Mr Hammerlund

I walked into the PTA room the other day and saw a garbage can overfilled with all kinds of garbage in mixed together. On top of it all were a few plastic bottles and I thought, we need to get in this garbage. I took the garbage out of their room, and brought it into my classroom one afternoon. The next morning when the students came in, they saw the bag of smelliness in the front of the classroom. Why is that in here? What is that? Who forgot their garbage in our classroom? I was asked a flurry of questions, but before answering them, I asked them what they saw. Garbage! Trash! Junk! Then I asked them again to look closer, and to find a partner and do a Think, Pair, Share. From this, I started getting observations about the plastic bottles, recycling, and someone may have seen a piece of paper in there somewhere. Then I asked what we could do about it. Someone said we should recycle the bottles. So I asked about the paper. They agreed we should recycle that too...

Since this was the second time I was teaching these units as a Grade 1-2 teacher [on a two year cycle], I wanted to change the order in which I taught them. Two school years ago, I taught our current unit, Sharing the planet: An inquiry into rights and responsibilities in the struggle to share finite resources with other people and with other living thing s, at the end of the year. This time, it is in the beginning. In my classroom I have a large basket filled with scraps of paper to be used in future projects. This was a great chance to ask my students why I would have a box of paper scraps in my room. After our discussion, I put them to work making their own self portraits using the scraps of paper. After we were done I had all these self portraits that I was planning on simply displaying. But when I put them up in a row, I noticed I could have them talk to each other.  This evolved into a way to track student understanding through our unit. I created speech bu...

I came across this article on Teach Thought entitled, " Growing Closer To Your Most Challenging Students " and it inspired me. Of course, that was last week. When I encounter a challenging student, I try to win them over. I do this by trying to get to know them better and building a bond with him or her. By creating this relationship, more times than not the student will settle down. I usually learn something about him or her. By understanding where the behavior issues are coming from, I have more empathy and am able to handle issues that arise with more compassion. This is not to say that issues disappear when a relationship is built, but rather that issues are able to be met with more understanding. Time for recess duty.