Is ADHD a Disorder?

Recently, I posted about how my school is using Facebook and Pinterest as part of our professional development.  (See the whole post HERE.) I’ve decided to pass on some of the best videos and articles I come across to you each Sunday evening.  Here is this week’s professional development post:

I absolutely love this video because it is a gentleman with ADHD talking about ADHD from a very realistic point of view.  He explains the importance of catching a student with ADHD’s attention in a very clear way and talks about how ADHD cannot be gotten rid of, so we need to teach students to work within their “different cognition” rather than trying to rid them of their “disorder”.  This video is about 13 minutes long and completely worth the watch.  After you watch, I’d love to hear how you help students with ADHD in your classroom.

 

 

If you’re interested in more professional development videos – follow my Professional Development Pinterest board.

ISM Spotlight – Monthly Handprint Pictures

This year I am the luckiest teacher in the world. I get to teach at the best school ever – International School of Morocco, with some of the best, most creative, teachers ever. Each time I walk into someone else’s classroom, I get inspired and we just seem to spiral great teaching ideas off of each other. It’s a wonderful place to teach, and since we are all collaborating, it’s a wonderful place for our kids to learn – a teacher’s dream, right? I have tried and tried to convince the other teachers to create blogs of their own to spotlight and share some of their amazing ideas, but everyone is super busy. Instead, they have each agreed to let me spotlight some of their ideas right here on Raki’s Rad Resources. So, each Friday night, I will be posting an ISM Spotlight.

I have posted many times about our amazing Pre-K, Jen Kadiri.  She does the most amazing activities with our 3 year olds.  Every month this year, Ms. Kadiri made a handprint portrait with her students.  Then at the end of the year, she stapled all of the handprints together to create a present for the parents.

September is an apple tree with a brown hand print trunk and green and red finger print leaves and apples.

October is a bat with two black hand prints and two pumpkins with two orange fist prints.

  

November is a turkey created by painting the palm and thumb brown and then each of the fingers a different fall color – green, orange, red and yellow.

December is a Christmas tree, created with five green hand prints and multicolored finger print lights and ornaments. 

January is a set of snowmen, created with a white open fingered hand print on blue paper.

  February is a heart, created with two close fingered hand prints, upside down.

March is a rainbow created by painting the palm white, then thumb purple, index finger blue, middle finger yellow, ring finger orange and pinkie finger red.  Then, students rub their hand across the page, creating a rainbow effect.

April is an umbrella creating with an upside down hand print – students get to choose their favorite color.

May is a set of two flowers, created with two hand prints – students get to choose between red, pink, purple and yellow.

June is a sun, created with four yellow hand prints – palms overlapping.

Ms. Kadiri gets the students to create these hand print portraits at the beginning of each month.  She works with each student one on one to create their hand print portrait, while the other students work on a more open ended painting project at the next table. The parents were so excited to have the year’s worth as a keepsake at the end of the year.  Do you have any great ideas for documenting a year’s worth of growth in your students?

Being a Mommy Makes Me a Better Teacher – 5 Reasons Why

Summer vacation has officially begun, and I am done teaching my class.  However, I am never truly done teaching.  Over the summer (and all school year long), I am a mother, and therefore a teacher, to the three most important children in my life – my sons.  My sons are 2, 5 and 9, and they truly make me a better teacher.

Here are some of the ways that my sons make me a better teacher:

1.)  Research & Development – Any teacher with children will tell you that they might (and often do) try out lessons and resources with their personal children.  When I was developing word family games for my class a few years ago, my children played them many times before my students did.  My older son loved learning about Africa and creating glogs when I was preparing my Africa Unit for my students this year.  Not only does this help me make better resources for my students, but my personal children are much more honest about what they do and don’t like!

