One thing I love about teaching in other countries is discovering new and exciting ways of teaching. Using different practices and resources, and changing them to suit the needs of my classroom and teaching style, has made me a stronger teacher. I have added a few resources I made when I returned to Australia.

Resources

Weekly Checklist

: Students weekly checklist for their English books

These are an easy resource to create and use. The Weekly Criteria resources helps students think more about the key learnings of the week and aim to achieve them. I use this in the classroom to make students more accountable for their learning and become independent learners. I get students to glue one of these into their English books at the start of each week or fortnight. They write a target for the week. At the end of the week, students fill out how well they think they did in each of the ‘descriptions’ and how often they used each ‘description’ in their weeks work. They also fill out whether they think they achieved their target. If not, they write how they could improve it in the following week.

Editing checklist

: Editing codes used in students workbooks

Again, after seeing the positive impact marking has in the UK, I attempted to adapt it for my own classroom. I made this resource to go on the wall of the class to remind students what the marking in their books mean. It has been fantastic for encouraging independence during editing time of a morning.

Steps for Success

As teachers, we have all had those students who take a little longer than the others to get ready for the lesson. I trialed different methods and resources to help my students be more organised and motivated to begin the lesson but nothing would work for more than a couple of lessons. After making the Steps for Success resources a tad bit more visually appealing (rather than the black and white writing-only look I had before) I have had much more success.

Each student who needs it has it attached to their desk with a Velcro dot. Being laminated, students can tick off the steps with a whiteboard marker as they complete them.

Sticky labels

Something that saved me when marking student books was the use of sticky label resources. Sometimes I would have to write the same Next Step in books for several students. Rather than repeating myself, I found it much easier to print a label and stick it into the lesson page. The kids also love getting a ‘sticker’.

It is also a good idea to use sticky labels for fast finishers. I have a list of labels to go with each core concept in math. Students come to me when they complete their work and if they have everything correct, they can pick a ‘challenge’ to stick in their books.