Day 73: Save the Date!

Our second annual PUSH Your Learning Conference focusing on integrating technology is happening on Saturday, March 5, 2016 at Bear Creek SS.

For more information visit the PUSH Your Learning Website.

INSPIRE. UNITE. SHARE. CHANGE.

Day 62: Taking Risks

Recently, Kit Luce and I had the opportunity to spend time with intermediate teachers at Worsley Elementary School in Wasaga Beach.  A number of important ideas came out of our learning with the teachers and students.  One particular overarching theme that existed throughout the week centred around “Taking Risks”.  

Going into schools classrooms and planning lessons for students we do not know can seem risky.  We could only make educated guesses about whether we would be meeting their needs.  There may be a perception that we have the answers...when, in reality, we are coming in with questions and just as eager to learn with the classroom teachers and with the students.

The teachers take risks also.  They invite us into their rooms and we are grateful for that.  We get to see varied classroom setups, amazing approaches to teaching and it gives us the opportunity to learn from and WITH the teachers.

Lastly, we saw risk taking by the grade 7 and 8 students in how they responded to having us in their learning space. The students were incredibly kind and gracious with us.  We know very little about them and they gave us their time and attention and shared their thinking with us.  We recognized that they extended the trust they have in their teachers to us. We appreciate that and do not take it lightly.

Another conclusion we came to was the importance of Consolidation in math lessons. Our focus was to show how we could meet the needs of diverse learners in the classroom through the use of manipulatives and open and parallel tasks. Varied representations of algebraic expressions provided for multiple entry points for student understanding.

The task:

Roll a number cube twice to fill in the blanks in this pattern rule:  Start at ____, increase by ____

(no snake eyes)

• represent this pattern using manipulatives, creating the first 4 terms
• on your white board,  represent this pattern visually, using a table of values, numerically, graphically?

What would be 10th term?

Challenge? What would be the 100th term?

                   How can you determine an algebraic expression for your pattern?

When we looked at the patterns created we focused on the connections between the visual representations and the table of values in order to develop the algebraic expression.

  

What we recognized was that consolidating conceptual understanding is essential everyday, even if the concept is revisited the next day.  The consolidation phase is where we remove the context from the activity.  This deconstruction provides students with the understanding and, hopefully, the confidence to practice and grasp the learning goal.

Thank you to Mrs. Campbell, Mrs. Hamilton, Mr. Ferris, Mr. Pike, Mr. McLean and Mr. Kemp at Worsley Elementary School for your professionalism, enthusiasm and guidance.

Day 60: The Third Teacher and the Literate Learner

Originally posted on Big Ideas in Education

I have the opportunity to be part of an amazing inquiry in SCDSB that is looking at the learning environment as the ‘Third Teacher’.  We are looking at how well-designed innovative spaces can be harnessed to help students optimize their learning potential.

I am particularly interested in how library and classroom design enhances literacy and math proficiency. However, especially reading.

The ability for students to be able to read is perhaps the most important thing that students need to be able to do. Reading is the foundation of all other literacies. If students are not able to read, then they will not able to demonstrate literacy in multiple areas that will lead to real choice and the ability to think critically within the world. I tried to show that in this diagram – with reading as the foundation for other literacies, and the ability to think critically, make good choices, and achieve personal success.

Deborah McCallum

I believe that the physical set-up of the classroom can have a significant impact on how we implement strategies that promote reading success. Based on the new document from the Ministry of Ontario: The Third Teacher: 

According to this document, there are 4 roles of the Literate Learner:

1. Meaning Maker
2. Code User
3. Text User
4. Text Analyzer

With these 4 roles in mind, I want to know how my learning environment can support literate behaviours? How can the Third Teacher help students to effectively manage texts in appropriate ways and help students to become literate learners?

Based on this document, I created a checklist of some of the things that we need to think of to support our existing instructional strategies that create literate learners. In this checklist, I also added culturally relevant symbols to this checklist. Culturally relevant symbols (without cultural appropriation) that help reinforce the mandates of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and promote FNMI perspectives on literacy and learning.

