Week 11: Homework

In This week's class, we looked at what homework is and why we assign it for young learners.  I shared some helpful hints about writing letters to parents and preparing calendars that communicate with parents about homework.  I hope you all had fun!

Next week is our last week of class.  We will share our scrapbooks and have a nice "goodbye" class.  Here is a sheet of points squares for everyone to put in their scrapbooks to show me which assignments you were doing!  I'm looking forward to seeing all of your work!

Week 10: Parent Communication

This week, we looked at a few different ways that we can communicate with the parents of the children that we teach.  We all know about making phone calls and writing emails, but hopefully the methods presented in class are something new and useful for all of you.  If you would like to make examples for your own classes and put them in your scrapbooks with descriptions, go ahead!  I'd like to see how other teachers use these ideas.

As promised, here are the files for my Happy-Grams!!!

Week 9: When Students Break the Rules

Even though we all prepare clear expectations and make simple rules that students understand, eventually those rules will be broken.  Children learn about boundaries by testing them and when those boundaries are crossed we need to know some good ways to react.  If possible, using logical consequences is a good way to discourage problematic behavior while teaching the reasons that such behaviors are unacceptable.  Just remember the "Three R's":

Related: Teaches cause and effect
Respectful: Is not too mean and does not embarrass the child
Reasonable: It is possible for both teacher and student to follow through with the consequence

If your consequence has all three of those, it's probably a logical one!

Here is more information about this if you would like to read about it!
Punishment vs. Logical Consequences
Types of Logical Consequences

Week 8: Rewarding Good Behavior

This week's class was about showing our students how much we appreciate them, but also about helping them to appreciate themselves.  When we use reward systems, it's important to first be sure that we actually need a reward system.  If you don't need it, don't do it!  However, if your students need a little "push" to help motivate them in class, rewarding the behaviors you want to see could help.

We discussed some different types of rewards in class and then made our own reward systems out of things that we had lying around the center room.  I was very impressed with the ideas that all of you came up with!  I'll be interested to see the creative things some people share in their scrapbooks.

Week 6: Jobs

Classroom jobs are just a fun way to let children help out in the classroom while building classroom community and self-management skills.  It's a simple lesson, but one that can make your classroom a lot more fun to work in.  One easy way to manage student helpers is to create badges for different jobs.  If any of you decide to make some job badges, I'll be excited to see what ideas you come up with!  I'll get to see them this week (week 7) when I take a look at your scrapbooks! So don't forget to bring them!

Do you think kid's would like this job? What goes on the back of the badge?

Week 5: Procedures and Routines

Although this was a very simple lesson, it's probably the most important lesson in the Joyful Classroom up to this point.  But that's good, right?  If one simple thing can eliminate 80% of problematic behavior, we should all do it!

In the lesson about routines, we learned that having procedures for doing things a certain way and practicing those procedures helps students learn how to be in our classrooms. For the moms in the program, having a routine for coming home from school or getting ready to leave in the morning will also save us a lot of time and teach our kids to manage themselves.  Of course, the routines are not very useful unless they are practiced, so make it fun and kids will do it!

The other thing that we tried this week was Total Physical Response.  TPR is a great way to teach language, but also a great way to teach routines.  It takes some practice to get good at it, so we might take some time to practice it more later in the semester.

I start every lesson at Sookmyung Kindergarten with the mystery box. Ask in class if you want to know more!

Scrapbooks

In a couple of weeks, I'll be looking through your scrapbooks.  It's not anything to get stressed about because I don't give a grade until the end of the semester, but I'll give you some help and feedback about how to make your things better and express your understanding better.  This week, I put two new items on the Quest Board.  The Daiso/Namdaemun Challenge (15 points) is one you can do with a friend or alone. This week I'll introduce the Class Observation (20 points) which gives you a chance to use an opportunity to observe a class as a way to get points.  Remember, everything on the Quest Board is something you can choose, not something you have to do. I give lots of choices for assignments so everyone can find something that they will like.  Only do the assignments that you want to do.  If you don't like one type of assignment, choose another one!

Week 4: The Rules

In this week's lesson, we had a great time learning about rules, why we have rules, and how we should make them.  Rules are important in the young learner classroom because like routines, they give clear expectations for behavior.  Rules also help us establish a classroom culture for children that is separate from their home culture.  It is also helpful for students to become accustomed to following rules in preparation for living with the rules of society. 

If anyone wants to read more about rules, find the book, Rules in School in the resource center. It outlines the process very well and also has some other important class management things in it.

Week 3: The Walls

Last week we looked at ways to prepare areas in our learning environments.  While that lesson concentrated on the floor, this week we focused on the walls.  There are many different ways that we can use wall space to help us maximize the effectiveness of the places where we teach and learn.  The types of classroom displays that we focused on this week were:

Classroom Management Displays
Literacy Displays
Classroom Community Displays
Thematic Displays

Of course, we also did our best to make all of these displays as interactive bulletin boards that students can touch and manipulate.  I hope everyone had fun bringing their ideas to life!

Week 2: Places for Learning

One of my classrooms in the Galapagos Islands

In our second week of class, we looked at what we put in our classrooms and why we put it there.  However, classrooms aren't the only places where we may be teaching or learning.  Learning spaces come in all shapes and sizes!  We also need to apply the same considerations to the spaces in our homes where we work or study.

For the scrapbook, there are some ideas from this lesson may go into your lesson reflections or even a crafting assignment.  If you would like to try designing an interesting learning space, you can use the same design tool that I used to make our class materials. 

See you in class!

Week 1: The First Days of School

Strong Classroom Community makes us more productive working together!

In this week's lesson, we spent some time getting to know the course and getting to know each other.  The only new concept that was introduced this week was "Classroom Community".  This is just a fancy word for "togetherness" in the classroom.

If anyone wants to start on their scrapbook, they can do a lesson diary about today's class, a self-introduction, or both!  Please let me know if you have any questions.

Lastly, don't forget to buy a scrapbook! Your scrapbook is where your grade in the course comes from!

See you in class!

Welcome!

The Fall 2013 semester of PL-TESOL will begin this September.  I can't wait to meet all of you new Play & Learn trainees!  Check back in September for important course information.

- Mr. Croner