Welcome to Ms Meagan's Classroom

Hello everyone and welcome to Miss Peters class.

So who is Miss Peters? Um I am a former teacher in post secondary.

I spent several years in post secondary support services

before moving into employment services for persons with disabilities.

Now I'm an Ontario certified teacher for english and history.

On the personal side I love books and puzzles.

I am a mom to a lovely little boy, a wife and the owner of a lovely dog.

So in my class

our instruct my instructional strategies are pretty varied.

Um And the reason is because I really like to use universal design for learning.

So you D. L.

Which takes into account all the different needs of

the different students that are in the classroom so that

I can make some really strategic design choices and a

lot of those choices come through in differentiated instruction.

Okay.

Which is basically the options and providing

choices to students that suits their needs,

their interests and their readiness?

Okay.

So a lot of my assignments,

you'll notice there's a lot of choices and options within them and

that's so the students can really tailor the assignments to their strengths.

Okay.

There are four different areas that can be differentiated the content.

So what is the actual information we're looking at in class the process.

So how do we actually go through learning the

materials and then creating the product that reflects our learning

the product which is usually what's submitted for grading

and then the environment which is our classroom environment.

So um do students need to work outside of the classroom.

Do they need some special considerations in the classroom in

order for them to be able to complete their work?

Some examples of different instructional strategies?

Um The first one is multimodal learning, which is really important,

which means taking into consideration all of the different senses.

So we're not just reading and writing every day,

we're thinking of different activities that appeal to different students.

Okay, lots of different choices.

Some explicit instruction on things like organization.

Uh the use of graphic organizers, jigsaws, four corners debates,

lots of different options.

Alright, up next

assessment strategies.

So once we go through the whole teaching part,

now I have to actually assess what the students have learned, right?

And there's three different types of assessments we do in our class

and each of these types of assessments applies to both the curriculum.

Okay, so what are the actual learning goals,

the success criteria that are derived from the curriculum

and then also ties in with our learning skills and work habits.

So those are things like organization, um working independently self regulation,

all those pieces you would see on their report card.

So the first one is assessment for learning,

which is where I'm really gathering information about what

the student knows either to inform my instruction.

So I'm either doing it as a diagnostic to know

where to begin or I'm doing it throughout the teaching

period so that I know how to give the student

informative feedback to help guide them in their learning,

help them to continue to improve

and then I know whether or not we're ready to move on.

Then. We have assessment as learning which are self and peer assessments.

So this is encouraging the students to use their meta cognition and reflection

skills so that they can think about who they are as learners,

what they've learned and how they're going to express that learning.

And then the last one is Assessment of Learning, which I commonly call evaluation.

So evaluation is what is actually graded and contributes to the report card grades.

We do a lot of assessments. Not all of them contribute to the report card grades.

Okay.

Just those evaluated pieces because some of those other

pieces are really about just more information gathering for me

and for the students so we know where they're at and where they need

to continue working so that they can get to where they want to be

some different

strategies or things like exit ticket surveys. The students love doing

quizzes so I try to do some of those, it's like a game version of a quiz. Um portfolios.

We do opinion essays. That is something that's on the O. S. S. L. T.

So we do we do do some essay writing on opinion essays,

presentations etcetera.

Central to the assessment evaluation is the use of success criteria

and that's how we ensure that there's equity in our assessments.

Okay.

We're holding all of the students to the

same standard and it's a criterion referenced standard,

right? They might produce different work.

Someone might do a book report, somebody might do a portfolio,

but they're still working towards those same set of criteria.

Alright. What it means is we don't use norm referenced. Okay.

So we're not comparing the students to each other.

We're only comparing their work to the criteria so we

can determine whether or not they've met the criteria,

Right? And that's how their greatest determined.

Our class also looks at a lot of different behavior supports.

So the biggest thing is our routines, we have a routine for how each day goes.

We get into that routine and we stick with our routine.

It doesn't mean we do the exact same things every day.

It just means we do things in the same order or close to the same order each day.

That just helps students to get to know what to expect.

And then we integrate a lot of

proactive positive behavior strategies into the class.

So we're not just looking at that curriculum.

We're also looking at those learning skills and work habits.

And we're also looking at how can we support our students in terms of their

development so that they have more positive

behavior behaviors as opposed to undesirable behaviors.

