At the start of Quarter 2 I started doing Flexible seating options in my 7-9 health classes. I was very nervous about it but it's halfway through the quarter and it's been going pretty well so far. I've had this idea in mind ever sense I starting teaching, I just had no idea how to pull it off successfully. After reading a few articles and other blog posts on Choice seating or Starbucks/Coffee shop seating I was really inspired to actually put this into place in my classroom. I posted a few questions that I had on other teacher's blogs asking them how how they make it work with their kids and rooms and then took the plunge. I talk to the janitor and we worked out a plan. This biggest thing that I got from talking to other teacher's who do this is having clear expectations ahead of time. My expectations that I came up with are listed below. Expectations:
Benefits:
I realize this might not work in all classrooms, but I'm glad I gave it a try in mine.
0 Comments
Below is a picture of my new classroom rules (screenshot from the syllabus). Basically, I just condensed my original 7 rules from before down into 4 rules. So that's partly what's new with me. I hope you find the information above helpful! If you have any feedback or questions for me let me know in the comments below. I have a whole list of things that I would like to get on here and share with you so please be patient. It's been a busy quarter 1 for me and there are only 11 days left! Thank you for reading and have a good rest of your week!
This year I decided I wanted to create my own classroom rules or code of conduct to fit the type of classroom environment I want to create for my students. I tried having my class create rule or jobs last year, but it didn't really work all that well. There were things that my students did or didn't do that drove me crazy last year so I created these rules to help fix some of those behaviors. When looking for inspiration on Pinterest I found this "Classroom Rules- The 5 P's" idea and I really liked it. I adjusted it a little to fit my needs and I added the Big I because helping my students learn to take initiative is a huge goal of mine. So below is the poster size version of my classroom rules! Let me know what you think.
So now that I had created new rules from my classroom, I wanted to reformat and adjust my classroom syllabi. Most middle and high school syllabi are 2-4 pages (one sided) if there even is one. Mine last year was 5-6 pages long (one-sided). I think my students (and other teachers probably) thought I went a little overboard. Even so, to me a syllabus is a place where all of the classroom policies and information about a class are located. I wanted my students to know up front what my expectations and policies were so that there were no surprises later. I didn't want my students to be able to say...
"Oh I didn't know about that" or "That's not fair, you let him do ______."
I still believe this about my syllabus for this coming school year. It still contains all of the information I think they need to know to be prepared for my class. However, I've condensed my explanations and made it more visually interesting. I also took out some policies that I didn't use or had changed my mind about during my first year of teaching.
I got this idea about making my syllabus more visually interesting from Jackie at Room 213. She had a post about making a digital syllabus and it included a FREE template. So I used her fantastic template and made it my own by changing colors, fonts, and adding my own information. I am so grateful to her for sharing such a wonderful free resource!
So without further ado, here is my Health 9 Syllabus for this year.
If you would like to learn how to embed PDFs from Google Drive like I have done above, click the "Read More" below!
|
AuthorI teach 7-9 Health Education & Computer 7 in rural southwestern Minnesota. I love using technology in my classroom and teaching students about how to live healthy and informed lives.
Archives
April 2016
Categories
All
|