Further, I would ask questions pertaining to how this environment provides effective feedback toward our learners. I would want this feedback to promote literacy skills for my students. If students don't have reading proficiency, then this will affect everything. 

I am very curious to see and learn about examples of learning spaces that promote literate learners, and that can also be created on a lean budget. 

What design features have you found to work well in your learning space?

Deborah McCallum

http://bigideasineducation.ca

Day 59: Making a difference!

So excited to be working with an awesome Grade 8 class @hydeparkps These students are blogging about social justice issues that matter!

Check out mrsmcraes.blogspot.ca and join in the conversation! 

Day 58: Supporting Learners

To start the day with her Grade 7 & 8 students on Thursday, Elaine Vodarek showed this one-minute video:

Wow!  That video is so powerful on many different levels. Elaine asked her students to think about what the video makes them feel and be ready to share what they noticed. After watching they discussed as a class and came up with for main questions to emphasize what they were wondering.

The students were given writing time to express in their own words what happened. 

I was visiting Elaine's class that morning with an Occasional Teacher named Dan. He and I were there to gain support from Elaine as we observed her excellent teaching. The experience was rich and powerful for all the learners in the room!

Day 57:MinecraftEdu Pilot Inquiry Begins!

Today a group of passionate students and teachers came together to share their learning. The goal of our day was to understand more about how the engaging game of Minecraft can be used in the classroom. The students were showing teachers and administrators how to play the game as they worked on a challenge to build their dream learning environment. Soon they were not only showing all the adults how to play but they were guiding them through the game! The students were the Minecraft experts and the educators were asking lots of questions. Knowing how Minecraft works helps to understand what is possible in the game and how it can be used for creation and making thinking visible.

By the end of the day, educators were inspired to use Minecraft for learning. Lots of resources were shared that have been created by other educators to be used in the classroom. We also started talking about and designing our own engaging learning experiences that explored mathematics, social studies, character, collaboration, critical thinking and digital citizenship.

The students and the educators all took risks today and that made all the difference in the world. We were co-learners and together our learning was much deeper. Teachers were experiencing being a learner alongside their students and how this can transform the learning culture in the classroom.

Thank you to all of the students - you made a big impact today!

The educators who participated today were given the opportunity to use the MinecraftEdu program in their classrooms. We will be working closely with the IT department to set MinecraftEdu up in their schools and test how the server will work. We will update you as we learn more!

Day 56: Getting Creative in Math

Mrs. Boate is the Innovation Resource Teacher for Numeracy K-8 with the SCDSB.

I invited her to join our class so she might demonstrate a creative and inquisitive approach to math concepts.

Math is typically an area that is seen as procedural, methodical and 'by the book'.

When most people think of math class in school, they think of following a set of pre-ordained steps, finding out the answer, and practicing questions over and over.

And yet...that does not have to be the case!

Our topic today was an introduction to graphing and data management.

To get our 'minds on' this new topic, and to access previous knowledge, Mrs. Boate posted a bar graph that had just bars and asked: what could this be about? Student brainstormed ideas, recalling previous graphs and survey subjects.

Then she asked: what is missing? Students remembered that graphs needs labels and scales and titles.

We then checked out this awesome site: Graphing Stories 

We looked at the Costa Rica swing video--but not past the point where we saw the swing portrayed as a graph because we wanted the students to try graphing it themselves.

Students had to creatively interpret the real life scenario into a mathematical (graphical) representation of their own devising.

This brought forth some interesting discussion on estimation of height, the shape the graph might take, marking the time for lowest point & highest point, etc.

We then compared student graphs to the graph in the video.

We will definitely be using this site again to explore graphing scenarios!

Mrs. Boate will be joining out class again in December for more graphing fun.

Thank you for visiting our class, Mrs. Boate!

