Class awards

I've decided to start the second semester with a change-up in class rewards. I decided to create two separate awards for my 3 English classes (8, 9, and 10). I have incorporated Class Dojo into a few of my classroom items (mainly washroom passes), so I decided to use the funny little Class Dojo characters for my awards too. I made an academic award (Task Master) and a good behaviour award (Dojo Champ).



I like the idea of having two separate awards, because I have some students that are great students but they struggle to always achieve success. The Dojo Champ award gives them another opportunity to get recognition. The Task Master award isn't necessarily for the highest mark, though. I want to award it to students that can demonstrate their understanding of a particular activity/task/topic. For instance, for the first Task Master award in Grade 10, I gave it to a student who has consistently demonstrated his understanding of critical media literacy this past week. He demonstrated his understanding through the activities we did in class and not through a summative assessment. Having said that, I am confident he would do well there too.

Edtech and iPads

I had a pretty long blog post about using iPads in my day to day teaching life. This isn't that post. The Blogger app has problems, and it decided not to save my post. Hence the angry rewrite. I'll try and recreate the magic I had earlier.

I am well on my way to converting fully to the iPad for my daily classroom tasks. I still use a pen and paper for marking, because that is how I started this year and I don't feel the urge to digitize everything. Occasionally, a pen and paper is more convenient for other things too (quick notes), but I have largely switched over to Apple's little device. I figured I would list a few of the ways that I use it n the classroom.

Notes/reminders/calendar - I'll get the vanilla apps out of the way first. I have tried other versions of all of these apps (some paid), but for my average day as a teacher I only need the functionality that these three provide. I use the Notes app for writing up long form reminders and for some anecdotal notes. I use Reminders to lay out my ever-changing to-do lists. And I use the Calendar app to schedule meetings and important dates.

Class Dojo - this app is a functional representation of the website. It doesn't have any bells or whistles, but it is solid. I love having the website open on my pc and the volume turned up while I walk around the room with my iPad in hand. I will often give points for students working on task, helping others, taking initiative, etc. Students hear the bell that alerts them to a new point, and they immediately (most of them) start to correct any problematic behaviour. It isn't foolproof, but what is.

Edmodo - I don't use this often IN my class, but rather I love the ease of use and fingertip access when I am not in the classroom. I post all of my homework on Edmodo, and I always check my account at night in case any students have pertinent questions.

Teacherkit - I use this free app to take attendance and make on-the-fly behaviour notes. It offers more functionality than that, though. There are a wide variety of these sorts of apps, but I like the intuitive and quick nature of the program.

Anyway, that's about it for tonight. I had a wonderful post written up (walla, I swear) but it is lost to the ether now.

Badges and Recongition

Our second semester starts shortly, and I am eager to start working in some new programs.  I have behaviour and recognition programs in place, but I want to alter them to add some interest.  I have more research and planning to do, but I think that I'll focus on using Edmodo as mode of transmission for the rewards.  I'll put something up in class too, but Edmodo badges have an alluring effect on my students.  Having said that, I need to focus more on giving out badges for day-to-day and weekly things.  My students love them, and I want to give them more opportunities to earn them.

Just some things I have been thinking on.

Classroom Management

Reflection is a key component of an effective teacher.  This is a statement that has been bantered around for a while, and in my experience it is every bit the truth.  Moving to Kuwait last year, I had a difficult time always managing my students.  I struggled, but it wasn't a complete disaster.  Still, when I had some time over the summer I thought long and hard about it.  This year I have implemented many systems, but the systems are only as good as the person using them.  I had to enforce them and I had to get the kids behind them.

Hand signals is one of the best systems I have in place.  The older students have some difficulty getting behind this totally (I still have some rebels), but for the most part my students like this system.  In fact, I have had other teachers come to me and ask about it.  The students I teach had ask their other teachers to implement a similar system.  The signals themselves are pretty self explanatory.  The biggest hurdle involves practicing and reminding students about the expectations.  I have far fewer students yelling out in class, or wasting time while I am with another student.  If they need to use the washroom they will simply hold up their hand with two fingers crossed.  When I see their hand, I can give them a head shake for yes and off they go.  It is simple and effective.  You can download the PDF I made here and the header here.  The designs for the hands can be found on this site.