Okay, so that involves things like our pro social skills development,

where we look at things like empathy, collaborating,

cooperative learning kindness, etcetera.

We look at self regulation.

So as self regulation is being able to really

take control of yourself and be aware of yourself.

So we do some guided visualization, some belly breathing mindfulness.

We work on self advocacy skills

and again um that explicit instruction for

executive functioning comes in here as well.

So explicit extraction on things like organization.

Mhm.

And then we also have emotional regulation.

So we use things like progressive muscle relaxation, bubble breathing,

wearable fidgets etcetera.

Okay so those are all different strategies that incorporate

for the entire class as a positive behavior strategy.

So it becomes really normalized in the classroom and part of our regular routine.

If there are behavior incidents or behavior challenges,

we would then start looking at behavior

monitoring which we use an antecedent behavior

consequence chart or abc chart so that we know what happened before the behavior,

what the behavior was and then what happened as a result of the behavior.

Then we're looking at different patterns to

determine the function of the behavior.

Okay so what is the behavior accomplishing for the student?

We would then look at a behavior intervention plan or a

beep and some of your students may already have a beep.

Um and that really just outlines the interventions and supports that

are going to help us encourage positive behaviors in the classroom.

Any of your safety intervention plan or your sip

these are less common.

Um and they are guidelines for how to respond to a behavior um in a

serious incident which could be in the class or somewhere else in the school.

Okay so that means that a student is

engaging in the behavior as an undesirable behavior.

And now we need to come in with some different safety

interventions to try and mitigate that as much as possible.

So it doesn't turn into a serious or critical incident at the school.

Alright. We also have some students with academic concerns.

So we also offer some different academic supports but a lot

of the academic supports are really built into the instructional strategies.

Okay because a lot of the supports are really um

geared towards again that universal design and differentiate instruction.

So it's gonna be things like multi multi modal learning

choice of assignment mediums and topics.

Graphic organizers, flexible groupings.

Basically anything that we need to do to be able to work with the student

to use their strengths so that they're able

to competently and effectively express their learning.

We also have our student success center and our learning resource center.

Okay so the learning resource centers for students who are on I. E. P. S.

The student success centers for students who require some

extra support but it may not have an I.

P. At this time.

Alright. Communication is key.

So student learning is communicated through

emails are progress reports that come out

at mid term and a report card at the end of the term.

If students are struggling.

Communication would be by email or phone call depending on your preference.

And then all of our sort of class activities are class news,

whatever we're doing is all on our D2L core shell and

you can access your detail core shell with your student,

okay?

So that they would log in and you'd be able to

see all the different things that are taking place there.

All right.

All of my contact information is also on D two L if you wanted to get

into contact with me by email and you misplaced my email address or my phone number,

whatever.

All right,

nearing the end. Now, our duty to report.

I always mentioned this to the students and I'd

like to mention it to the parents as well.

There are two areas that I have a duty to report. Okay.

The first one is that if there's reasonable grounds to suspect

that a child is or may be in need of protection,

I am bound to report this.

Right. It's not personal.

I am legally obligated to make a report.

Okay.

If there is an incident that qualifies for suspension or expulsion,

I am bound to report that to the principal for investigating an action.

Again, it's not personal,

it is an obligation that I have.

Right? So it's not about trying to target students or target certain families.

It's simply that I am absolutely bound to make a report of these things

and I like the students to really know that from the get go right.

And I like obviously

the different supporters involved with our students to know that as well.

If you have any questions about that, please let me know.

Um, I do have some references there.

If you want to read up a little bit more

about what might constitute resemble need of protection or um,

what incidents qualify for suspension or expulsion.

And those are all included in the references for here as well.

So if you were,

if you wanted to do a little bit more reading

maybe about pro social behaviors or self regulation activities,

you're more than welcome to make use of these references.

Or you can reach out to me and let me know what your

concern is and we can take a look at how best to address that

when there are any concerns. I like to look at a more holistic approach.

So not just in the classroom,

but how are we going to support the student in the class and at home?

So we have the greatest chances of success.

More conferences.

Perfect. Thank you so much for joining me.

And like I mentioned,

please reach out if you do have any questions or concerns about anything

that I've just kind of given you a quick overview about here today.

Thank you

Welcome to Ms Meagan's Classroom

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