Building An Engaging Learning Community in Your Classroom

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Building An Engaging Learning Community in Your
Classroom

• Cathy Costello
• Curriculum Coordinator Retired
• York Region District School Board

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Presenter Profile

• Cathy Costello is a recently retired educator
  with 31 years of experience. Her roles have
  included teacher, department head, curriculum
  consultant, and curriculum coordinator for
  literacy for York Region District School Board.
• Her expertise is in the areas of literacy and
  special education. Cathy is currently an author
  and reviewer for Pearson Education Canada where
  she is involved in Literacy in Action, Grades 7
  8, and Stepping Out reading and writing
  professional training programs.
• She has been part of author teams for four books
  in the Boldprint series (Grades 4 to 12) and
  Reading and Writing for Success.
• Cathy was on the provincial writing teams for
  Think Literacy Cross-Curricular Approaches and
  the Reaching Higher resource package.
• She has been a member of Oxford University
  Publishings author team contributing literacy
  strategies for subject textbooks Active Citizen
  (civics) and Encounter Canada (geography).
• Cathy was also a contributor to the 2nd Edition
  of The Literacy Principal.
• Her e-mail address is cathy.costello_at_sympatico.ca.
  

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History With the person to your right

• If you could meet and do lunch with one
  personality from history, who would it be? Why?

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Music With two people behind you

• If you were shipwrecked on a desert island, what
  two songs would you want to have on your Ipod?
  Why?

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Outcomes of This Session

• Participants will
• learn about practices supported by research that
  engage students in learning
• understand that how you teach is as important as
  what you teach
• support each other with experiences and
  strategies.

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How do we teach?
Assumptions about Learners
Practices Protocols
Understandings Beliefs
Reality of your classroom
Map backwards How do the practices and protocols
in your classroom reflect your assumptions? How
do your assumptions build from your beliefs and
understandings?
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You had me at hello

• Meet students as they come in the door.
• Stand at the door or close to it. Greet them
  with a compliment or a genuine query about how
  they feel, why they look happy, worried, tired,
  etc. Students learn that you consider them a
  person first.
• Nobody cares how much you know until they know
  how much you care. William Purkey

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Give Them a Stake in the Room

• Invite each student to colour the room with a
  photograph, a poster, a piece of artwork, a
  newspaper clipping or magazine cover of a
  favourite activity
• Quote of the day teacher posts for first 2 to 4
  weeks, then students choose and contribute.
• Graffiti Board where they leave messages for
  each other appropriate for public viewing.

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Establish Order and Structure Cooperatively!

• Students need fences to bump up against. John
  Leeds, Principal
• No more than 3-5 basic ground ruleseven 2
• Respect People
• Respect Property
• Routines
• Agenda of days activities
• Startup and cleanup routine

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Build Self-Esteem Bragging Exercise

• Find a partner
• Interview each other about what you do best or
  what you are good at. Take 1 to 2 minutes each.
• You will introduce each other to the rest of the
  class, so use effective listening skills.
• Jack Canfield, Mark Hansen, 100 Ways to Enhance
  Self-Concept in the Classroom

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Build Relationships and Teams

• Birthday line working in teams of 10-12, get in
  a line according to your birthday with January at
  the front. NO TALKING AT ALL.
• Lifesaver Relay popsicle sticks, large gummy
  lifesaver shape
• Lead to
• Effective Collaborative Group Work
• http//wilderdom.com/games/Icebreakers.html
• - Choose carefully.

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Building the Learning Community

• Working with two other students
• Name the 10 provinces and three territories of
  Canada. Bonus prize for adding the capital of
  each one.
• List as many major events of World War Two as you
  can.
• Working in a group of four, do a group homework
  check. You have 10 minutes to ensure that
  everyone understands how to do the first five
  problems. One person from your group will be
  asked to demonstrate one of these five questions.
• Take Five in Think Literacy Oral Communication.

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Grab their attention!