*reposted from my class blog: http://mrsjohnsonintermediate.blogspot.ca/
*I'm a Grade 8 teacher at Shanty Bay PS. I love introducing creativity, tech and media into my classroom.
*on Twitter @julieejohnsonn

Day 52: Supporting Student Inquiry

Last week I was lucky enough to attend a workshop facilitated by Usha James of The

Critical Thinking Consortium (TC2) focused on Planning, Supporting and Assessing Inquiry. Usha is a skilled facilitator and I was eager to spend the morning learning with her. She did not disappoint! Usha pushed us to think hard about our practice and the ways that we support critical inquiry in the classroom.

Nurturing an Inquiry Stance

Usha described the inquiry approach or stance we want to nurture in a way that really resonated with me. She talked about the importance of framing good inquiry questions but also providing students with more specific, smaller inquiry challenges to help build or encourage inquiry dispositions. She likened inquiry challenges to climbing a mountain, where once you reach the summit and achieve that specific challenge, you want to carry on further, towards the horizon.

Intentional Interruptions

As a facilitator, Usha was engaging and clearly read her audience. Instead of front loading all of the instruction and possibly cutting off possibilities for learners, Usha started her workshop with a broad inquiry based task and then intentionally interrupted us to force us to slow down and think more deeply about our work.  For example, she provided us with an image and time to discuss what we think we saw.  After some initial discussion, she interrupted briefly with some direct instruction. She then gave us the more specific challenge of not inferring what we thought was happening in the picture, but of only articulating facts/details/observations. This is harder than you might think. It forced us to slow down. She later noticed the group was focused on the central image in the photo. Once again she interrupted; this time pointing out that good thinkers also pay attention to the peripheral details. She gave us a concrete thinking strategy, asking us to make observations and inferences across a 5-Ws chart. Finally, she interrupted the conversation once again and gave us the next step. She wanted an informative explanation - but she didn't give us the success criteria up front, she allowed conversation to happen first, for possibilities to be explored and then success criteria was shared.

Usha reinforced the idea that the teacher plays such a critical role in inquiry based learning especially through supporting and sustaining student inquiry.

Day 46- Coding and Simple Circuits Come Alive Through the Arts

Join us throughout the day today at Nottawa Public School as we explore artbots, coding Spheros to complete tasks and collaborative art pieces...and a whole lot of STEAM fun with grades 1 -6!

Block 1 : Artbots- Gr.4/5/6 - 50+students 

With a quick lesson on simple circuits, and a reminder about forces causing movement, these Grade 4,5&6's were ready to rock and roll with their artbot prototypes. Iteration was key and embraced whole-heartedly as they worked through the design cycle / creative process to solve problems and step up to their challenge.

The challenge:

I find it essential to not show a prototype or exemplar of what an artbot could look like. We're not looking for replication, but rather inspiring creativity and innovation by presenting a challenge and the tools required to create it. It never ceases to amaze me how different each and every artbot can be when left to the creative genius of the group. Cue #theartoflettinggo

Some vibrate, some squirm, some spin...but they all dance and make their mark on the world. It is a great reminder for students that we can all be so different, yet accomplish tasks in our own way and leave a positive and unique mark on the world...just like our artbots. Teachable moments make the most of any design challenge as students are directed to think and extend upon their own schema in math, science, technology, engineering and the arts.

What's an artbot without a dance battle? #bettertogether has never been truer!

After prototyping, students were invited to create a collaborative art piece, contemplating the concepts of colour, balance and line while composing the collective piece. A masterpiece was born!

Block 2: Coding Spheros with the 'Tickle' App- Grade 3&4

If you're going to learn to code, let's add some movement! None of these kids had coded before, but before long they were coding like pros and make their Sphero's perform planned tasks! These kids were fully engaged in learning how to use the technology as a tool and not just a toy...although that doesn't mean that a whole lot of fun wasn't to be had as well!

What we did:

Step 1- visual intro to scratch/blockly style coding ( it's just like Lego!)

