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
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
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
2 Stars & A Wish: Appropriate Pacing
My second week of student teaching has come to a close and we are now officially on Spring Break until April 1st; so we are off for a full week. I am hoping to utilize this time to further prep for my classes and possible interviews that can come up in the next few months. Two things I think went really well this week were:1 ) Enforcing Accountability with my Students– This week we had a few preliminary assignments that we worked on in my various classes. They were not extensive or time consuming, but I needed them… Read More
My Experience with Parent-Teacher Interviews
Bacall, A. (2011). Parent Teacher Conference. Available online at: http://www.cartoonstock.com/directory/p/parent_teacher.asp This week not only marked the last week before spring break, but also “S-School’s” springtime Parent-Teacher Interviews. While parent’s could technically come in anytime during the week, depending on their schedule, our main interview dates were yesterday evening and today during regular school hours. Luckily, I was able to sit in on parent teacher interviews and learn more about how they are organized and how to address any parental concerns. As I am student teaching and not a staff member, however, parents need to give their consent for me to sit… Read More