Does my classroom reflect my teaching philosophy?

Last weekend on Twitter, @whatedsaid tweeted an excellent question along the lines of "Does your classroom environment reflect what you believe about learning?"
At the time I thought this was an excellent question and wished I had time to do it justice in a reflective post.
As luck would have it, this week I was asked to give a presentation on a similar topic so I managed to create time to reflect on what I do and whether this matches what I say I believe.
Here is what I found:

Even though what I do, I could do successfully in a different system, my philosophy of teaching is based on my foundational belief in the dignity of the human person. I believe that every child is made in the image and likeness of God, and that every child deserves to feel safe, have fun and to enjoy learning experiences that suits their needs.

 Learners in my classroom are usually busy doing. Of course there are times when they gather to listen, reflect and recap, but I try to allow opportunities for hands-on exploration, discussion and experimentation as much as possible.

 I am very proud of the way that my students are able to speak about their own learning and why what they are doing is of benefit to their learning needs. This year I have implemented the Daily 5 program for the first time. I have found that this program which fits my philosophy well, provides a structure for my practice in Literacy, and that the students and I have been able to transfer the best parts of this practice into other curriculum areas.

 Right from the beginning of the year, I work hard to establish a sense of community through special shared experiences, predictable routines that highlight the identity of our class community and behavioural expectations based on mutual respect. A few years ago I convinced my school administration to allow us to move to a resources levy system instead of a text book list so that I can set up shared resources in my classroom. When students have individual belongings and pencils cases I find that usually by the end of the first semester, many of the twist-up crayons have been turned into pea shooters and half the class can't seem to find a pair of scissors when they need them. Since moving to the shared tubs, I have discovered that students are more responsible for the resources since they don't see them as belonging to them, but as necessary for our class community.

 If you spent a week in my classroom you would notice how much and in how many ways technology has transformed the way that I work with students in my room. I use my projector and laptop as an essential part of many of our routines. I use a bank of student laptops (shared among a few classes) for individual and collaborative activities. I use a set of shared iPads for a range of purposes, and use my own personal iPad and iPhone for capturing student learning on a daily basis.

 I try very hard to allow all learners to engage in challenging activities at an appropriate level by providing differentiated learning experiences and open-ended tasks. I use K-W-L charts and pretests to determine the students' individual and collective knowledge and interests prior to learning experiences and use this information to guide my planning.

 The General Capabilities of the Australian Curriculum are at the heart of what I do. I regularly reflect on how I am offering my students opportunities to develop in these capabilities.

Although I am restricted to the furniture I was given and a reasonably small classroom with no "break-out" space, I have tried my best to arrange the furniture to suit the kinds of experiences I want students to have in the room. I have set aside a large carpet area so all the children can gather in front of the IWB and so there is enough space for games and movement. I have arranged the desks into pods and students know that even though they have a "home desk" which houses their books etc, they can work in a variety of spaces within the room, sometimes for flexible grouping, sometimes by their own choice. In the corner, I have had the old whiteboard installed at floor height so that students can use this space to write questions, reflect on learning, practise their spelling or express ideas in pictures. The PE teacher has loaned us an exercise ball and students love to sit on this either at their desks or around the room. My teacher desk is pushed right into the corner of the room so it doesn't take up more space than it must. I rarely sit at it anyway. My students sit on my "teacher chair" more than I do. I'm always on the move!

I really do think that my classroom reflects my teaching philosophy. Of course it is a "work in progress" and changes as I reflect on how I can improve, and when I am inspired by other great teachers who share their ideas.

Does your classroom reflect your beliefs about learning? I'd love to see more ideas!

A Classroom Tour

With two more sleeps to go, I am not feeling completely ready but I know that I have done most of the big things now and it's the final touches and tidying that will get done or don't really matter too much.
I also need to start thinking about planning the first week so I have something to do with my lovelies in my new space.

This year we are "2C" so I decided to be "Cool Cats". Surprisingly there are no "cat" themed packs that I could get my hands on. Frogs, bees and ladybeetles seem to be more popular than cats. I made the door decoration using clipart by Trina Clark. I used a paint program and MS Word to individualise the paw prints. People keep telling me they look like dog prints but I don't know the difference and I hope my Year 2s are non the wiser as well. ;-)

Here is my room. I have 24 students but until a few days ago I was expecting 25 so I have 5 groups of 4 and one of 5. I'm not quite game to repurpose the spare desk just yet in case someone turns up on the first day. Six groups of 4 would be very neat though. I usually start the year with students facing forward as much as possible because it is easier to gain attention at first but I figure since they are younger grades, I will put them on the floor for whole group focus stuff and the desks will be for activity in groups or individually. I am using pencil caddies, not pencil cases, so they need to be in groups. Secretly, I would have preferred tables to desks but they are fairly new, especially compared to what I have been used to for the past few years so I won't complain.