Step 2- mini lessons on degrees and speed vs. time variables

Step 3- Code the teacher! Be silly and have them recognize how precise commands need to be to execute a simple task, like walking a straight line 90 degrees to your right that is 5 meters long.

Step 4- predict what some sample lines of code will allow their Spheros to do by 'acting it out'. It's a drama technique, a math strategy, a kinesthetic learning technique and yep...a STEAM strategy too.

Can you act out this code? Try it! A lot of body awareness and geometry was happening to determine that this code makes a square.

Step 6: Code your sphero to follow a line or shape in the tile on the floor! How fun! And all in 50mins ;)

Block 3: Jackson Pollock inspired art created by coding Spheros to colour mix- Grade 1/2

This may have been the highlight of my day. I'll be honest with you, I have grandiose ideas at times and tend to trust that something amazing will happen...even and especially if it doesn't all go according to plan. But a plan I had. Where it goes is up to the students... and that is always the best part of the adventure!

Grade 1's, non readers, never coded before, paint, end of the day and robots. What could be more exciting to take a leap of faith into!!!

What we did:

1. Leaving our mark: write your name and draw a picture that represents who you are anywhere on the paper with markers- 5mins.

2. Learn to code- act it out. 

The pinnacle highlight of my day was when a little girl who recognized me from when I had worked with her in summer school this past summer (great difficulty with reading, writing and paper/pencil tasks in general), explained that if we had to code our teacher to walk a square, 'they need to take 4 steps because the other side was 4 steps and all the sides of a square have to be the same number of steps". I almost cried. Amazing right! If we hadn't given that child the opportunity to express their mathematical learning in a different way, we would never have known how much they really knew and understood. Yay for movement integration in all that we do!

3. Use the Tickle app code template and change the variables of time or speed or rotation to change the trajectory of your sphero.

Next...add paint of course!

I must thank my husband for suggesting the garden hose as a sphero fence...brilliant! And a BIG thanks to Chris Gilewicz for picking up a drop sheet and dropping in to play with us at Nottawa this afternoon!

As I sit here wrapping up this blog and tidying up for home this evening, I can hear the kids in YMCA homeport showing their parents the art that they made today just down the hall. I'm pretty sure mini motors and Spheros are on a few Christmas wish lists in Nottawa this year. ;)

Day 45: Grandfather Teachings

Today I joined a grade 7 class at Orchard Park PS as they continued their learning about the Seven Grandfather Teachings. 

Conversations were generated from the book Seven Sacred Teachings - Niizhwaaswi  gagiikwewin  by David Bouchard, Dr. Joseph Martin, paintings by Kristy Cameron.  

The book provides students with the message of traditional values and hope for the future represented among First Nations, Metis and Inuit.  The teachings honour the seven basic values (humility, honesty, respect, courage, wisdom, truth, love) which are the foundations for a full and healthy life.  Today's class discussion focused on the Eagle that represents love and the students could easily relate this moral truth to their own lives.

It was amazing to see the students responding to the reading through writing, sketching, poster creation and digital formats to showcase their personal connections and insights into how this teaching impacts on their daily choices and decisions.

Thank you to Lynn for welcoming me into your classroom to spend some time with you and your wonderful students!

Follow or connect with Lynn's class on Twitter!

Day 44: Twitter

Today an educator asked me to explain why he should join Twitter. I took a few minutes to gather my thoughts before responding with my reasons and a few resources for getting started. I thought I would share my response for those who have wondered what the hype is all about...

