Training Guide - Unit 2: The Student


Unit 2: The Child

 
Guiding Questions

 

Timing Activity
35 min  Session 2.1
75 min  Session 2.2
60 min  Session 2.3
60 min  LUNCH
105 min  Session 2.4
30 min  Session 2.5              
Total timing: 6 hours 5 minutes

 

 

Session 2.1: What challenges do students bring to the classroom?
RATIONALE:  Just as teachers have lives outside of the classroom that impact their focus and success as teachers, students too are impacted by their lives outside of school.  Life at home and situations in the community can make it difficult for children to focus on learning.  Child-friendly schools work to create an environment that makes school a place where ALL students, despite what they might face outside of school, feel safe, are cared for, and are encouraged to be actively engaged in their learning. Before teachers and schools can do this, however, it is important to be aware of the multitude of vulnerabilities that children may bring to the classroom.

This puts a lot of pressure on teachers and schools because every child is different and some children, and often entire communities, face real hardships that make it difficult to make education the primary focus.   Unit 1 focuses on the teacher and his or her mindset and well-being.  Having a good command of these things is critical because a teacher faces the daily challenge of meeting the needs of each student in the classroom – not an easy task.  In this first section of Unit 2, the group will consider the ideal conditions for learning, the vulnerabilities that children face that make this difficult (in their communities specifically) and will learn strategies for creating welcoming, loving, inclusive environments for their students.

 

Session Goals:

 

Outline and Timing:

Timing Activity
35 min Think-Pair-Share 
Total timing:  35 minutes

 

Materials:

 

Preparing for the Session:

 

Facilitating the Session:

Open up the day's session by reminding teachers of yesterdays events and setting up a clear picture of where they are going today.  You may want to say something like:

Yesterday, you reflected on yourselves, your teaching practices, and the things in your lives that prevent you from being the best teachers that you can be.  Today's sessions will focus on the children or the students - the challenges that they face, the "stuff" that they bring to school that may prevent them from learning and developing to their full capactity, and the strategies that you as teachers can implement in your classrooms to combat some of the challenges and to create a safe space that allows children to flourish.

 

1. Think-Pair-Share. (35 minutes)

Introduce first activity, with something along the lines of:

We will begin by brainstorming some of the challenges that your students face both as a whole and individually.  As you do this, I want you to think about the Life Maps you created yesterday.  For how many of your students could you anticipate some of the major events on their life maps?  You will begin by independently generating a list of common challenges that all your students face in one column and a list of unique challenges that some of your students face in another column.  For example, in the first column I might put "poverty" if all my students typically come from impoverished neighborhoods or I might put a negative effect of poverty such as "no shoes" or "poor health".  In the second column, I might put "deaf" if one of my students cannot hear or "orphan" if I had a student who is an orphan and I believe that might pose challenges to them in their life.  Be sure that if you write a challenge that you can explain how this challenge may present problems in the classroom for the student, the class, the teacher or everyone.

Any questions?

 

Provide participants with five minutes of silent, independent brainstorming.  Walk around the room and ask questions of those who seem stuck (they aren't writing).  Questions you may ask: 

What type of neighborhoods do your students come from?  What do you know about their families, their parents, their homes, their communities?  How many boys are in your class?  Girls?  Do they always have the proper uniform and the proper school supplies?  Do any of them have disabilities?  (Some disabilities teachers may not know about, so you may want to ask - Do any of your students seem to have difficulty learning or understanding concepts that others grasp quickly?)

 

When the five minutes have passed, instruct participants to get into pairs and share their lists.  Participants should add new ideas shared by their partnern to their own list.  Allow two minutes and then ask participants to find a new partner and repeat the process.

 

Once the time has passed, the group will come back together to generate a list together.  Ask for a volunteer to write all the ideas on the poster paper, as you moderate the discussion.  (Point out that this is always a great way to get students involved - as many LOVE to write on the board and to assist)

 

Begin by having members share challenges that may be common to all their students.  The "scribe" should write the challenge and then why it is a challenge in the classroom to the right of the challenge, creating two columns 1) challenge and 2) Effects in the classroom.  As the trainer be sure to ask follow up questions if ideas are unclear and make sure that participants are clearly explaining how the identified challenges can present challenges in school for the student and the teacher and the other students as well.  The goal is to create an exhaustive list that the group will later try to attack with creative solutions. 

 

When this list is complete, have the scribe start a new list of individual challenges that some students bring to the classroom - this may include disabilities, unique home problems, gender, etc.  Remind teachers not to use actual names of students or families.  Also, remind them that any stories that are shared should not go beyond the workshop as some people may be able to decipher who the story is about if shared with certain individuals. 