I also use an assertive discipline tactic where I write names on the white board for warnings and other actions. On the right you will see my white board.  Since we are a bilingual school, I have to get my students to use English as much as possible.  I will allow Arabic in certain cases, but usually when they come into my room they speak only in English.  This is easier said than done, but I strive to work on monitoring this everyday.  Under the Warnings header I write names of students who choose not to listen.  This is the key with this system: the students have auditory, proximity, and visual reminders for behaviour expectations.  The first warning is verbal, the second gets their name on the board, third a check and a time out, fourth another check and a lunch detention, and after that they get after school detentions and so on. 

This is a school policy at my school, but the key is following through with each step.  Kids are kids, and if they can convince you not to give them a lunch detention for their poor choices they will.  It is a system that allows some flexibility, though.  Students can earn back checks if their behaviour improves (if they haven't worked themselves to a detention).

Reflecting on the last semester, I can safely say that I feel a lot more comfortable with how my classroom works.  I can still improve, but I feel as though my students and I have a great environment where we can tackle the questions of the day in a safe, structured, and positive manner.

Dropbox - AKA The Keeper

I have finally made a full conversion to using Dropbox.  If you aren't familiar with the website, I'll give a brief synopses.  Dropbox is a storage service that allows you to digitally house files.  You can access and sync these files through your PC/Mac, iOS or other portable device, and from an internet browser.  You can share the files with others for easy collaboration, or you can lock everything up tight.  It is a cloud-based service, meaning that the files are stored somewhere...out there.  In the ether, so to speak. 

I have been using the service for a while now, but only for odds and ends.  I wanted an easy way to see my wedding photos despite the disc being at my mom's house and Amanda and I being in Kuwait.  My mom's partner uploaded them to dropbox and shared the link so that we could see the finished products.  It worked very well!

How is it useful for teaching?  I began the year using a USB thumb drive for all of my school files.  I dragged that sucker to and from school everyday, and I had more than my share of "WHERE IS IT?" moments.  Well, I finally lost it a while back.  I erroneously kept it on the half-wall between our kitchen and our living room, and I think it fell into the garbage at some point.  I was never able to find it.  After some swearing and panicking, I was able to find most of what I lost.  Anything that had been created in the previous couple of weeks was gone, but a lot of stuff was still on our home laptop. 

And that's how I quickly became a Dropbox afficiando.  I use it constantly now, and I will never look back.  Dropbox automatically syncs all of my files with all of my devices, and it is a painless process.   Over the holidays I wanted to mark some student presentations, so I threw them into my Dropbox folder.  I was able to open them up on the plane ride, back in Canada, or wherever and start marking away.  It is a must-have product for teachers, or, well, anyone.  Plus, it's free!

Great TED Video

I just stumbled on this great TED talk by Paul Anderson, and how he added gaming elements to his classroom.  I've already planned for some of his ideas (also some of Lee Sheldon's), so I'm excited to start the year and see how it all turns out.

The New Year

We just finished up our first week back in Kuwait.  We were flown in a week ahead of the start of school, so that we can get our classrooms ready for the new year.  Our school has grown by over 200 students this year and we have added several new classrooms.  I'm in one of the new ones, and, thankfully, it is quite big. There was a worry, see, our school is housed in an old government school building and we aren't really able to add to it at all.  Therefore, the classrooms tend to get smaller as we cram more and more inside the school compound.  Nevertheless, my classroom is starting to come together.  I'll be posting some pictures later, but I've got all my material up on the walls, the Smart Board is installed, and so is the whiteboard and cork board.  Unfortunately, our chairs haven't arrived yet so my kids will have to sit on banquet chairs for the first few days of classes.

My school

As I've mentioned before, our school week runs Sunday-Thursday.  My weekend starts tomorrow, when we will get some groceries, and then we will head back to the school on Saturday to prep for Sunday's first day mayhem.  This year I will be focusing on fostering respect and community thinking for the first few weeks, as that can be a problem here in Kuwait (in any school, I suppose).  To go along with that, I will be hammering home the routines and procedures I want to be followed.  Last year was my first real year in the classroom (I taught ESL communication in South Korea for a year, but I don't necessarily count that) and we arrived the day that school started.  That meant that the first few weeks were about survival, and not the proper establishment of routines and procedures.   I came out no worse for wear, but I began my summer vacation researching the procedures I wanted in place.  It is all pretty standard fare, but these are the things that will save me a lot of headaches later on.

