Category: Classroom Practice
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Nurturing a Sustainable Culture of Active Thinking
As the school year launches, teachers prepare for their new and returning students, school leaders to welcome new and returning staff and the focus turns to designing ways in which learning communities can come together, develop and thrive. In my experience this often means that team building activities are dusted off and there is a […]
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What’s in a name?
I miss the puzzle of learning names. As a School Principal I used to love greeting families, learning student names and being part of the early morning routine welcoming everyone into school. I struggled, I got names wrong, I mixed up pronunciation, put the accent in the wrong place and from time to time muddled […]
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Goals, Habits & Growth
Pick a goal, write it down and commit to it. Having a goal is part of the learning process, right? It is embedded in our idea of supporting growth, evaluating achievement and encouraging reflection. We need to articulate where we are headed, develop SMART goals and then work towards these with criteria to assess how, […]
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A ‘learning buzz’ in the virtual learning world
I recently wrote about missing the sense of, ‘a learning buzz‘, during these times where many of us have moved to virtual learning spaces. It made me wonder, how can you generate a ‘learning buzz’ in this virtual space? It of course would be fruitless and frustrating to try to copy and paste the same […]
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Love for the Learning Buzz!
What have I missed most over the past months of school life? We have been roller-coasting through school closure – distance learning – hybrid learning – back to school – quarantining – distance learning. There are many things – but my first reaction was ‘There’s a learning buzz’. If I asked you to describe what […]
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‘Small Moments’
As we approach the beginning of the new school year it got me thinking about ‘small moments’. Our Writer’s Workshop training has focused us all at BMS on how a story can be created from just a simple ‘small moment’. So much of preparing for the welcoming back to school of our students, teachers and […]
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small words – Big Changes
After a long hiatus from blogging I am ready to jump back into this space to reflect on professional learning and I am excited to be inspired from the benefits of doing so! Just recently I was pondering over the fact that I have probably read and edited thousands of pieces of work by students, […]
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Literature Circles: A Powerful Practice to Support Differentiation
Literature Circles. Of all of the practices I introduced as a teacher in the Primary Classroom, I believe this to have been the most powerful. For me, literature has the power to connect us all beyond age, nationality, language, culture, religion or gender and also has the power to provoke thoughts and opinions that lay […]
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The True Value of Student-led Portfolio Conferencing
I was first introduced to the concept of a student-led portfolio conference many years ago, and quickly became a strong advocate for their use as part of any effective reporting and assessment practice within a school. For further information about student-led portfolio conferences please have a look at the links below: Student-led Portfolio Conference prezi […]
Jenny O'Fee 