 

When the group has run out of ideas and has addressed how the various challenges may impact student learning, wrap up the session.  You may want to say something like:

This is an excellent list of all the challenges that students may bring to our classrooms.  Yesterday we examined the challenges that we as teachers face in our personal lives that may impact student learning but now we see that students also bring many challenges that can negatively impact their success in the classroom.  In our next session we will examine what children need to be successful and feel supported and will discuss what teacher actions can ensure that students get what they need while they are in our classrooms.

  

  

Session 2.2: What teacher actions support the learning and development of ALL students despite these challenges?  What teacher actions are potentially detrimental to the learning and development of students, considering these challenges? 
RATIONALE:
This question exists to expand teachers' view of their role.  Many teachers have a narrow view of their role and do not realize that beyond the delivery of content, a smile, a "How are you?" and "Nice job!" can really make a difference.

 

Session Goals:

          teacher actions that address the challenge in a more child-friendly manner.

 

 

Outline and Timing:

Timing Activity
10 min Instructions
20 min Jigsaw - Part 1
30 min Jigsaw - Part 2
15 min Review of potentially harmful teacher actions
10 min Teacher reflection/ questions
Total timing: 1 hour 15 minutes

 

Materials:

 

Preparing for the Session:

1) Being proactively inclusive
2) Advocating Human Rights
3) Being academically effective
4) Being healthy and safe
5) Being gender responsive
6) Being actively engaged with the community

(UNICEF, 2009)

 

Facilitating the Session:

 

Begin my introducing this next session by something like the following:

In this session we will examine how teacher actions can either combat the challenges that children bring to the classroom or exacerbate the challenges by negatively impacting the learner. The instructions for this activity are a bit lengthy but the activity has purposely been included in this training to give you another strategy for your own classroom.

 

1. Instructions.  (10 minutes) Take your time explaining the instructions to this activity.  You may want to check for understanding by asking someone to repeat the instructions or asking the group to confirm their understanding with a thumbs up (got it!) or thumbs down (I'm still confused).  The following is one way you could explain the instruction:

 

There will be four stations.  The five stations are five of the six components of child-friendly spaces: 1) 1) Being proactively inclusive; 2) Advocating Human Rights; 3) Being Academically Effective; 4)Being healthy and safe; and 5) Being gender responsive. The final component " Being actively engaged with the community" will be addressed in tomorrow's sessions.

 

Now you will only be visiting ONE of these stations but you will be getting information from ALL of these stations from other members of the group.  So let's clear this up:

1.  You will begin by getting into groups of 5 and will then choose numbers 1 through 5.

2.  Once you have your group and your number, you will leave your group and visit the station that corresponds to your number.

3.  You will have 20 minutes to look at the materials at your table and record information in your graphic organizer that is helpful to you and that you will share with your group.  You may discuss the information with the others at your table to decide what information they think to be the most important as well.

4.  After the 20 minutes are up, you will return to your group of 1 through 5. 

5.  At this point, each person will have 6 minutes to share the information they learned with their group.  The group members should record the information in their graphic organizer and should ask questions.  After 30 minutes, everyone should have information on teacher actions that match all four components addressed in the various stations.

 

So let's review what's step 1?  (Quickly review all five steps with the group)

 

Help participants break into groups of four people.  If there is not a perfect number of participants some groups can have more, however, that means for some stations pairs will share the responsibility of reporting back to the group.  Have participants choose their numbers and head to the correct station.

 

2. Jigsaw Part I. (20 minutes)  For 20 minutes, participants will record the information they are learning from their station into their graphic organizers.  After 20 minutes, instruct participants to return to their group and begin sharing immediately.

 

3. Jigsaw Part II. (30 minutes)  Every 6 minutes remind group members to switch and let the next person talk (if they have not yet begun).  Feel free to give additional time updates if you think it will help.

 

4. Review. (15 minutes)  When time is up, bring the group together to share what they came up with.  Keep your list close at hand and when the group has exhausted their lists, share additional examples that may not have been mentioned by the group.  Remember too, that both the positive and negative actions may be practiced by some members of the group.  For some actions you may want to validate why a person may think this teacher action is productive and then explain why it is not.