2.)  Keeping Me Up to Date – Thanks to my kids, I know what toys, t.v. shows, characters, and games are “cool” right now.  Without my sons, I certainly wouldn’t know about Ben Ten, Ninja Go or Super Why!  This helps me know what rewards might work best for my students (especially the boys – anyone want to lend me a girl?).  It also helps me build connections for my students that I wouldn’t be able to build otherwise.  For example, when we were doing persuasive writing, I helped one student write a persuasive essay on who was a better alien – Four Arms or Shockwave (from Ben 10).

3.)  Double Dip Previews - I get to watch those “educational” videos in advance too.  For example, since my two year old is currently obsessed with anything “Bus” (Magic School Bus) or “Sid” (Sid the Science Kid) at the moment, I have memorized pretty much all of the videos.  This means when it is time to teach any of these science concepts, I know exactly which video best illustrates it and I don’t need to spend extra time “previewing” it.  The same goes for kids’ books that I read at bedtime and activities, museums, and parks that often become the best field trips.

4.)  Patience – Spending time with my own children has taught me patience.  It has also taught me that the most important thing for a child is a positive relationship and quality time.  I know that not all of the students I will get to teach get that patience, positive relationship and quality time at home, so I try hard to provide it for my students at school.

5.)  Keeping Me Balanced – Without my children, I could easily spend ALL of my time on teaching and creating resources for teaching.  However, my kids need me to be a mommy. They need me to get out of the house and take them to the park, they need me to snuggle them, read them stories, play games with them etc.  I tend to be a very tunnel visioned person, especially when it comes to work.  My children’s needs prevent me from being too tunnel visioned and this time away from my work helps me to stay balanced.

 

Are you a mom and a teacher?  How does being a mom help you to be a better teacher?

Is texting hurting or helping our students?

Recently, I posted about how my school is using Facebook and Pinterest as part of our professional development.  (See the whole post HERE.) I’ve decided to pass on some of the best videos and articles I come across to you each Sunday evening.  Here is this week’s professional development post:

 Texting and tweeting are a common form of communication among our students.  I constantly hear from other teachers about how this is killing our students’ ability to spell and use proper grammar.  This great video from John McWhorter argues the opposite.  He talks about how texting is actually developing into it’s own dialect and is giving our students the ability to be bilingual, while only speaking English.  This video is only about 13 minutes long and it’s completely worth watching!  When you’re done, I’d love to hear where you stand on the texting debate.

  

If you’re interested in more professional development videos – follow my Professional Development Pinterest board.

Food Web Interactive Prezis

For our final unit of the year, my class worked on the food webs that are formed by the plants and animals of the forest.  We started out by watching the Temperate Forest DVD from the Planet Earth video series.  If you haven’t seen these videos, they are amazing and they were great to give my students a realistic view of the plants and animals in the forest.

Next, we talked about food webs and the transfer of energy between one organism and another, starting at the sun.  I gave the students a template and they drew out a possible food web that might exist in a temperate forest.  Then, the students used books and the internet to research each of the animals on their food web.  They found the lifespan, predators, prey and adaptations of their animals.  We used these sheets to research – feel free to download them free from Google Docs.

 

 

Finally, they used the information to create an interactive food web using www.prezi.com. Here is a student example from my class:

How have you used Prezi with your class?

ISM Spotlight – Student Led Portfolio Conferences

This year I am the luckiest teacher in the world. I get to teach at the best school ever – International School of Morocco, with some of the best, most creative, teachers ever. Each time I walk into someone else’s classroom, I get inspired and we just seem to spiral great teaching ideas off of each other. It’s a wonderful place to teach, and since we are all collaborating, it’s a wonderful place for our kids to learn – a teacher’s dream, right? I have tried and tried to convince the other teachers to create blogs of their own to spotlight and share some of their amazing ideas, but everyone is super busy. Instead, they have each agreed to let me spotlight some of their ideas right here on Raki’s Rad Resources. So, each Friday night, I will be posting an ISM Spotlight.

Each month at ISM, we have a Morning Meeting, to share what we have been learning with the parents.  Most of the morning meetings we have shared songs or skits that we have been working on in class.  Some of the morning meetings, we have invited parents to come to the classrooms to share projects with them, like our Earth’s Materials Online Posters and our African Folktale Project.

