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Training Guide - Unit 2: The Student

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on January 17, 2011 at 5:16:40 pm
 

Unit 2: The Child

 
Guiding Questions

  • What challenges do students bring to the classroom? (2.1)
  • 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? (2.2)
  • What does the ideal classroom look like? (2.3)
  • What teaching strategies can a teacher use tomorrow in his or her classroom to improve student learning and become more child-friendly? (2.4)

 

Timing Activity
35 min  Session 2.1
75 min  Session 2.2
60 min  Session 2.3
60 min  LUNCH
80 min  Session 2.4
30 min  Session 2.5              
Total timing: 5 hours 40 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:

  • Generate a list of challenges that students bring the classroom both collectively and individually.
  • Identify how these challenges may impact learning. 

 

Outline and Timing:

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

 

Materials:

  • Individual graphic organizer
  • Poster paper
  • Marker
  • Pens 
  • Timer

 

Preparing for the Session:

  • Have poster paper hung up on wall or board, ready to go.
  • Consider some of the challenges that affect students in the communities of the teachers participating in the program - so that you can assist and push their thinking.

 

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.

 

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:

  •  Review the 7 components of child-friendly spaces
  •  Learn another strategy for teaching new material in the classroom
  •  Develop a toolkit of effective teacher actions to create child-friendly spaces
  •  Identify current teacher actions that may be detrimental to student learning and choose new  

          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:

  • Timer
  • Poster paper
  • Markers
  • Participant packets
  • Information packets for each station
  • 8.5" x 11" paper (or other size paper for station numbers)
  • Tape/something to hang posters

 

Preparing for the Session:

  • Poster with 6 components of child-friendly schools numbered and listed:

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)

  • Station numbers (1 through 5)
  • Print information for each station
  • Graphic organizer in participant packets
  • Posters for each station with space to write down positive and negative teacher actions. 

 

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.

 

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.

 

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.

 

Jigsaw Part 2. (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.

 

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

 

 

 

 

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:

  • Reflect on current classroom spaces
  • Remdoel classroom space to promote student learning
  • Identify additional changes that may be made to the classroom in the future 

 

Outline and Timing:

Timing Activity
10 min

My classroom...

looks like...

sounds like...

feels like...

20 min
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:



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 
10 min Activities that can support all learners
10 min Presentation of resources
30 min Lesson(s) Re-Write 
20 min Group Share
5 min Resource Wish List 
Total timing: 1 hour 20 minutes

 

Materials:

 

Preparing for the Session:

 

Facilitating the Session:

 

1. Multiple Intelligences.

 

 

Find the right timing for the story.  Include transcription.

 

 

Session 2.5:  Putting it into Practice

Session Goals:

  • Participants reflect on the day 
  • Participants create action steps for implementing child-friendly practices when they return to their schools

 

Outline and Timing:

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

 

Materials:

  • Graphic organizer on "The Student"

 

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.

 

-Complete graphic organizer on “The Student”
    My classroom ___________ is currently ______________.
I can make my classroom more child-friendly by:
    
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

 

3.  Review major takeaways.  (5 minutes)

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

 

4.  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.

 

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