 

Child-Friendly Component
Positive Teacher Actions
Negative Teacher Actions
Being Proactively Inclusive
•    Encourage kids to stay in school when pressures to drop out are high.
•    Provide positive feedback and encouragement to ALL students.
•    Learn every student’s name and learn about each student
•    Allow time for group/teamwork that requires cooperation and interdependence
•    Consequences for misbehavior are erratic and inconsistent.
•    Maintain low expectations for some children
•    Scorn and discipline students who have
Advocating Human Rights
•    Intervene on student’s behalf if they are having problems with their parents
•    Help students are being abused/exploited speak up.  Be an advocate.
•    Bribe students for good grades, etc.
•    Abuse students physically, sexually and/or mentally
 
Being Academically Effective

•    Develop a routine in the classroom but also include variety in educational experiences
•    Be a role model to the students
•    Show students that you know and love your subject
•    Be patient
•    Encourage questioning AND provide clear answers (or seek out answers and report back to the student if you do not know)
•    Provide regular, manageable assignments
•    Provide opportunities for self-expression – dance, art, drama, music, writing, etc.

•    Seating arrangements change depending on activity.

•    Show up late or not at all
•    Come to class unprepared
•    Share insufficient or inaccurate information
•    Repetitive lessons
•    Unchanging teaching style
•    Teach only from the textbooks (which can be easily outdated)
•    Focus only on content and not on skills
Being Healthy & Safe
•    Provide information about health – including reproductive health.
•    Play the role of counselor when a student needs someone to talk to.
•    Assist students in resolving conflict peacefully (teach conflict resolution).
•    Physical abuse
•    Verbal abuse
•    Sending students outside the classroom (while this sometimes feels necessary – it forces students to fall further behind, which is often a cause for misbehavior in the first place)
Being Gender Responsive

•    Give all students equal treatment

•    Students sit together - as opposed to girls on one side of the room and boys on the other.

•    Give preference to one gender
•    Assign gender-roles
•    Maintain low expectations for some students

 

5. Teacher reflection/Q&A.  (10 minutes)  Give teachers a couple of minutes to make any additional notes in their packets.  Then take some time for teachers to share reactions and ask questions or present challenges they face that might make using some of these teacher actions difficult. (For example, children that are a struggle to keep in line.  Teachers may want more examples of child-friendly consequences for students who misbehave.)

 

 

Session 2.3: What does the ideal classroom look like?

RATIONALE:  This is a very tangible and practical place to begin.  Teachers can think about their ideal classroom - this may include better resources, a different feeling, or a different appearance.  Teachers may also identify attributes of their classes that they think make it an ideal classroom.  As a trainer, it is important to be prepared to ask questions and challenge teachers' thinking if they identify qualities that go against the child-friendly model such as: Why do you believe that makes an ideal classroom?  What if the classroom looked like ______? 

 

Session Goals:

 

Outline and Timing:

Timing Activity
10 min

My classroom currently

looks like...

sounds like...

feels like...

20 min
Stations:  Classroom Settings that support students and student learning 
15 min

My classroom will

look like...

sound like...

feel like...

5 min Gallery Walk
10 min  Reflection
Total timing: 1 hour

 

Materials:

 

Preparing for the Session:

 

Facilitating the Session:

 

Transition into this session by saying something like the following.

Now that we have taken some time to break down teacher actions that promote positive student actions, we are going take some time to reflect on our actual classroom.  How is it set up?  What resources do you have? How are students sitting? Who are they sitting with?  How do you teach?  How do you respond?  How to do students respond to each other? And more.

 

You will begin by reflecting on your own environment.  Several prompts have been provided in your packet but you should feel free to make additions.  The goal is to try and write down as much about your current classroom as you can in the 10 minutes provided.  At this point there may already be new ideas that you have gathered from this training but we want to begin with what your classroom looked like BEFORE you attended this training.  Later in the session you will be given time to start planning revisions.

 

1. My classroom currently...  (10 minutes) 

So let's begin.   Open your packets and begin.

 

Give the participants 10 minutes.  Walk around the room and ask questions if people seem stuck.  Again, the goal is to get them to think about all the details of their classrooms - even the things that they might not be able to control (like dirt floors that gather puddles when it rains). 

 

2. Stations: Classroom Setting that Support Students. (20 minutes)

 

When time is up, participants will have 20 minutes to move around the room to different stations and read about, see, and hear about different classroomsTeachers will take notes of how they can create a more child-friendly classroom.  Teachers should also take note of things that they do or that they have in their classroom this already child-friendly.

Your instructions may sound something like this:

Okay, you will now have 20 minutes to move around the room to the various stations to explore various classroom approaches to creating child-friendly spaces.  Use the space provided to note strategies, classroom set-up, etc. that may work in your own classroom.  Feel free to discuss the examples with the people at your table.  For this activity you will move from station to station as you see fit.  Note, that with students you have several options you can let them move at their own pace (risking that some students may stay at one station too long), you can have them move in groups at set time intervals, or you can have the stations move and the students stay in their groups.  Keep in mind their are pros and cons to both.  The last two provide more structure but the first one allows for students to work at their own pace and allows you to modify expectations for students who may have different needs.

