If you haven’t encountered a “Currently” post before, it is just a fun post at the beginning of each month that serves as a way to share what is Currently going on in your life! You can link up and share your own “Currently” post by visiting the wonderful Farley over at Oh’ Boy 4th Grade. November is here and that means that it is almost time for my first parent-teacher experience as a teacher! I feel like this month will fly by with all of the new things that I have to learn, all of the things to prepare for, and all of… Read More
"Open Phone Exams" Response
This week I read a post by George Couros titled, “Open Phone Exams” in which he started off with the following comparison: “If I was to ask a question of an educator and they didn’t know the answer, the tendency would be to google it, or for some, to send out a tweet and ask the question. If they find the answer, they would be considered resourceful. If I was to ask a student a question on an exam, and they did those same things, they would be considered a cheater.“ This immediately got me… Read More
Lets Convert the US to the Metric System! A Grade 10 Essential Math Persuasive Project
Today my Grade 10 Essential Math class was introduced to their unit project to conclude their unit on Measurement Systems. If you can remember back to my previous posts, they created board games as their unit project in their last unit on Personal Finance. Here is what they were tasked with today: – Time For A Change – The United States is the only leading nation not using the metric system, despite doing business with metric countries thousands of times a day. Your mission is to create a persuasive Public Service Announcement (P.S.A) designed to convince the United… Read More
See You In 5 Days…
I only see my Grade 9 math class 3 days a week… Now, I will note that although this is a high-school class, it is not broken into semesters and I will see them all year long. The problem, however, is that these 3 days are back-to-back Monday to Wednesday. This means that my students do not have math for almost 5 full days with the way our class times are laid out. Furthermore, our school functions on a 5-day cycle which means that anytime there is a holiday on a Monday, I only see my students 2 days a week.… Read More
I'm Back!!
After a 9 day hiatus I am finally back in the blogging world. Trust me, it is not for a lack of writing topics… the opposite actually. Since I last posted my life has been a whirlwind of activities: – In-school meetings – Supervising student council dances – Driving 3 hours to watch our football team play their first play-off game – Driving an additional 3 hours to attend a PD session …. …. …. Oh ya… all of those were on the same day actually (but trust me, the remaining days were just as busy. On top of that,… Read More
2 Stars & A Wish: Week 7
This weeks started our back-to-back short weeks as Monday of this week was Thanksgiving and this upcoming Friday is our provincial professional development day, S.A.G.E. This week seemed to go by very quickly even though I didn’t actually teach that much. Most of my classes are nearing the end of their units and I had 2 classes write their unit tests on Friday. Two things that I think went really well this week are: 1 ) Introducing Formal Lab Reports in Science– We have been working with the Scientific Method since the beginning of’ the school year and we have… Read More
#FunShirtFriday 3
One of our school goals is to build in classroom spirit activities/routines for our students as a way to help foster school spirit and classroom community. One activity that I came up with for our class is #FunShirtFriday that I’ve seen on Twitter. Every Friday, I encourage my students to wear a “fun shirt” to school. Over the summer I found a lot of funny and interesting shirts online related to math, science, art, and teaching in general so I was pretty excited to share these with my students. To take this spirit activity one step further,… Read More
These Are A Few Of My Favourite Things…
We’re at that point where the majority of my classes are finishing up their first units and preparing to move on. As such, I wanted to share some of my favourite projects and activities from some of my classes. Grade 8 Art Our first project in Art this year was a Famous Artist Research Mobile. Students picked an artist of their choice, created mobile using their pieces of art, and included artist bio’s and references on the back. These are now laminated and permanent fixtures in my room! Grade 8 Science In Science we explored cells and… Read More
Sometimes You Just Need To Shut The Door…
Lunch hour… in any other profession I’ve been involved in this meant that I left the premises (or at least moved to a cafeteria/staff room), ran personal errands up town, went to the gym, relaxed and enjoyed my food, etc. Lunch hour… in the teaching profession, however, is a somewhat less-structured continuation of the rest of your day. As soon as that 12:00pm bell rings you are:– Supervising extra-curricular activities– Providing extra support for students who need to catch up– Meeting with colleagues or admin– Holding meetings with students– Making phone calls home– Photo-copying – Preparing for your… Read More
Resources To Start Off Your Week 80
Holy moly, has it really been 3 weeks since I had a Resources To Start Off Your Week post?!? It seems like it has been forever. I have been posting, I just have been posting other awesome things on Mondays… Anyways, today is Thanksgiving and I was reminded of how thankful I am for all of the amazing people who are willing to share their ideas and experiences online. To honour this, I wanted to make sure that I shared some resources with you! As always, I will be adding these to my lists of resources under the Fav… Read More