I made these placemats for my students desks. I use them as easy reference for high frequency words, maths activities and also to mark where I would like the students to sit for particular activities.

This is one of the pencil caddies. I have enough pencils, scissors, crayons and glue sticks for each child, as well as a set of 20 counters each. I have only put two erasers on each table because I don't really want them to be erasing all the time and they tend to just use them to stab, chew on, draw on and crumble, so hopefully if they have to share them they will pay more respect to the group property. (It's a theory - I'll let you know how it goes.)

This is the front of the room. There is a large blackboard which is half covered with a white board and then I covered the rest with paper to use as a display space. I found a great picture of a lifecycle of a frog craft activity and display that will look great on the board. I have an interactive whiteboard on another wall so I will use it most of the time. I'm not sure what I will put on the whiteboard yet. Maybe messages.
The piles of stuff on the ledge are the books that go into children's desks. They should be gone by Tuesday morning.

This is my gathering space. I wanted it to be in front of the IWB so that we can do morning message and calendar and use the board interactively. I have put the carpet under the desks because the floor is vinyl and we are directly above another classroom and it gets very noisy when children are putting their chairs in and out. This means I don't have a carpet to sit on. I don't know whether to go for cushions or a rug or what just yet. Mum's a great quilter, maybe she will come and help us to make an alphabet rug. (That's a hint, Mum, if you read this.)

This is my prayer space. I still need to make a sign and find a candle and bible. I have cut out the letters for the sign but haven't worked out how to put them up. I have plans for the tree.

This is another view of the space on the floor. I have a sound muncher and some boxes with toys for free play and also maths equipment - MAB and unifix.

My empty word wall, ready for the students to add their names and to keep adding to as the year goes on.

This is my birthday chart. On the first day, I want the students to place their name and birthdate (already printed, cut out and laminated) on the right charts and add a candle to the right cake to make a birthday graph. Then I will move them up higher to make a frieze.

So as I said, it's coming together! I am pleased with how it looks. I hope my kids love learning in this space.

Activities for Guess the Baby

I have made some activities to go with the “Guess the Baby” book. Since I plan to use this book in the same week that I will teach the ‘b’ sound, the first two activities are spelling or phonics focussed.

The third activity links to the Science unit we will be doing on growing and changing.

I have designed the activities to be multipurpose. This way they can be used as a quick activity or a longer one and the lesson can be adapted to meet the needs of the group.

The first activity is really a reading activity. The students drag hidden words onto the screen and read them. You could extend this activity by having students sounding out each word and then putting the sounds back together. The words could also be sorted into alphabetical order, or into groups such as according to the number of syllables.

The second activity focuses on the blends for ‘bl’ and ‘br’. A few of the questions could have more than one answer. This is an opportunity for discussion about having more than one right answer and also building vocabulary since some children may not know words such as “bloom” or “brow”.

The third activity is a sorting activity. There is opportunity for discussion about many of the points, eg: Are these statements true for everyone?

I can only attach the images at this stage since I haven’t set up a way of putting up the files yet. I am working on that next…

BTW... Do you like the pictures? I drew them myself using two different programs and going from one program to the other to get the right type of file. It was a pain but they are done and hopefully next time I will work out a few shortcuts so it won't be so fiddly.

Where do I Start?

I have decided to write a blog this year even though I'm not really sure how to go about it. I have been looking at many other teacher blogs and seeing the great ideas people are sharing so I thought I should share too. Hopefully someone else can benefit from the work I do...


This year we are implementing the new Australian Curriculum. I hope that as I create and share resources that I will use in my classroom, other people will share too and we can support each other through this new experience.

I am excited by the new curriculum and am glad that we will finally have a bit more consistency across the states within Australia.

I am teaching Year 2 this year after a few years in the Year 4/5 area. It has been a while since I have taught little ones so I know there will be a learning curve for me in this regard as well.

One goal this year is to make better use of the IWB in my classroom. When I first got one three years ago I was using it interactively a lot, but I found that with the older students, a lot of the activities that were taking me hours to create would only last a few minutes in the classroom and they were not intellectually challenging. Last year I used it mostly as a projector. I think that having a projector in the classroom is essential and really enhances the students' opportunities to understand concepts more deeply because they can "see" what is being talked about, but it doesn't justify the expense of having the interactive capabilities.

Another goal is to make good use of our new iPads. Our school has purchased ten iPads for use across the school. I won't be able to have them all the time of course, but I can already think of great uses for them and hopefully will discover many more along the way. I think that all these new challenges will keep me pretty busy this year so I hope I can manage to find time amongst it all to share my journey via this blog.

I have a few short weeks before we start to try to get my classroom organised and to learn a whole lot more myself.

Wish me luck!