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
Student Teaching Update
Yesterday marked the official “half-way point” of my LAST student teaching placement ever. I have been progressing through my units with my four classes and am really happy with how everything has been going so far. Despite a multitude of missed days, (snow days, guest speakers, “Grade Wars”, field trips and sporting events!), I feel like we have been able to accomplish quite a bit in the last 3 1/2 weeks and wanted to showcase some of the awesome work my students have been creating. Grade 10 Geography We have been discussing Natural Resources and have so… Read More
Day of Pink
The second Wednesday of April marks the Day of Pink where people in Canada (and around the world) celebrate diversity and take a stand against bullying, homophobia and discrimination of all kinds. “S-School” hosted a number of events today including trivia challenges, collaborative positive message murals, guest speakers, video creation projects and even served pink floats at lunch! In addition to the school-wide activities my students created their own mural featuring stats, positive messages, and personal stories/confessions as well as created their own video! Our collaborative mural full of bullying stats, positive messages and personal stories. … Read More
Resources to Start Off Your Week 59
Last week I missed my Resources to Start Off Your Week post as I was home sick with the stomach flu, but I am happy to say I am feeling much better and back at it! I’ve used both of these resources in my classroom either during this current student teaching placement or in my previous placements and can say that they are definitely keepers. As always, I will be adding these to my lists of resources under the Fav Websites heading. 1 ) Jamendo– Jamendo has one of the world’s largest collections of royalty-free music clips. Songs can… Read More
2 Stars & A Wish: Meaningful Learning Opportunities
My third week of student teaching has come and go and even though we are back from Spring Break that didn’t mean it was business as usual. This week was “Grade Wars” which is an extracurricular competition between Grades 9, 10, 11, and 12. Even though the actual events took place over the lunch hour, there was a lot of events that required preparation that ended up occurring during class time. As such, this week seemed very short as I often had anywhere from 5 to 15 students missing from my classes as they were helping get things ready for… Read More
Vintage Parody Posters
Today, in Grade 10 Geography, we began creating “Vintage Parody Posters” about the use of Fossil Fuels. (We are currently working on a unit about Natural Resources and already discussed minerals prior to Spring Break.) Globally, the discovery of oil peaked around the 1950s-1960s and has been in decline ever since. Despite this statistic, the consumption of oil and other fossil fuels has been rising every year. To illustrate our learning about Fossil Fuels and this issue we decided to create “Vintage Parody Posters” which are created to look like they belong in the 1950s-1960s (when discovery… Read More
April Currently
So here we are, it is already April. If you have been keeping tabs on my countdown that means only 1 month left of student teaching, 2 months until graduation ceremonies and less than 3 months until our wedding! (And hopefully get a teaching job somewhere in there as well). All countdowns aside though, April has been a bad month for me so far (all three days of it) as I’ve been battling a stomach flu which finally decided to get bad enough that I was unable to go to school today 🙁 If you… Read More