This past Friday, we used our Morning Meeting time to give students time to share their online portfolios with their parents in student led conferences.  The Pre-K and Kindergarten students created paper portfolios to share with their parents, while the 1st – 4th graders shared online portfolios in the computer lab. 

The student led portfolio conferences are so impactful.  They allow students to choose the works that they are most proud of.  They also allow students to then present their work and their learning to their parents, which is much more impactful than a teacher presenting the pieces they have chosen to the parents. 

Do you do student portfolios or student led conferences?  What’s the most powerful part in your class?  Mine was seeing one of my “macho boys” sitting on his mom’s lap and guiding her through the math videos he has created this year.

Building Online Portfolios in LiveBinders

What a week it’s been!  I’m sorry I’ve been so absent, but this week has been fully devoted to finishing up my students’ online portfolios.  We began building our portfolios about 5 weeks ago, and have been working through these steps to build our portfolios using www.livebinders.com. 

 1.)  The students used a printed brainstorming sheet to decide on what would go into each tab of their LiveBinder.  My students decided on at least one thing they learned in each subject this year, their favorite activity in that subject, any projects or websites they could link to, and any pictures or videos they were interested in adding.  (Grab the brainstorming sheets from my TPT store, along with student and teacher technology tips in my Student Created Online Portfolios Made Easy packet.)

The students had to come up to with all this information for: math, reading, writing, science, social studies, Arabic, French, drama, music, art and PE. 

2.)  Then, I conferenced with each student and encouraged them to add certain details or projects to their portfolios.

3.)  Next, the students went onto www.livebinders.com and created a binder named Online Portfolio.  The students created a tab with their grade level and subtabs with each of their subjects.

4.)  Students then typed in the information that was written on their brainstorming sheet into each tab.  They also linked each tab to projects we have done during the school year, storybirds, glogs, prezis, blog posts, even stories they typed in google docs.  These links provide the “evidence” for learning in each subject. 

5.)  This week, I conferenced with each student again, to check for grammar, spelling, etc. and to help them with any linking issues.  I also helped them add photos and videos that were saved on my computer or our class iPad.

5.)  On Friday, the students presented their online portfolios to their parents in a student-led conference format.  The parents loved seeing all the work put together, and talking to their students about all of the different projects they had completed this year.

 

I can’t share a whole portfolio with you because they contain private pictures and videos, but here are some screen shots of different portfolios.

 

 

 

 

How do you do portfolios in your classroom?

Can Kids Teach Themselves?

Recently, I posted about how my school is using Facebook and Pinterest as part of our professional development.  (See the whole post HERE.)  I’ve decided to pass on some of the best videos and articles I come across to you each Sunday evening.  Here is this week’s professional development post:

Here is one of my new favorite videos about the Hole in the Wall program created by Sugata Mitra.  Mr. Mitra created a program that put computers in public places and allowed students to teach themselves.  Here is his video from TED:

After watching the video, it makes me wonder, how much do we allow students to teach themselves?  With the internet today, there is so much information out there.  It is important to teach our students to teach themselves.  How can you utilize this with your students?

Making Time for Poetry

My school year is broken into 6 week units for science, social studies, reading comprehension and writing.  During the last 6 weeks, I am teaching the forest in science, making judgments in reading and poetry in writing.  However, we are also working on end of the year assessments, like UK National Testing and Map Testing, and putting together online portfolios and a Spring Show, so needless to say, the last 6 weeks of school are kicking my but!  We’ve managed to do a lot with our forest unit, but I have felt as if our poetry unit was suffering, so I went back to an old standby this week – my Poetry Writing Journal (available at my TPT store for $10.)

