Raki's Rad Resources: Secrets to a Successful Classroom

What works? Successful teachers share secrets from their classroom for Teacher Appreciation Weekof 2015. Stop by Raki's Rad Resources to find out what her secrets are!

We’re almost to the end of the school year. It’s a time to look back and appreciate all of the amazing things you and your students have accomplished this year. It’s also a time for everyone to take a moment to tell teachers how much we appreciate them. Within the field of education, we collaborate, we work as a team and we share, share, share. While it’s nice that parents and students take time at this time of the year to show their appreciation for teachers, too often teachers forget to take the time to show appreciation for the other teachers around them – the teachers they work with each day, the teachers they collaborate with online, the teachers who share their ideas or their resources, the teachers who help make the professional teaching community such a wonderful place. So a few teacher bloggers (including me here at Raki’s Rad Resources) are coming together to show how much we appreciate all the teachers in this great professional teaching community. For the next few days, in coordination with the Teacher Appreciation Giveaway, many different bloggers will be sharing a few of our teacher secrets. Here are three of my personal teaching secrets:

Every moment is a possible learning moment. Learning doesn’t just happen during the precise lessons you plan out so perfectly. Learning happens when students are doing independent reading. Learning happens when students explore nature at recess. Learning can happen at lunch, on the bus, while standing in line for the bathroom. Kids process information in their own way, on their own time and can make the strangest connections to what we teach them. However, connections of any kind help students remember and process information. So grasp all those little minutes to review, discuss and build connections. Talk to students while they are lining up. Ask them to tell you three things they learned today. Quiz them on their fast facts. Make up silly songs that go over key concepts and sing them during transition times. There are tons of ways to utilize every possible moment of your instructional day, you just have to be creative!

**** For more information on strategies I have used to make every moment count in my classroom, check out this old blog post called: Learning Every Second

Building relationships is more important than building bulletin boards. They key to good teaching is knowing your students. Knowing your students is more

important that knowing your content. Content can be looked up, found in a book, or discovered with students. Building relationships with your students is something that takes time and energy in class every day. However, once you have built those relationships, your students will trust you more, listen to you better and cause fewer disturbances in class. Once you have built those relationships, you will know how to help individual students connect to the content you are teaching. Once you build those relationships, you will spend more time teaching and significantly less time “managing” your class. Bulletin boards are very low on my priority list, unless they are interactive and built with the students. Building relationships with my students is my number one priority.

**** For more information on how I create bulletin boards that matter while building relationships with my students – check out this old blog post called: The Purpose Behind Bulletin Boards

Differentiation is easier when it appears that everyone is doing the same thing. It makes things easier for the kids and it makes things easier for you. I have taught multi-age classes for the past three years and so my kids know that Mary doesn’t always do the same work as Johnny. They know that I give everyone work that is just right for them.

However, they also know the directions for everyone’s work, because pretty much the directions are the same for everyone. Everyone is doing calendar book this morning. Now the calendar book pages may be different for Mary than they are for Johnny, but everyone is doing calendar book. Everyone will be doing their vocabulary packet later this afternoon. Juan may be doing Weather ESL vocabulary on Weather for a Level 1 while Katie is doing Long Vowel Word Work vocabulary on a Level 4, but everyone is doing a vocabulary packet and everyone is doing the Friday page in their vocabulary packet. This way everyone knows what we’re doing, they are able to help each other out with some general directions and I maintain my sanity while still providing individualized education.

****For some resources that make differentiation simple, check out this resource: Differentiated Monthly Calendar Books with 8 Different Levels

Two lucky teachers will receive huge thank you gifts in the form of one of these two prize bundles. Be sure to enter to win so that you might be one of those lucky teachers.