I decided to laminate the procedures I have at the moment (I'm sure some more will eventually be added), and I have hung them at the front of the class next to the Smart Board.  We will discuss these ad nauseum for the first week, and I will consistently refer the students to the document if they forget the procedure for a particular action.  Similarly, I have created laminated posters for the levelling explanation and process (XP), as well as the Class Dojo behaviour management system (BP).  As I said, though, I will take some pictures this week of the classroom.

Also, I'm going to post the levelling profile chart I made and I'll go into more detail for the  levelling and behaviour systems I have in place.  It is an exciting time of year!

Jeff

P.S. I forgot a rather funny item.  I went to check on the books that were ordered for my students, and it turns out that somewhere along the line my grade 10 grammar textbook changed from an English with Arabic explanations one to an English with Thai explanations one.  Oops.

Crafting - Part Two

We've been back in Kuwait for a couple pf days now, and Amanda and I are already busy getting our classrooms and plans together.  I'm lucky enough to be teaching in a brand new room (albeit a portable), so it is a blank canvas.  They are still working on the room, though, so I'll have to wait a bit longer to get some of my things set up.

I am, however, preparing and laminating a lot of material for the first few days (and for the rest of the year, really).  I'm creating a "Crafting Corner" where students will be able to practice certain skills.  I will post a skill tree every few weeks, so the students can see all of the skills/steps they will be working on.  When they finish one step (worksheet, activity, etc) they can move on to the next.  The final step is a short written test that covers all areas of that skill (verb tenses for instance).  The students that complete all steps and get 80% or higher on the final test will be awarded a badge on Edmodo.  However, if the students get below 80% they will not be awarded a badge.  Instead, they are able to retake the test as many times as they want until they do.  I want this to be a positive experience, and I want to get them interested in accruing and practicing these skills.  The crafting will take place outside of regular lessons, and I will let them take the sheets home (not the test, though).  I know that a lot of my students love getting badges, stickers, or any other kind of recognition (yes even those moody 9s and 10s), so I foresee a lot of them getting behind this.  The ones that aren't interested will not be forced to do it, but I imagine they will consider it when they see the rewards and higher marks their friends get from practicing their skills.  I've thrown two examples of these skill crafting trees up on Google Documents, so click here if you are interested in using something like them.

Time to play a little Xbox before hitting the sack.

Behaviour Points Using Class Dojo

In a previous post, I wrote about how the students will be graded in my classroom next year.  I touched on the idea of XP, and how those experience points will essentially be their marks on assignments while the levels they achieve will be their grades.  In this post I am going to write about another point system I will be introducing next year: Behaviour Points.

In short, I'll call these points BPs.  Teachers all over the world use a behaviour management system that revolves around points and rewards.  I'm not reinventing the wheel by any means, but I will be integrating this management system into my class narrative and theme.

The Class Dojo homepage.

This past year I stumbled onto the classroom management system Class Dojo, and it was a stress-saver.  I implemented it into my grade 8 class in November, and they immediately loved it.  Their system is an avatar based reward and consequence system.  I can assign points based on defined actions (1 positive point for raising a hand or 1 negative point for coming in late).  During every class I would put the website up on the interactive whiteboard, so that students always knew where they were in terms of points.  I set up a system where if they got 10 points in a week they would get to choose a reward like sitting in the teacher's chair or eating in class.  If the entire class earned 75% positive in the course of a week we had a whole class reward like playing soccer for 20 minutes or having free personal activity time.  Only the kids with -1 or higher were allowed to participate in the whole class rewards.  This system worked wonders in my class, as I had kids invested in the game nature of the program.  They wanted to earn points, win the week.  Add to that the fact that kids can create their own avatars and I can e-mail parents beautiful behaviour reports. It is a fantastic free classroom management tool that I suggest every teacher try out.

I will be using Class Dojo next year, but I will be changing how I use it.  This year I reset the points each week, so that the students had a fresh start.  Next year I will use it more as a currency system.  Students will earn positive BPs for things like raising hands, completing homework, staying on task, helping others, etc.  They will earn negative BPs (and therefore lose points) for things like being late to class, not doing homework, speaking out, and using Arabic in class (a problem in a bilingual school, as the students have been caught saying some nasty things - also we are trying to promote their development of English skills).

