I came across the following image this past week on social media and I can’t seem to get it out of my head. Its true, many people that I can credit with acting in a “teaching” role through my childhood are people that I never met or had any one-to-one interaction with. If I had to personalize this graphic, mine would look something like this: The virtual teachers of my childhood include individuals such as: Bill Nye Fred Rogers Mr. Dress Up (aka Ernie Coombs) Reading Rainbow with LeVar Burton Hal Johnson & Joanne McLeod As I work with teachers… Read More
Room 132 Info
The 2017/2018 school year is in full-swing! Here is where you can find out more about our classroom and keep up-to-date with the amazing learning my students are uncovering. YouTube Twitter Small group instruction in Gr 7 Social Studies to practice latitude & longitude 🌍 #trsd32 #schoolgoals pic.twitter.com/a2d7aQeRoA — Mrs. Thompson (@Thompsonclass) September 14, 2017 Instagram Welcome back to all #trsd32 students; it’s going to be a great year A post shared by Mrs. Thompson’s Classroom (@thompsonclassroom) on Sep 6, 2017 at 6:06am PDT Facebook Website Canadian History Blog
Things I Want to Do… But When?
It seems like I have been preparing to get back into the classroom from the moment I left the classroom. I know that it will be a huge adjustment returning to work and trying to balancing work requirements, extra curriculars, my M.Ed classes, and the day-to-day life chaos with wanting to spend all of my available time with Jaxson. I can’t help but think long-term about all the things I want to implement in my classroom and am wondering when the best time would be to explore these areas. One huge aspect at play is that… Read More
A Teacher Spends a Day in PD, What She Realizes May Shock You!
Our division sets aside five days every year to commit to professional development. Whether it is division-wide or school-based the purpose is clear… for teachers to embrace a growth mindset, continue their professional learning, refocus their pedagogy, and increase how successful their classroom is (with the definition of “success” looking different in different situations). Sometimes professional development days are tailored to meet the needs of specific teachers like meeting in grade-groups or by subject-level. A lot of times they are more general and include all teaching staff regardless of their teaching assignment. Division-wide or school-based… subject-specific… Read More
Things To Ask Yourself When Trying a New Tech Tool
There are hundreds… thousands of new tech tools out there that are being incorporated into classrooms on a daily basis. Without a purpose, however, we run into technology being used simply as an engagement tool that doesn’t open up any new opportunities for students and can be a waste of your time (and money if the school had to purchase new equipment). As many of you might know, when you use tech as an engagement tool the appeal is lost relatively quickly…. students can become distracted…. they begin using the tool for other purposes (surfing the web, selfies,… Read More
Put Yourself In Their Shoes… Does The Adolescent Brain Allow That?
My favourite subject has always been history. As a child I loved going to museums, seeing artifacts from cultures and situations long past, watching documentaries, and reading books that included everything from Little House on the Prairie to Clan of the Cave Bear. When I reached post-secondary I majored in History and completed a double-minor in Geography and Geology so that I could understand as much as possible about a situation: – What happened? When did it happen? Why did it happen? (History) – Where did it happen? What was there then? What is there now? (Geography) –… Read More
Thinking About Choice
I think that most educators can agree that providing our students with choice can be incredibly beneficial, in and out of the classroom. This level of choice can be regarding instructional set-up, groupings, seating preferences, assessment options, etc. How do we, as educators, balance how much choice to allow while still managing our classroom? What about our students who seem to continually make the wrong choices? What do we do with students who continually change their mind and seemingly “waste” time bouncing back and forth between different choices? Yesterday the TED network shared this… Read More
Interactive Notebooks (I.N.B) in Grade 8: Front Matter & Rational Numbers
Last year I used Interactive Notebooks with my Grade 8-10 Math classes with some success. My Grade 8 and 9 students used them the most but my implementation lacked direction and I don’t feel my students got as much out of them as they should have. I still taught my lessons regularly and then we would do an Interactive Notebook entry at the end of that topic as a type of review activity. So, while useful, I wasn’t using them to my full potential and my students could pick up on that, This year I was… Read More
First Steps in Math – Day 1
Today I began the First Steps in Math program with four other educators from our division. Several years ago our division sent one of our colleagues to the First Steps in Math training program and he has now spent time each year educating other teachers in our division and was actually trained by David McKillop, who I saw last year in Brandon. My new books (provided by our division): the First Steps in Math Number Sense course book & work book. First Steps in Math was developed in Australia in the early 1990’s as a means… Read More
Welcoming a New Set of Grade 8's to the Blogging World!!
Today my Grade 8 Science class joined the blogging world with the official 2014-2015 launch of Mrs. T’s Classroom! This blog is one that I actually started last year with my Grade 8 homeroom, who ended up blogging regularly for their science class as well as featuring a weekly “Mathlete Friday” post. This year we are maintaining our online presence at Mrs. T’s Classroom as opposed to starting all over again with a new domain. Some of my students have already been checking out last year’s posts and are excited about the potential of competing for page-view statistics! We… Read More