Tuesday, September 25, 2012

WELCOME BACK!!!

Greetings Makassed KSPS family!
 
Welcome to a new and exciting school year! One week passed after coming back from your summer break that I hope you have enjoyed and you have filled with opportunities to learn and grow. I am so impressed to see you all enthusiastic and happy for coming back to your school and being engaged in all our activities.
 
I have high expectations toward your performance and achievement and I strongly believe that every child can learn and be a high achiever with the proper support and preparation. KSPS is a learning organization and KSPS staff is devoted to build a safe and caring community whereby our lifelong and independent learners are inspired to become reponsible, innovative, cooperative, respectful, critical thinkers and problem solvers. We are dedicated to provide children with modern education and help them achieve academic excellence.
 
Our instructional program will be much more effective with active parental involvement due to its influence on students' achievement. My staff and I look forward to working with each and every parent.
 
As for KSPS staff, you ALL showed your high commitment to your school, you ALL showed that innovation and creativity starts here at KSPS! I am so excited to start this year with each one of you and I am so proud of your high performance, practices, and achievements.
Together we can make this an awesome school year!
 

 

Clovers Majestic Wishes


            As the scholastic year started, KSPS students had their special dreams with them. Each student came with a majestic wish hoping to achieve it before the end of the year. Students jotted down their small wishes, believing that some will come true. This activity was performed using web 2.0 tool: Wall Wisher.


        If you have any wish for KSPS Clovers, just double click on the wall to write it.

Saturday, September 22, 2012

Teachers-Parents Attitudes


I would like to share with you an article in “Terrific Teaching Tips” newsletter. The article is focusing on teachers- parents attitudes as there is the initial contact with parents in the first month.
“In order to turn this around so that it is not detrimental to their child, your student, here are a few suggestions for you as their teacher:
1. You must continually acknowledge achievement by recognizing students who function at a high academic level. This is proof that we are teaching and your students are learning. If we want parents to know that we are doing our job properly, we must also acknowledge and reward student improvement in their attitude and behaviour.
Most people look at achievers as excellent role models and want to copy them. That's why recognizing their successes acts as a powerful motivator for your students and their parents. That’s why you should never group students with learning difficulties together - no role models to follow.
Remember, also, that excelling in sports or other activities are opportunities to provide great recognition as well.

2. We must always keep parents informed and offer help continually. Be consistent - let them know about their child's achievements and improvements. Remember to change parents' negative attitudes, acknowledge students' progress openly.

3. Inform parents of test results, special assignment and project marks. Don't keep them in the dark. When report cards are sent home, you don't want an irate parent calling you saying "I wasn't aware. Why didn't you let me know my child was having problems (or failing)"?
Call, email, or see parents in person. Telling them what's happening (in a professional and tactful manner) with their child's progress will build positive parent feelings. Believe me!

4. Another way is to acknowledge another teacher's excellence. If another teacher is doing a great job to promote a child's progress, make the parents aware of it. Be professional, honest and sincere about the other teachers.

It's easy to resent or ignore negative parent attitudes. But who's the big loser in the end ... their child, your student! This kind of behaviour is WRONG (on our part). We need to consider what WE (as teachers) can do to improve the situation.”

 Danny Krumholz

 

Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Sharing My Best Practice

“Empowered Educators” Workshop for Teachers
27 & 28 August 2012
Crown Plaza Hotel
 
As part of the component "Professional Development for Internationalizing Education", the British Council organized a 2-day workshop delivered by Dr. Baldev Singh from Imagine Education UK. Attendees were teachers from different Lebanese schools; I was presenting Makassed Khalil Shehab School.
This workshop provided support to teachers to understand how technology impacts the classroom dynamics (pedagogy), motivate students and develop creativity in both the teaching and learning process.
*Workshop Outcomes:
• Create learning activities to support development of 21st century skills (Collaboration, Knowledge building and assessment)
• Increase knowledge of meaningful applications of Information Communication and Technology (ICT) tools in the classroom
• Engage students with professional learning communities through Web 2.0 tools
We were introduced to a set of new tools which allowed us to understand how to develop learning activities which are effective to support learning and development of 21st century skills. A number of Web 2.0 tools were used in the workshop to get teachers think creatively and enhance the learning process. I found it very useful to share with Makassed teachers some new web 2.0 tools presented in the workshop.                                                         
- Symbaloo:
  It is a Personal Learning Environment (PLE) for teachers to visually organize and share the best of the web with students. Symbaloo allows you to create your own pages with your favorite websites, videos, images, word documents…
You can also access your “Symbaloo” account through your smart phone by downloading Symbaloo App.
- Answer Garden:
Plant a Question, Grow Answers... Answer Garden is a new feedback tool that can be used in your classrooms to motivate students and trigger their prior knowledge.
-Wall wisher:
An online wall that is built for students to write their wishes, feelings, thoughts… Students will post sticky notes on the wall. Create an account www.wallwisher.com
-Online Tests through Your Google account:
Access your Google account → documents → create → forms (in this form you can create several forms of tests such as choose best answer, true or false, open ended questions…) → more actions → embed code ( to embed the test that you just created on your blog or wiki)
- QR Code:
A QR code is a barcode which can be read by webcams and smart phones. When the barcode is scanned, information appears on the phone screen or computer. This information can be text, a web address, an email address or a video. You can generate your own QR codes
You could create a puzzle-solving lesson out of QR codes or you can use these codes as secret messages to the parents. These codes are newly used in books... Example of a QR code:
 
Download the QR reader App to read the code!
-Educational Games:
Super new educational games www.classtools.net
 -Wordle:
Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.You can create your own Wordle gallery to share with your students especially in English Language sessions.
 
-Infograph:  
A useful tool that sums the lesson up, it can be created using word, PowerPoint, and paint.
Google → cool infographic gallery