An example of the point distribution for my grade eights.
Alaa has earned her reward!

At any time students will be able to spend their BPs on 'loot.'  For instance, 5BP would buy a student a pencil or pen, 10BP no homework for one night, 15BP a treat, 35BP 15 minutes of quiet free time, etc.  100BP would buy a student soccer for 25 minutes.  Obviously soccer costs a lot of points and an individual student would have to save for an entire semester to earn something like that.  However, I want to promote cooperation and group work.  Since the students will already be in guilds (groups) I will allow them to combine or donate points to each other in order to claim loot.  If Ahmed doesn't have a pencil and he has no BP left, he can ask Tom if he can spare 5BP from his cache of 30BP.  In order to get the soccer reward, my students will have to work together to combine their points.

As of right now, Class Dojo doesn't seem to allow for erasing a particular student's points (as in spending them on a reward), so I hope that they allow this in the future.  If not I'm sure I can figure out a work around to it.  I will be using Class Dojo simply because it is a clean and easy way to manage and track my students' behaviour.

What's worked and what hasn't

The last year has proved educational in a variety of ways. I've been learning on the go since we arrived, and now, as the summer approaches, is the time to start reflecting on the year.

My students are a frustrating bunch. We have had to deal with a lot of behaviour problems this year at my school, and a lot of that is due to where we live. The kids that attend our school are a privileged lot that have nannies and drivers. They don't even pack their own books into their bags. This reliance on others to do things for them has meant that our students often lack motivation and many of them have no respect for the classroom. Of course, it is not all students, and it isn't really their fault. They are a product of their environments. It is my job to try and give them a formative and positive environment to develop in.

Behaviour management is a difficult thing to master, and I am nowhere close to doing that. However, I did discover some things this year. Mainly, my students are interested in being good students but they have trouble knowing how to do that. The best tool at my disposal this year has been Class Dojo. This site turns behaviour management in a visual point-based system. The kids loved it. I had students actively engaged in trying to be good. It helped loads this year.

However, I want to use it in a slightly different way next year. This year the kids would earn positive and negative points based on their classroom behaviour, and we would reset the count each week. If they reached 10 positive points in a week they got to choose a reward. If the class achieved a 75% positive rating at the end of the week the whole class earned a reward (usually soccer).

Next year, I want to make the points continue from week to week. The students will be able to redeem points for rewards or privileges. As of right now I'm not sure that I can reset individual points using Class Dojo, but I'll figure something out (even if it means creating a hard copy point system modelled on Class Dojo).

As I've mentioned before, I have a lot of big plans for the next school year. I'll be blogging more about them soon in a series I've yet to title. Stay tuned.

Penny Arcade - Extra Credits

I stumbled on this video a while ago, so I thought I'd share it. The video's creators bring up a lot of interesting ideas, such as going from the bottom up in assessment. Watch it and let me know what you think about it.

Penny Arcade - Extra Credits

A New Classroom, A New Adventure

My name is Jeffrey Phillips. Welcome to my blog.

As we approach June, I've started to reflect on the last year in the classroom. My soon-to-be wife, Amanda, and I moved to Kuwait from Canada last September to start working at an Ontario curriculum based school. In the next few weeks our year will close out and we will fly back to Canada for the summer. We will be back again in August to start our second full years as teachers. This year has been a big learning experience, as I imagine the first year is for every teacher. Even as exams approach I am thinking of things I want to do differently next year, things I want to change slightly, and things I want to research over the summer.

Part of the reason I am starting this blog is to monitor my own professional progress and to reach out to like-minded professionals. I have survived my first year as an English and Art teacher for grades 6, 7, 8, and 9. Next year I will only teach English for our grade 8s, 9s, and 10s. I'm already formulating a plan of attack for next years curriculum, and the more research I do the more interested I become using a game concept based methodology. I'm not necessarily talking about using games in the classroom, rather I am interested in using the ideas and tropes found in most games in my year, unit, and lesson plans. I want to incorporate the interest that kids have in playing games into the lessons I teach them.  I want to change the way I'm doing assessment.

I have a lot of big ideas, and over the course of the summer I plan to develop them extensively. My progress, research, and insight will be blogged about consistently (I hope). Technology is changing the way we educate our kids; this is the new classroom.

That's all for now.