• Challenge of the day
• Issues and Answers

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Geography Rapid Writing/Brief Reflection

• If you had to make one thing in the world or
  in this country smaller, what would it be?
• IfQuestions for Teens by Evelyn McFarlane
  John Saywell

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Mathematics Group Think

• What information would you need to estimate how
  many cell phones are in this hotel right now?

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English Think-Pair-Share

• Think of 30 words that include the oa letter
  combination. You may not use the dictionary until
  you have 20 words.
• What was your strategy?

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Find Out About Them What do they read? What do
they write? What are their interests?

Historical novels
Biography
Sports
Thrillers
True crime
Romance
News articles
Mystery
Poetry or Drama
Nature
Science
Science fiction
Magazine articles
History
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Find Out About ThemI Am Unique Sentence
Completion

• My favourite song/music
• My hobbies
• Pet(s) I own
• Sports/games I like
• TV show(s) I enjoy watching
• Movies Ive seen
• Places Ive been

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Set Students Up for Success

• Assessment for learning know their strengths
  and needs so you can build skills
• Assessment as learning checklists, checkbrics,
  rubrics, exemplars, goal setting opportunity for
  each assignment
• Assessment of learning provide engaging
  assignments which require high-level thinking and
  for which there is no wrong answer, e.g.,
  responsibility pie graph, visual verbal essay,
  mind map

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Assessment For Learning with Issues and Answers

• Use think, pair, share, or inside/outside
  circles
• What is an important environmental issue in
  todays world?
• Use a values line and fold the line
• World War One could have been prevented.

Agree strongly Disagree strongly
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Responsibility Pie Graph

• Who was most responsible for? What was the most
  important cause or effect of? What is the most
  important factor in?
• Name each piece of the pie and assign a
  percentage of responsibility.
• Add evidence to support the ge.
• Example Who was most responsible for the tragic
  end of Louis
  Riel?

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Verbal/Visual Essay

• Students draw or find five symbolic elements
  related to what they have read and explain the
  meaning of each one.
• Students choose five key quotations from the text
  and explain why those are significant indicators
  of what is explained in the text.
• Technique originally shared by Jim Barry,
  author for Thomson Nelson Publishing.

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Mind Maps

• Key idea in the centre
• Creative integration of visuals, colours, codes,
  words, ideas, and connectors a natural
  function of the human brain
• Demonstrates various aspects of the key idea.
• A more personal response.

Viewing
Writing
Oral Comm
Processes
Literacy
Reading
Venn
Strategies
Vocab in Context
Timeline
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Mind Map about Creating a Mind Map

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Celebrate Success as Moving Forward

• Be a guide on the side. Support the right moves
  and directions.
• Conference with students. Ask questions to lead
  them forward.
• Be an encourager. Tally the positives, not the
  negatives.
• Celebrate their strengths.

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The Lessons of Martin Haberman

• Success in school is a matter of life and
  death, especially for the poor.
• He published The Pedagogy of Poverty Versus Good
  Teaching in the December 1991 issue of Phi Delta
  Kappan.
• He exposed the paradigm many educators in inner
  city schools adopted in teaching the poor
  routinized activity, strict discipline,
  compliance, teachers teach/students learn.

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Haberman Good teaching is happening when
students are

• involved in issues they regard as vital concerns
• being helped to see major concepts, big ideas,
  and general principles, not simply isolated
  facts.
• involved in planning what they are doing.
• involved in applying ideals such as fairness,
  equity, and justice to their world

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Good teaching happens when students are

• actively involved
• directly involved in real-life experiences
• participating in heterogeneous groups
• provided with access to information technology
• given opportunities to reflect on their own lives

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Buzz Moment Final Thought

• Engaged learning doesnt just happen. It is the
  result of a cluster of practices that
  systematically over time build a learning
  community in the classroom, bolster student
  confidence and self-esteem, and lead towards
  greater student achievement because students
  believe they can accomplish the tasks of learning.