This week was the MTS Awakening Possibilities Tech Conference and my head is still spinning over how amazing it was! Starting on Wednesday the 16th, approximately 600 educators got together to discuss educational technology in regards to:– implementation– policy– potential tools– project options– and much more!Here’s an excerpt from the official MTS Awakening Possibilities website: This conference was exciting for me for a lot of reasons. I remember attending the MTS Fab 5 Conference in Brandon in the fall of 2012 and seeing a banner advertising for an upcoming technology conference. At this time there wasn’t… Read More
Good Things Sunday
This post is inspired by the stories at the collaborative blog, One Good Thing. – I have a student in one of my classes who is dealing with many personal issues both at school and at home. As such, their attendance is very sporadic which results in them falling behind and feeling left out and frustrated when they are present. This week they were present for two of our three math classes. In the first class they were uncooperative and didn’t attempt anything during the hour. In the second class, they not only allowed me to sit with… Read More
2 Stars & A Wish: Week 28
With Spring Break come and gone, we are on our last stretch of school before summer holidays and I know that these next three months are going to go by very quickly! It is hard to believe that at this time last year, I was student teaching here and nervously hoping that a job opening would come up. That time only seems like a few short months ago and it is mind-boggling to think about how it has already been a year! I didn’t write a reflection the last two weeks as it was our Parent-Teacher interviews and Spring… Read More
Fanning The Flame of Curiosity
“Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.”[1]Can an individual’s pursuit of knowledge ever truly cease? Educators the world over are diligently attempting to arm their students with the skills and values so that they can become life-long learners; learners who recognize not only that education is not limited to the confines of a classroom, but also that self-guided learning often times provides the most rewarding and valuable experiences of all. In a profession that is built upon the ignition of students’ curiosity, there are many teachers who not only end their formal education with… Read More
Introducing 3D Shapes
The week before Spring Break marked my Grade 8’s introduction to 3D Shapes. This is our 6th unit of the 8 that we will cover this year and, personally, I think it is one of the most fun! Here are some of the activities we completed over the week, they were NOT all done in one day. PRIMARY ACTIVATION I started off the unit by having students, in groups of 4, brainstorm ALL of the ingredients they would need if they were going to bake a cake. Some students went very simple with the boxed-cake-mix approach, others had detailed… Read More
April Currently
I am currently writing this from the luxury of Spring Break! Last week included the delivery of our spring report cards and our second formal parent-teacher interviews of the year (read all about my experience & tips here). This week has brought a much needed break and despite it still being -30C, and feeling nothing like spring, I couldn’t be happier! 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… Read More
Parent-Teacher Interviews Round Two
On Monday of this week our second round of report cards went home and officially kicked-off spring Parent-Teacher Interview week. Being that we are a K-12 school, our K-7 teachers scheduled and organized their own meetings which ran throughout the week. In the 8-12 end, our school secretary scheduled our meetings for us which were primarily held on Thursday after school and Friday during school-hours (there were no classes on Friday). Compared to the 30+ interviews I had first semester, this round was a breeze with only 20. I think last semester I had a lot of interviews because… Read More
2 Stars & A Wish: Week 26
After two weeks of battling bronchitis-like symptoms* I am finally feeling better and this week felt like a fresh start! (*I have no idea if I actually had bronchitis because I couldn’t get into the doctors office). Not only did I hit the ground running in regards to my lesson plans and classroom activities, but our report cards were due for review this Friday as they go home with students this upcoming Monday. Thank goodness I was feeling better because this week definitely had some stressful moments, but two things that I think went well this week were: 1 )… Read More
My First Science Fair
On Friday my Grade 8 class held their first Science Fair after working diligently over the past three weeks. After a very long first unit on Cells & Systems (I was getting used to teaching Science!) we moved on to our unit on Fluids at the start of January. As a summative assessment, I decided to have my students organize, plan, and administer individual science experiments that would then be showcased with a Science Fair (an event that our school does not formally have). Not only would this serve as a summative assessment for our unit, but it would also… Read More
2 Stars & A Wish: Week 25
This week actually represented my shortest teaching week on record due to extracurricular activities, meetings, and illnesses.– Tuesday was our Grade 7-12 Ski Trip to a downhill ski hill approximately 2 hours away (a gorgeous day where I got to snowboard with my students!)– Wednesday I attended a meeting at our Division Office– Thursday I had my first sick day all year after battling bronchitis-like symptoms for almost two weeksAs such, I feel like I wasn’t able to accomplish much this week. I am hoping to hit the ground running on Monday, however, as spring break is only a… Read More