what they learned in first, second, third and fourth grade. Amazing!

I encourage you to start incorporating portfolios into your classroom. Students will never be allowed to say "I didn't learn anything this year" ever again!

My First Classroom!!

Well, so much has happened in the last few weeks and I haven't had time to stay updated! To start the story, I was going to an interview in Brighton for a middle school math position and on my way home I got a call from the principal of the school that I had the 4th grade position. I didn't hear my phone so he left a message offering me a Kindergarten position at their school! I didn't even have to interview! With the way my luck has been going I decided to take the job : ) I went in about a week later to talk with the principal and looked into my room.... and this is what I walked into

Everywhere you looked there was stuff! Furniture, books, tables, chairs, toys, trash, lost clothes; you name it, you could find it in that room. My first thought was, "Oh my goodness. This is going to take a looooong time to sift through". Then I thought, "Well at least I will have some stuff to fill up my room". I checked out the other kindergarten classroom to get some ideas and make sure I wasn't forgetting anything. It was ready to go. It looked like students could walk in that day. I was pretty optimistic, but I did not think it would take a full week to get my room into working shape.

The first thing I did was sifted through all of the stuff. That literally took me a full day to go through. The next day my mom came in and we moved furniture, cleaned all of the stuff and started to organize things to where I think they should go. My mom was so much help this week. I literally could not have done this without her. On Wednesday, we worked on details and adding things that all classrooms should have. Thursday, I had two meetings so I went in on my own and stayed until 6 o'clock working on more details. And then we get to today. We finally were able to decorate the room, so that now people know it is an ocean theme and I think it looks amazing.

I give mad props to my mom who made the cool looking jellyfish, which determine the table colors and doing the background of all the bulletin boards. As I said before, I couldn't have done it without her.

So we completed this all in 5 days. Not too shabby I would say. What do you think?

Just Keep Swimming

Rejection. It's got to be one of the worst feelings in the world. Whether it's from a group a friends, potential significant other or a job. Rejection hurts. Some of us are better at hiding this feeling than others. Some of us need to talk it with a friend while others keep it bottled up in side. Sometimes it only take a few minutes to get over rejection, while for others it take days, weeks or even years.The worst type of rejection is when someone says that you are awesome, amazing, impressive (insert other uplifting adjectives), but then you get a phone call saying you were not impressive enough or amazing enough. It is tough not to get down on oneself and ball up in a minor state of depression or trying to get everyone to feel sorry for you, but in the end you have to preserver, learn from the experience and push on.

A quality that I have learned to use is finding the good in people and the situation not matter how bad it may be. Sometimes it is difficult to look on the bright side and think positive. After being rejected from what it seems like a million jobs, even though it's only closer to 7, I feel like I become better and more prepared at interviews and have almost no trouble with any question based off of my knowledge and experience. It's having a school find me a good fit for them and that's something you cannot control. I'm going to be a good fit somewhere, I just don't know where that place will be.

There was one question where I got stumped though, and it would really hurt if I knew that this was the deciding factor, because it was based off of knowledge and pedagogy, rather than experience. The worst is that it was about differentiation, which I know so much about because of the schools I have been placed at, but didn't know there were specific components of differentiation. I just knew when I had to differentiate and how I was going to do it. Once I heard the interviewer say the components I was able to explain how I have done each one of them in the classroom.  I found some good websites, so that if this question comes up I will be prepared, but I'm also going to summarize a bit based off it too. The more I write/type things the better I learn them!

http://sussex.de.schoolwebpages.com/education/projects/projects.php?sectionid=396
http://faculty.tamu-commerce.edu/lwickersham/greatexplanations/pbl/differentiated.html

The Components of Differentiated Instruction

1. Content
2. Process
3. Product
4. Environment
  (some people don't consider environment as a component)

Content: the 'WHAT' of teaching
  Example: Historical Fiction study - provide a selection of books that reflect a variety of reading levels and match students with an appropriate book or group books and let students choose from the collection

Process: the 'HOW' of teaching
 The content is the same, the same learning objective is achieved but the way that students are able to learn or process the information is different.
  Example: Culture study – students compare & contrast two versions of Cinderella from different cultures. Students can draw pictures of similarities and differences (visual learners), discuss and prepare an oral presentation (auditory learners) or create 30 seconds reenactments representing similarities & differences (kinesthetic learners). At the end of the time, all groups share their ideas.
 
Product: 'the 'SHOW WHAT YOU KNOW' of learning
  Example: Power Unit: Students may plan a debate or speech, present a multimedia presentation, write a report or perform a role play depicting specific events to demonstrate their understanding

Environment: the 'WHERE' of learning