 

Are there questions about the activity?

Have teachers begin.  Keep timer going and give them 20 minutes.  When a minute remains have participants return to their original seats. 

 

3. My classroom will...  (15 minutes)

To introduce this activity the following instructions are appropriate:

Now that you have taken some time to look at what some child-friendly classrooms look like and how various teachers have approached the task of developing a child-friendly space given many constraints, take 5-10 minutes to complete the graphic organizer that will help you consider changes that you would like to make.  These can be short-term or long-term changes. Once you have done that you will draw a picture of your ideal classroom (be realistic though) - if you did everything you could, what would your classroom look like, sound like and feel like.  You will be sharing these pictures with others so try and incorporate as many of your ideas as possible.  Drawing and writing notes on the classroom map are fine.

 

Move around the room and assist teachers as needed.  Keep the time for them - 15 minutes.  If it seems that teachers are "in the zone" when the 15 minutes is up, feel free to extend the activity 5 or 10 minutes. 

 

4.  Gallery Walk. (5 minutes)

When the time is up, have teachers get a piece of tape and hang their pictures on the wall - like in a gallery of an art museum.  Give teachers a few minutes to walk the perimeter of the room and look at everyone's classrooms - giving teachers an opportunity to steal other great ideas!  

 

5.  Reflection. (5 minutes)

When teachers are done, they should return to their seats and make an additional revisions to what their classroom will look like. 

 

Session 2.4:  What teaching strategies can a teacher use tomorrow in his or her classroom to improve student learning and become more child-friendly? 
RATIONALE: It would be impossible to provide teachers with every possible classroom strategy that they could use to make their classroom more child-friendly. This training will focus on the classroom environment discussed above, teacher behaviors, and then a handful of child-friendly teaching strategies that can make a lesson more student-centered and less teacher-centered.

 

Session Goals:

Outline and Timing:

Timing Activity
5 min

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

Video with Sir Ken Robinson 

5 min Participant response 
30 min Activities that can support all learners
10 min Presentation of resources
30 min Lesson(s) Revision
20 min Group Share and Feedback
5 min Resource Wish List 
Total timing: 1 hour 45 minutes

 

Materials:

Video projection materials & Internet OR the story told by Sir Ken Robinson

 

Preparing for the Session:

Set up the video project OR prepare to tell the story as well as Sir Ken Robinson. :) 

 

Facilitating the Session:

 

1. Video with Sir Ken Robinson. (5 minutes)

Do Schools Kill Creativity?

This session is the final session of the day before reflection.  Teachers will get a LOT of additional tools to sift through and work with and will have the chance to incorporate new strategies into old lessons - to revitalize the lessons they know and love.  Before getting into lesson revisions, this session will introduce the concept of multiple-intelligences or recognizes the unique strengths and gifts of all students through this video.  It does not require much introduction, you may simply want to say something like:

To kick of this session I am going to play a short clip from a video of Sir Ken Robinson in a talk titled "Do Schools Kill Creativity?".  After the clip, I've love for you to share your reactions.

 

Play the video from 15:00 - 17:45. 

 

YouTube plugin error  

The story, if you do not have video:

There is a woman named Jillian Lynn, have you heard of her?  She is a choreographer.  She did Cats and Phantom of the Opera.  When asked she became a dance she explains that when she was at school she was really hopeless.  And the school in the 30's wrote to her parents and said "we think Jillian has a learning disorder".  She couldn't concentrate, she was fidgeting.  Now they would probably say she had ADHD...but this was the 1930's and ADHD hadn't been invented...it wasn't an available condition...people weren't aware they could have that.  Anyway, she went to see this specialist, in this oak-paneled room and she was there with her mother and she was led to a share and she sat  on her hands for about 20 minutes has this man talked to her mother about all the problems Jillian was having at school.  And at the end of it, because she was disturbing people at school, her homework was late and so on...little kid of eight, in the end the doctor went and sat next to Jillian and said, "I've listened to all these things your mother's told me, I need to speak to her privately".  So he said, "Wait here, we'll be back, we won't be very long".  And the went and left her, but as they went out of the room the doctor turned on the radio that was sitting on his desk and when they got out of the room he said to her mother just stand there and watch her.  And the minute they left the room she said she was on her feet moving to the music.  They watched her for a few minutes and then the doctor turned to her mother and said, "You know, Mrs. Lynn, Jillian isn't sick - she's a dancer.  Take her to a dance school".  So what happened?  She did and it was the best thing that ever happened to Jillian.  She walked into a room and it was full of people just like her.  People who couldn't sit still, people who had to move to think - they did ballet, the did jazz, they did tap, they did modern, they did contemporary.  Then Jillian auditioned for the Royal Ballet School, she became a soloist, she had a wonderful career at the Royal Ballet, she eventually graduated and founded her own school met Andrew Llyod Webber, has been responsible for some of the most successful musical theatre productions in history, she's given pleasure to millions, and she's a multi-millionaire.  Somebody else might have put her on medication and told her to calm down.

