I believe learning takes place best in a positive, caring, and safe environment.
In my classroom, there will be a mutual respect between students and teachers. I will achieve this by having students help to come up with classroom rules, deciding on their own how they think they should behave in the classroom. I will also create a mutual respect through consistency in rewards and consequences. All students will be treated equally and fairly. Finally, I will be a good listener and confidant. Students will know that they can talk to me without fear of breaking their trust. I hope for students to have an "I Wish My Teacher Knew..." journal where students can write down any of their likes, dislikes, struggles, and successes that they want me to know.
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In my classroom, differences will be celebrated! Students will feel safe knowing that diversity is a good thing. I will achieve this by allowing students' strengths to shine through projects and authentic assessments that are geared toward their likes and skills. I will also encourage students to share their different thought processes when looking at a problem, so they can see that there are different ways to view and solve problems. Lastly, we will use materials and learn about experiences that students may not have been directly exposed to already in their lives, such as being in a snow storm, living in a different country where cultures, languages, and foods are not what they are here, etc.
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In my classroom, we will be lifelong learners. Learning will be viewed as being continuous throughout our whole lives. This will create a positive environment for students, showing them that it is okay to struggle, fail, and make mistakes, because we learn from our failures. Students will not have to feel disappointed if they do poorly on an assignment or assessment, because they will know that they don't have to know everything perfectly right now. They will continuously have new opportunities to improve and develop a deeper understanding throughout their entire lives. I will keep working on past skills with struggling students through small groups all year long.
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In my classroom, we will be kind to each other! Students will be encouraged to "fill each other's buckets" and "catch" friends being kind to one another each day. Students may not always remember a lesson you teach them about the different parts of a plant, but they will remember what it means to be a good person and friend. The lessons you learn when you are young mold who you become. I hope to help create a future generation that is kind, caring, generous, tolerant, accepting, and forgiving. I will do this through daily character education lessons, a "Kindness Catcher" bucket for students to write down kind acts to be read aloud, and having students cheer for each other's successes.
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I believe that all children are individuals and should be taught in a way that addresses their individual learning styles and passions as often as possible.
Since all students are individuals, they bring their own background, knowledge, and experiences to the classroom. This means that students will all be at a different place in their educational journey. To reach students that are at various skill levels, you need to have varied instruction. I hope to achieve this is my classroom through the use of small groups. During each new unit, I will use anecdotal notes and assessments to judge how quickly and accurately a student is picking up or understanding new material. I will use these assessments to form small groups of students based on their skill level. I will then pull aside every child in a small group at least 4 days a week to work with them one-on-one at their personal level. This will help struggling students to continue to practice and grow, so that they don't fall behind, and will be an opportunity to challenge advanced students. Small groups help to enable each child to better fulfill his or her own potential.
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Students bring their own individual learning styles with them when they enter the classroom, therefore, information needs to be presented in ways that will reach every individual child. You may have students in your classroom that are visual, auditory, linguistic, or kinesthetic learners. To reach and motivate all of your students, you need to have parts of every lesson geared toward each of these different kinds of learners. To do this in my classroom, I like to have visual presentations or pictures on the board as I discuss or introduce a new topic, read picture books that address what we are learning about, and find or create games or crafts for students to play or create that go with what we are doing. Finally, I always like to find some sort of song, dance, or video to go with my lessons. Videos can present things in humorous ways that I may not be able to do myself in person or can show other children sharing the same experiences as my students. Songs are a personal favorite of mine since I grew up loving music! I have personally seen students enjoy singing and dancing along with songs during lessons AND referring back to them later on to access their knowledge.
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I am a strong supporter of inquiry based instruction. If you allow students' natural curiosity to lead their educational experiences, not only will they be more interested in the topic, but it then becomes personal to them and far more important. I plan to do this in my classroom by being flexible with my lesson plans. If students are really interested in a topic, I want to give them the opportunity to continue to explore. This could be done by extending a unit for students to continue to learn about it in depth. Students could also have the option to research and learn more about something individually as an early finisher activity. Finally, since I plan to have a theme every few weeks for our classroom to learn about, such as an animal or part of the world, I could cultivate students' interests by planning an integrated theme around whatever their current interests are. I believe this will make my students more excited about learning!
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I believe that every activity in the classroom should be meaningful for the student.
I believe that students should have the opportunity to share things that they are excited about or doing outside of the classroom with their peers. Having a sharing time builds the classroom community. While many classes give students the opportunity to share, I like to incorporate it in my classroom in a different way than most, shared journal. Shared journal gives students the opportunity to share, while having them work on writing and phonics as well. Three students share stories each day. The class then votes on which story that they think would be the best to write about (since there are 3 stories, there is no 1 loser to be upset) by answering questions like: "Was the main message of the story clear?" "Were there enough details given for you to write and draw about the story?" "Was the story told in a meaningful sequence?". They then go back to their seat to individually write the most important part of the story and draw a picture. Students aren't allowed to ask how things are spelled; they simply write all of the phonetic sounds that they know and can hear in the words. Each Monday is "Modeled Writing Monday" where we come up with the main idea and write the sentence all together. I help students to remember to start with a capital letter, leave spaces between words, put punctuation at the end, and sound out all of the phonetic sounds that they can hear. They then go copy the sentence(s) down in their journals individually and add more to it if they would like to.
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It is so important for young learners to read daily. Reading gives students more exposure to unknown words, both their meanings and spellings. It also helps students build fluency and comprehension so they can better understand, retain information, and answer questions about texts. This is why so many teachers have reading logs for students to fill out each night to show that they have read. These reading logs often ask for the book title, pages read, and a parent signature. The problem with these reading logs is that they do not actually guarantee that a student is reading and they aren't working on any reading skills. Additionally, every child has a different home life, so requiring a parent signature often penalizes children who have parents that may work night shifts, be overwhelmed with other obligations and activities, or not speak English. If a child reads but gets in trouble at school because their parent forgot to sign their log, this could discourage their love of reading. This is why I instead plan to have meaningful reading logs. Reading will be encouraged daily, but students will only have to fill out a log for Mondays-Thursdays, so they can turn it in each Friday. There will be different logs for different weeks that will work on the skills that we are working on in the classroom. Each night of the week, they will complete the same short activity. Some examples may include writing their favorite part of the story, drawing the story's setting, drawing the beginning, middle, and end of the story, or writing new and interesting words from the text.
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A big part of the school day that is often wasted is when students finish an activity early before their peers. In several classrooms that I have been in, children just read whenever they complete their activity. While reading is very important and a wonderful use of time for children, having students always read when they have a completed an activity doesn't really motivate students to finish their work in a timely manner. Other classrooms that I have been in have students complete more problems or questions when they finish early. This also is not very motivating for students, since it really penalizes them by giving them more of the same work. I hate busy work or down time, so I am going to work to consistently have early finisher activities in my classroom! A good way to avoid down time is for students to move to something that they can do on their own immediately whenever they finish an activity, like a Daily Five rotation, an ongoing project, or even snack time. Every part of your school day can't always be planned that strategically, however. This is why I want to have fun and engaging early finisher bins! These bins will have activities and games that students can do individually that will work on math, literacy, and STEAM. Besides these bins, I also plan to give students the option to research a topic that they are interested in for a research project, complete unfinished work, write down something to go in the "Kindness Catcher" bucket, or do a class job.
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Sydney Lauren Hall