This week my Grade 11/12 Agriculture class has been putting the finishing touches on their Dust Bowl “mini-museum displays”. My students were responsible for finding some type of media (photo or video), creating some type of artifact and completing a written report. Here is how their project was set up. The Greatest Dust Bowl Photograph Witnessing the Dust Bowl Dust-Phenomena P.S.A Dust Bowl Citizen Trading Card From the Dust Bowl, With Love Agricultural Causes & Effects of the Dust Bowl Row 1 = media Row 2 = artifacts Row 3 = written report Students had their choice of… Read More
The Job Hunt is On!
Last week I was approached by the principal at “S-School” who let me know that two jobs were being posted in the school! I was so excited when I went into the staff room and saw these hanging on the bulletin board. Here is what the two jobs are posted as: – Grade 7-10 Science and Social Studies Teacher, Full Time Permanent – Family Studies and Resource Teacher, Full Time Permanent After spending both my third and fourth student teaching placements at “S-School” I’ve grown to love the students, staff, and learning environment that is present. I am so excited that there… Read More
Resources To Start Off Your Week 61
Happy Monday everyone! Does it look like Spring yet where you are? Here in Manitoba, Mondays are getting pretty depressing as we are starting ANOTHER week with snow 🙁 I have about a ten-by-ten patch in my yard where it has melted but in most areas we still have well over a foot of snow still. Here’s hoping that spring catches up soon! The good news is that we still have awesome ed resources to make us smile 🙂 As always, I will be adding these to my list of resources under the Fav Websites heading. Good Video… Read More
2 Stars & A Wish: Finishing on Time
My fifth week of student teaching is all finished up which means that I officially have two weeks left to wrap up my units and complete final assessments with my students! A reoccurring theme during this placement has definitely been a lack of time and this week was no exception. This week we only had a four-day week because of a division-wide PD day on Friday and on Thursday our high school students were away at a local career fair. Unfortunately, this meant that I really only had three teaching days instead of the five that I would… Read More
Dr. Kathie Nunley Part 2: Layered Curriculum
*The following is Part 2 of a two-part reflection on a PD session I attended by Dr. Kathie Nunley. Part 1 of this reflection on, A Student’s Brain, can be found by following the highlighted link. Layered Curriculum, developed by Dr. Kathie Nunley, is an instructional method based specifically on her work with neuroscience and how the adolescent brain functions. It is developed as a means to effectively meet the needs of the adolescent learner by taking into account how the brain processes information and reacts to various stimuli. One very important factor in this method… Read More
Dr. Kathie Nunley Part 1: A Student's Brain
Today all the teachers and support staff in “T-Division” had the opportunity to attend a PD session with Dr. Kathie Nunley, an educator and brain-image researcher from the eastern US. I was immediately excited because I have always been really interested in how to engage different parts of our student’s brains and differentiate instruction to best meet their individual learning styles/needs. I can definitely say that I was not disappointed by this PD session! Dr. Nunley is not only just extremely knowledgeable about her subject area but is also a very humorous and engaging speaker (I spent a great deal of the… Read More
Resources To Start Off Your Week 60
I was going through my email account this weekend and found some emails with resources from over two years ago that I had saved for future reference! I guess it pays to go back and double check through your online files haha. This week I have three different resources that could be a great addition to a Social Studies or English classroom. As always, I will be adding these to my lists of resources under the Fav Websites heading at the top of the page. 1 ) Top Documentary Films– Top Documentary Films has compiled over 1000 documentaries, … Read More
Imagine All The Water
In July I shared one of my Fav Websites, Imagine All The Water, which illustrates how much water it takes to create some of our everyday items like paper or a pair of jeans. Fast forward nine months and I am now teaching Natural Resources in Grade 10 Geography and we have just started talking about fresh water resources! Last week I showed my class the following video which showcases a group visually depicting one of the water statistics from the website using water balloons: We decided to use this video as our inspiration to create… Read More
2 Stars & A Wish: ICT Whirlwind
My fourth week of student teaching is now complete and I can’t believe that I am over half way done my LAST student teaching placement! This week offered a really great blend between academic goals and social goals as we had two extracurricular days to celebrate the Day of Pink and Think Day. Two things that I think went really well this week were: 1 ) Merging ICT, Social Outcomes & Student-Relevant Ideas– This week our school celebrated the Day of Pink and worked towards creating awareness about bullying, discrimination, and homophobia. One option our school suggested was creating… Read More
"T-Division" Think Day
Today “T-Division” organized an extracurricular event involving the Grade 7-12 students from most of the schools in our division. When we arrived at school this morning we loaded buses, by grade level, and traveled an hour to attend Think Day at “A-School”. Inspired by the incredibly popular, We Day, this event was all about inspiring the youth in our school division to get involved in positive projects and make a change (either personally, locally, or globally). We started off our day by welcoming the group, Live Different, who shared personal stories of situations they have overcome as well… Read More