 

2.  Participant Response.  (5 minutes)

Take a few minutes to hear participants' initial reactions.

 

3.  Multiple Intelligences - Activities to reach all learners. (30 minutes)

Here participants will find out what type of learner they are, what the various multiple intelligences are, and some ways to teach that address these various learning styles.  How you introduce this activity may depend on what participant comments but you may want to say something along the lines of:

There are many different ways that people learn.  Jillian's example was just one case where we as teachers may judge a student's behavior as inappropriate, out of line, or as a sign of not being able to learn - when in reality some children may just have different needs, different talents, and learn differently but be brilliant all the same.  In this session you will take a quiz to identify how you learn and then we will take a look at the different intelligences and some of the strategies for delivering material that best reach the different learning styles.

 

Participants complete the quiz and calculate their score.

 

When everyone finishes, go through each learning style, find out who represents that learning style and describe the learning style.  Read through the list of activities/ methods of delivery and then ask they group for other ideas that they can add to their graphic organizer.

 

4.  Resource Share. (10 minutes)

At this point give teachers 10 minutes to look at the additional resources that have been provided in the participant packet.  Walk around and answer any questions that participants have.  After 8 minutes, allow participants to share the resource that they found to be most exciting or useful. 

 

5. Lesson(s) Revision. (30 minutes)

Now teachers will have some time to re-write a lesson and incorporate strategies that address one or more learning styles AND other child-friendly practices that they have learned throughout the training.  The trainer should again walk around the room and answer questions.  Providing your own examples of before and after may be helpful for teachers to reference although the trouble with examples is that often participants can not think beyond the activities in the example.

 

6. Group Share and Feedback. (21 minutes)

When the time is up, teachers should get in groups of 3 and share their revised lessons.  Each teacher should take a few minutes (4-5 minutes) to explain the lesson to their peers and the new strategies they are incorporating into the lesson.  The listening participants should then provide feedback (2-3 minutes) including strengths of the lesson and suggestions for how to possibly improve the lesson with further strategies. 

 

7. Resource Wish List. (5 minutes)

This is a chance for participants to quietly reflect on what resources they would like to obtain for their classroom.  The idea here is to create a list of things that they might be able to get donated by the community, that students might bring from home for labs, etc.  The idea here is NOT to create a wish list of technology, etc. that is not essential but simple items that could improve the course and are necessary for child-friendly lessons.

 

Session 2.5:  Putting it into Practice

Session Goals:

 

Outline and Timing:

Timing Activity
10 min Self-reflection 
5 min The days major takeaways
5 min Shout-outs
Total timing: 30 minutes

 

Materials:

 

Preparing for the Session:

Have a few shout outs that you want to give - This may be  - someone who assisted you with setting up materials, someone who took a risk and shared a personal story, or someone who was a very active or enthusiastic participant - or for whatever else you may want to shout someone out.

 

Facilitating the Session: 

1.  Complete graphic organizer on “The Student”. (10 minutes)

Teachers will have 10 minutes to complete the organizer - several open-ended questions that will help them to identify steps that they can take immediately to improve their teaching, student well-being, and their students' learning.

 

 My classroom ___________ is currently ______________.
I can make my classroom more child-friendly by:

 
AND/OR

 

Examples of ways my classroom is already child-friendly
Examples of ways my classroom is not child-friendly & steps I can take to change this

 

2.  Review major takeaways.  (5 minutes)

Go through the graphic organizer and give participants a chance to share their take-aways

 

3.  Shout Outs.  (5 minutes)

Each day will end with Shout Outs.    

I'd lie to begin by shouting out _____________ for ____________________.  Two claps for ___________, One, Two, (CLAP, CLAP).

 

Take participant shout outs and lead them:  

Two claps for ____________, One, Two. (CLAP, CLAP)

   

DAY 2 OVER!

 

*****************************************************

REFERENCES:

 

UNICEF. (2009).  Education in emergencies in South Asia: Reducing the risks facing vulnerable children.