Blog Archives

What Does Your Classroom Learning Environment Look Like?

2/22/2016

Seven Strategies for Building Positive Classrooms

Today, An Educator wears many hats. On a daily basis teachers must assess student progress, capture hearts, create meaningful experiences relevant to learning, and introduce rigor at all levels that challenge students academically, socially and mentally. This challenge has led many classroom teachers to leave the profession and look for more meaningful employment. If this crisis is not addressed soon, it may lead to a mass reduction in qualified teachers who actually care about the “Whole child”. Teachers can only be responsible for what takes place in their classroom. This article greatly sums up what the teacher can do to make each day inside the classroom worthwhile. It includes three concepts that are reinforced daily in all of my classes. These concepts are a classroom code of conduct, reinforcing positive behaviors and always being positive.
     Entrepreneurship is perfect for a Positive Learning Environment. The whole idea is to motivate children to be a positive influence in the classroom, around the school and in society. It is important for any teacher to establish this positive role from the beginning. To accomplish this in my classroom, my students view daily motivational videos that encourage positive mindsets, displays positive words, and reviews positive themes about success.
     Establishing a positive atmosphere for every child to enter daily is key to my success. It requires me to respond with positive remarks, redirect negative thoughts, and encourage every student to adopt these concepts. Positive attitudes are contagious and when practiced daily can change lives.
     Once these three concepts are incorporated, the classroom is healthy and surrounded by positive vibes. It enables students to help each other, teachers to teach more, and the school environment changes for the better. This positive behaviour reinforces academic achievement and creates healthier children. It reduces stress, and helps children accept responsibility for learning. It is the key to producing caring, understanding, and well adjusted children of tomorrow. It becomes one of the most powerful tools in any teacher’s toolbox.

What are Soft Skills?

2/9/2016

The Soft Skills of Great Digital Organizations

by Alexandra Samuel

Ever wondered why the term "soft skills" was introduced? In today's tech savvy world, it is important to develop both inter-personal and intra-personal skills. These skills are present in everyday life and include goal-centric thinking, collaboration, technology, communication, and playful skills. They are hidden concepts that can make or break a company. Without developing these skills, digital organizations may falter. These skills are the foundation of society and more than ever should be taught in school.
   In Entrepreneurship, these skills are stressed daily. Teaching children to be responsible citizens is key to a successful business. Students must collaborate with 2-3 other members of the class to create a mock company. Decision making and compromises
are integral to making the group work. Students must collaborate daily to set both short term goals, long term goals, and a mission statement for the mock company.
     Since the class has Chromebooks, it is important for those with knowledge about technology help those with little knowledge. This helps students stay on task easier and not rely on the teacher for simple technology questions. It is also important for the teacher to try each of the applications before letting the class use them. Many apps work fine when the teacher is planning, but are blocked for students through the district. It is extremely frustrating for students to understand what the objective is when the applications are not functioning. It is also a good idea to use rubrics that show specific tasks students should accomplish when using new applications.
     Another skill is communication. One example, using all caps, is frowned upon in correspondence, because it means the writer is shouting. It is hard to tell what tone the writer intends or what their perspective is at the time of writing. Students should be learning the difference between a business letter and chatting with friends. Knowing what language is appropriate when corresponding to the customer, or using slang and abbreviations when chatting on twitter, Facebook, or Instagram must be taught so students understand the difference between both types of communication.
Lastly, playfulness is the most important part of starting and owning any business. Doing silly things, or having fun creating materials generates great ideas. Students create slogans, logos and promotions in class. Finding a creative and unique name that brings the idea of the company to the customer is key to a successful business.
   With the "soft skills" of collaboration, communication, technology, goal setting, and playfulness, companies will produce innovative, mind-blowing, eye catching tasks that compete in a global society and ensures our students will be leaders in the 21st century markets.

Differentiation

2/2/2016

My classroom has 30 Chromebooks with a cart to charge nightly. We use Google Apps for education extensively to reduce the amount of paper. Assignments are shared through Google Drive and Google Classroom.
Every child that is selected to be in Entrepreneurship has the opportunity to establish a mock company based on their interests, goals, and academic skills. Students begin by dreaming about what life would be like in 5, 10 and 20 years. The classroom has Chromebooks for each student. They collaborate with a partner and create a power point based on these answers. Every word and picture for each slide must have a hyperlink that connects to these beliefs. Examples of the hyperlinks can be definitions, videos, images, or websites. Students use Google Research tools which will automatically cite links for the source slide.
Once this is completed, students are grouped based on similar interests and Academic Grades. For the remainder of the nine weeks, students work together in the mock company to create Long Term, Short Term, and Personal goals. They will also learn about Gross profit, COGS(Cost of Goods Sold), Net Profit and an Income Statement. The final project is a Google Website using various tools such as Thinglinks, QR Codes, Kahoots, and Fakebooks.