Friday 27 November 2015

Friday's News

Happy gobble gobble to our friends and followers in the US. As you recover from your Turkey hangover, or as you prepare to stand inline for when Target opens, I entrust that you had a great, short week in the classroom.

Back here we've had a fun and exciting week. There was a full moon and well I don't think you need me to get too in depth as to how that worked out in the classroom. One of the great ways to get out those bursts of energy is through Go Noodle. Jeff's class was learning to Pop See Kow!

Jeff's class also concluded their Habitats and Communities unit and wrote their quiz. He added a bonus questions and apparently his kids think he might be part Yeti. 
His class is also working on a passion project which you can follow here.
We are currently working on completing a health unit for grade 4 based on the new Ontario health curriculum. Jeff was testing it out with his students. Here is a sample photo of the kids using it. 
So how when you stopped eating turkey and finally got that new laptop you waited in line for tell us how your weekend went. 


Friday 13 November 2015

Friday's News

Happy Friday!

Another week is complete in the books. Both of us work in special education and sometimes those students need a voice and too often they are ignored. This video came across our timeline and made us really think about those students in our rooms or that we work with individually.

It is time to let them stand up and be heard.


Do you have any of these students in your room?


Friday 6 November 2015

Friday's News - Remembrance Day


Remembrance Day is always a tough one to address with our younger students in class. The concept of war to them is what they get to do on their PlayStation 4 or Xboxes when they get home from school. They can luckily turn those things off and get up the next day and do it all over again. However, the men and women that took up the cause of World War I and World War II weren't so lucky.

So how do we go about explaining the war to our students? Do we tell them the truth that greed got the best of a few men and it led to them making bad choices and thus the loss of life for hundreds and thousandths of people? While it seems simple enough to explain it this way the war was much more complicated. So it is alright, to be brief about the war because as our students get older they will have the chance to study the history behind the war. What we really need to teach our younger children is the concept of Remembrance.

I am a proud Canadian and for this upcoming Remembrance Day my class will be looking at the concept of Remembrance and what does it mean. We will be looking at those true heroes of Canada and remember their great sacrifice so we could learn about them 100 years after they fact. We will also be doing it with our Remembrance Day package that we recently created and put up on our site. Please take a look at it and help also teach this concept we need to have so many of our students learn.