Why I love Twitter:

• a powerful tool for sharing and conversations - Sylvia Duckworth’s infographic Should You Use Twitter?
• help students find and create awesome stuff - check out Find the Awesome, Create the Awesome by George Couros
• follow @SCDSB_LandT to explore and discuss learning and teaching ideas, then try searching hashtags (Guide to Twitter Hashtags) or participating in a twitter chat (see the Best Twitter Chats for Teachers in 2015)
• read about and share what is happening in our schools using #SCDSB and follow @SCDSB_Schools

Resources for getting started:

• create a Twitter account using your name (Mr.Kemp’s 10 Steps to the Perfect Educational Twitter Account)
• an Infographic that summarizes Twitter for Educators
• The Ultimate Twitter Guidebook for Teachers
• establish a Twitter routine in the classroom and with your professional account
• try TweetDeck to follow your favourite hashtags

TweetDeck

Tips for classroom Twitter accounts:

• have a conversation with your administrator about how and why you will use Twitter with your students
• share with parents how you plan to use Twitter with students
• consider privacy when choosing a classroom Twitter handle
• before sharing student personal information ensure their media release form is signed
• students need to be 13 to create an account
• consider how you will incorporate digital citizenship - ex: check hashtags before including them in a tweet, giving credit for pictures and resources you share.

Day 43: Using TweetDeck to Organize Twitter Feeds

Recently Marci Duncan posted an excellent blog entry encouraging the use of Twitter. Someone suggested in one of her links that Twitter is a great source of professional learning. While I agree with this, the flip side of the coin is that Twitter can sometimes be a little overwhelming. Marci touched on TweetDeck as a useful Twitter feed organizer and I’d like to expand on that idea just a little bit.

I had the privilege of attending Web 2.0 Boot Camp a few years ago in Philadelphia with Will Richardson, @willrich45, author of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Will suggested that a great way to get started with Twitter was to follow personal interests. So in addition to my education and math related feeds I added some of my sports gurus and entertainment heroes as well as some friends. All good fun! Except as I expanded my network of follows, and as they became increasingly prolific, my Twitter feed blew up. Too many feeds on too many topics! I had to stop the madness…

Enter TweetDeck. Thanks to David Petro, @davidpetro314, fellow math educator and technology enthusiast whose session I attended at the annual OAME Conference, I now use TweetDeck to organize my feeds into personalized categories that make sense just for me. TweetDeck lets you organize your feeds in multiple ways. Here are a few of my favourite strategies:

Lists: This allows me to group feeds by person. My Education List includes math gurus such as Dan Meyer, @ddmeyer, as well as SCDSB shining stars such as Mike MacAlpine, @MichaelMac151. To see what members of my Program and Innovation team are saying I scan my P and I List. 

Keywords: Sometimes it is beneficial to collect tweets by topic, rather than person. Using hashtags, I can follow all tweets that include key words such as #growthmindset and #scdsbmath.

Notifications: This interesting feed column shows me all the activity of the people whom I follow: their favourites, mentions, new follows and retweets.

Activity: Curious about who your new followers are, or who is retweeting your tweets? This column shows you all activity directly related to your Twitter account.

Scheduled: Got a great idea for a tweet in the middle of the night, but worried that it will be missed? Tweetdeck lets you easily set a scheduled tweet that goes out during prime time or on any time and date of your choosing.

Notifications and Activity are where I often find intriguing new people or topics to follow. TweetDeck automatically sets up these and other default columns, including Home, which is your running feed of everything you follow, as it would appear in Twitter. List and Keyword columns are just some of the types of columns you set up yourself.

So now I have my work-related feeds set apart from my more personal ones. Some power users actually have multiple Twitter accounts to further this separation. But I don’t roll that way: I like to have ready access to all information all the time from one simple platform. One feature I really like about Tweetdeck is that it allows me to easily change the order of my columns. That way, when I am at work, I can focus on education and math related tweets, and when I am on vacation I can switch things around so that I get my Habs updates and entertainment scuttlebutt first and foremost.

There are various ways to access TweetDeck. I currently recommend downloading the TweetDeck Google App from the Chrome Web Store. For more information about setting up TweetDeck to organize your Twitter feeds, check out the following links:

TweetDeck for Beginners: Setting up TweetDeck

http://cjrogers.com/tweetdeck-for-beginners-setting-up-tweetdeck/2914

TweetDeck Columns

https://support.twitter.com/articles/20169914

Organizing My TweetDeck with Lists and Collections

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MuBPONNzv0