We spent an hour reviewing each of the different types of poetry, using the reference sheet at the beginning of the poetry journal and writing our own examples of each type of poem focused around the topic of the forest on the board.  I then typed up our class examples and stapled it at the back of my students’ Poetry Writing Journals.  (Feel free to download this sheet for free from Google Docs if you’d like to use it with your class.) All week long, whenever there was a minute, between testing, play practice, and other activities, we pulled out our Poetry Writing Journals and worked on writing poetry.  Because the Writing Journals already have every step from brainstorming, to drafting, to editing and revising, it is an easy way for my students to work along at their own pace.

 

 

I really love teaching poetry at this time of the year, because poetry breaks all the rules and lets kids explode with creativity at a time of the year when they are totally done with school and rules!  During the last week of school, we will choose our favorite poems to publish and share with the class.

If you’re still in school, how are you wrapping up the school year?

ISM Spotlight – Top 10 Technology Resources for Teaching Arabic

This year I am the luckiest teacher in the world. I get to teach at the best school ever – International School of Morocco, with some of the best, most creative, teachers ever. Each time I walk into someone else’s classroom, I get inspired and we just seem to spiral great teaching ideas off of each other. It’s a wonderful place to teach, and since we are all collaborating, it’s a wonderful place for our kids to learn – a teacher’s dream, right? I have tried and tried to convince the other teachers to create blogs of their own to spotlight and share some of their amazing ideas, but everyone is super busy. Instead, they have each agreed to let me spotlight some of their ideas right here on Raki’s Rad Resources. So, each Friday night, I will be posting an ISM Spotlight.

All of the teachers at ISM use quite a bit of technology.  We are lucky to currently have approximately a 1:4 ratio for technological devices (both iPads and iMacs).  Today, I am going to share with you 5 websites and 5 apps that are used by our wonderful Arabic teacher, Mr. Raki (who also happens to be my wonderful husband!)  Mr. Raki teaches both Arabic as a Second Language and Arabic for our native speakers.  He has so many websites and apps that he uses, that when I asked for one of each, he told me I was crazy.  He was able to pare it down to 5 and 5, with a You Tube channel thrown in for good measure!  Here is the YouTube channel, it’s called Critical Language Service.  This You Tube Channel has great video tutorials for non-native Arabic speakers. 

Top 5 Arabic Teaching Websites

1.)  Alef-Ba-Ta – This website, and the corresponding app, are the only one the list that require money. Mr. Raki says that this site, with tons and tons of e-books and games on every topic imaginable is totally worth the $10 a month. 

 

 

2.)  Bareem – This website is linked to the amazing Arabic children’s television channel.  This link is to their set of videos which describe tons of kid friendly concepts like shapes, patterns, colors, numbers, and positional words, all described in a nice, slow, formal Arabic, which helps both language learners and native speakers alike.

 

 

3.) I Like Arabic – This website has a set of 18 tutorials and 5 videos, all specifically designed for English speakers who are learning Arabic.  For our intermediate grade language learners, these provide an amazing resources.  (I’m using them myself too!)

 

 

4.)  Omar & Mariam – This website focuses around these two characters – Omar and Mariam.  It provides e-books, videos, and games all round this character.  Think interactive Dick and Jane in Arabic!

 

 

 

5.)  Salam Arabic Memory Games – This is a game site with memory matching games.  Kids get a chance to match the English word with the Arabic word.

 

 

Top 5 Arabic Teaching Apps

1.)  Alef-Ba-Ta – This app is the same as it’s website counterpart.  It contains e-books and games on tons of topics, but there is a $10 monthly cost.  The cost covers both the app and the website.

 

 

2.) Bareem – Although this app is sponsored by the Bareem t.v.channel, the app is quite separate.  It has three pieces, letter recognition, word building and handwriting.   

 

3.) Play and Learn Arabic – This great game app helps kids to identify animals, colors and letters in their Arabic word forms

 

 

 

4.)  Iqraa Ma’a – This great app teaches students to construct words in Arabic and connects Arabic and English vocabulary.

 

 

5.) Learn Arabic for Kids – This set of online vocabulary cards has both English and Arabic, to help students learn new vocabulary.  Each flashcard also provides a spoken component.

 

 

What foreign languages are taught at your school?