If you click that image you will be transported to an incredible resource for math assessment and problem solving. We all know I love integers. Like so many things in math I get tired of their not being a context for what we are doing, but integers should definitely have a context. Whether it is debt, temperature, direction, that context is so important. Next year I will probably begin with this, but I am still not so sure. Students really struggled with this though, and it means I have a lot of work to do at unpacking this with them. We will see how it works.
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Today we had a lot of students away for soccer. I saw it as a great opportunity to have students learn while still having fun. They did awesome with tangrams! They are so difficult for some of these kids, but it was great to see them persevere through the problem solving. That is a big theme in my class this year. I am so excited that our BC Curriculum is finally including, and acknowledging this branch of the mathematical world into our curriculum. We will be coming back to this!
So much of what I do in a day is making students feel welcome and appreciated. One thing I sorely lacked in over the years was birthdays. I never remembered them, and I never had something ready. I am now very honest with my students that I want to honour them and their birth (which is weird when you say it like that), and yet I forget, and need to do something. When I am told it is someone's birthday we usually sing "Happy Birthday" and it often sounds terrible. I got tired of that quick, so what I have started doing is singing a "version" of Happy Birthday to them in a genre. Any genre of their choosing. So far to date I have don't Elvis, the Biebs, Heavy Metal Opera, Country, and today was Gregorian Chant. I did videotape it, and no you do not get to see it. Not because I am embarassed (I am totes proud of my awesome pipes), BUT it has student names and faces, and I don't feel comfortable with that, but you can just imagine how awesome I am. Just think Boccelli meets Bon Jovi. You got it!
This post does not contain a fun little picture, because I forgot. Forgive me already.
I try to do (to the best of my ability) a good job at a lot of subjects: all of the ones I teach, actually. I leave behind science and art, because I don't teach them, so I feel I don't need to perfect those yet. In all subjects I try to adopt an inquiry approach, and have students do rather than sit and listen. I don't always get it right, but I am constantly moving onward. French has always been that subject that I feel is not a very inquiry based course. You either know words or you don't. That is why I have really attached to the AIM program. I have friends who hate it, but I have loved it, and I feel it is the only way I can truly teach French. If you are unaware of AIM, it basically teaches students French through gestures (similar to but not sign language), and therefore students stay in the target language (French, but it is also available for Spanish). I love this, because students are listening to and looking for patterns all the time that they are in French class. It takes a lot of effort, and energy, but I wouldn't have it any other way. This was the amazing sunset I got to see on my way to the great US of A. Our school went to a convention before our great Thanksgiving holiday commences. Instead of writing about it though specifically I felt like creating a list.
Things I don't like at conventions
Things I like at conventions
There is much more to be said, but I'm about to go on the ferry. Happy Thanksgiving. * if you can't tell that most of these things are facetious, there is nothing I can do for you.
Video edited by my awesome colleague Eric!
I love a good assembly. Don't worry though, I hate a bad one too! I have to give credit to the Earth Rangers, they really engaged the students, and I hope that there were some students who thoroughly encouraged to be stewards of our world. This was a good way to get ready for a long weekend. Time for rest...
Over the years as a teacher I have become a tidier, more organized person. I never used to be that way, but my grade sevens now clean their desk, put their chairs away, before they are dismissed. I want respect for our classroom, for our space, and we try to do that. That being said sometimes I LOVE when my classroom is left messy because learning was occurring. Today we had stations of inventions and innovations from Mesopotamia. Students made clay tablets, stylus's, and wrote in cuneiform. They made ships with sails, and they even created rulers to measure cubits, digits, and feet (their literal, actual feet!). They didn't want to stop, and they got to experience what life was like, before we had pen, paper, ferries, jetboats, and even plastic rulers! When that kind of day happens, I am all right that our little old classroom isn't pristine. It reminds me that we are actually doing things; we are experiencing the world. I hope you make a mess sometime soon!
Interesting and clear: that's what good writing should be. I hope that by the time, my students leave grade seven, they will have this burned in their heads (only figuratively, I am certain my principal will not allow branding(or the legal system)). These are the ideas that I want students to be thinking when they come to a keyboard, pick up a pen, or even text. What are you writing; what are you communicating, and what is the best way to have that message received?
Today I had students review each others work, for these core components, and it worked just shy above mediocre. I know this is going to be a long process, and I am still looking for better ways for students to become editors. They are pretty good writers, but they can do so much more, and that is mainly from revising. We will see. Anyone have any hints? Today we worked further on the act of inferring. Students engage in the act of building a story and asking questions with incomplete information. We do this but looking at images and discerning from what we see what is happening. It is great to see all the different kids interpret information. Today kids were pretty exhausted from the week of mini courses but it was still quite worthwhile. We will later be working on having the balance in our writing of giving details but also avoiding revealing the whole story all at once.
The clustering of hundreds of monumental inscriptions mounted on huge poles along both sides of a highway was quite common. Each inscription represented a different religious sect or point of view and was placed as near as possible to heaven the traditional home of the North American gods. The level of spiritual rivalry becomes dramatically clear when we realize that shortly before the catastrophe some of the inscriptions reached heights of close to one hundred feed above the highway. Von Hooligan claims, and convincingly so, that these tremendous heights prove that the stripes were in fact designed to be used by airborne vehicles. I love getting students to read and interpret what has been interpreted by archaeologists from the year 4022. I use this lesson to introduce a few concepts: archaeology as a discipline of incomplete information, for one, and how to write and give your reader the chance to infer. Students will begin writing a similar description of an item from their room. They will add detail but also strike that balance of omitting detail to cause wonder and mystery in the reader's mind.
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November 2017
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