Remembrance Day Freebie

I think that Remembrance Day is one of the most important topics we have the opportunity to talk to our students about. 

So much of our life is possible because of the sacrifices of the past.

So much needs to be remembered so that the past will not be repeated.

Every year I dedicate a big chunk of time talking about the sacrifices made by the soldiers in our armed forces, the meaning of the poppy, reading picture books and watching videos. I want my students to understand how much they have to be thankful for because of those who dedicated their life to serving our country.

In the past my students have written letters to veterans thanking them for their service and have spent time talking with members of the armed forces to learn more about their careers.

To help with the reflections I want my students to participate in I have create a few worksheets/printables that can be used in any class for a variety of settings. 

Click on the image above to go to my TPT store and grab a copy. 

As we read through the publications sent to us by Veteran's Affairs my students took the time to create a thought page of all the words, ideas and questions that came to mind as they read. Each time we watched a video or read a picture book over the past few days they added more ideas to their thought page.

On Monday and Tuesday (Remembrance Day here in Canada) I will have my students complete a reflection that explains why they wear a poppy and a recipe for peace. I'm hoping that they are able to grasp the complex nature of this topic and understand the importance of giving thanks to our service men and women.

Looking to the future I am hoping that once again my class will be interested in writing letters to the veterans in order to fully express their thanks.

I'd love for you to head over to my TPT store and grab a copy if you think it would be useful in your class. 

Day of Pink- Let's Unite Against Bullying

April 9th is International Day of Pink. As educators we deal with bullying everyday. We see it. We discuss it. We know it's happening. And yet, it's not stopping.

What is the Day of Pink?

April 9th marks the International Day of Pink. It is a day where communities across the country, and across the world, can unite in celebrating diversity and raising awareness to stop homophobic, transphobic & all forms of bullying. 

The International Day of Pink was started in Nova Scotia when 2 straight high school students saw a gay student wearing a pink shirt being bullied. The 2 students intervened, but wanted to do more to prevent homophobic & transphobic bulling. They decided to purchase pink shirts, and a few days later got everyone at school to arrive  wearing pink, standing in solidarity. The result was that an entire school stopped homophobic & transphobic bullying. 

The message was clear: anyone can bully, any can be victimized by bullying, but together we can stop it.

Each year on the second Wednesday of April, millions of people wear pink to remember that positive actions make a difference. And that the change starts with each one of us. 

~ from DayofPink.org

This April 9th my school board will be participating in the Day of Pink as a day to promote awareness of bullying and to raise awareness against homophobic and transphobic bullying specifically. We have participated in the past years but again this year we are specifically talking about homophobic and transphobic bullying. 

I am so proud.

Regardless of your beliefs and faith, I hope that you too believe that no child deserves to be bullied for who they are. The Day of Pink is a way we can all come together to keep our children safe. 

Take some time on April 9th to talk to your students, your children, your co-workers, everyone you know about bullying and how it hurts. Let's keep our children safe. Talk about this!! It's scary and unfamiliar, yes....but losing even one child to bullying is scarier.

My school has pledged to wear PINK on April 9th.  Anything to show that you care for the children who deal with bullying everyday.

Last year I talked about this with my class and we had an open and serious discussion about how bullying hurts, specifically homophobic and transphobic   Together we are going to pledge to stop bullying and accept everyone for who they are.

If you would like to take a pledge along with us then click on the image below to pick up the pledge/reflection form I created for my class.

The font used is Mr. and Mrs. Popsicle from Kevin and Amanda fonts. 

Our Day of Pink

Here are some the activities my class participated in for Day of Pink!

Brainstorming how we can stand up to bullying!

Creating a class mural.

We also read a number of books:

The Sissy Duckling by Harvey Fierstein

Pink by Lynne Rickards

The Great Big Book of Families by Mary Hoffman

I also showed this clip of a flashmob that was put together for Day of Pink.

Finally, this video by Artists Against Bullying- True Colours.

I hope you had a chance to share, talk, create, and read about this important day.

Hands of Kindness for Newtown

I really wanted to take a moment and discuss the sad news from Friday with my class this morning but also wanted to do it in an age appropriate way for my Grade 3's. Here's what I came up with...

My students had some questions about the tragic events of Newtown, CN this morning when school started but some of them had not even heard of it happening. We discussed it very briefly. 

I first asked them what they already knew as I didn't want to go into any kind of unnecessary details. Naturally some of them very upset by the events and seemed a little shaken. 

To transition them into a more positive mode I read the book "Whoever You Are" by Mem Fox (love that book!). We talked about the author's message (gotta get a little curriculum in where you can) and they were bang on. I felt very proud.

I talked a little about how the events from Friday made the world feel a little less kind to some people and that many people felt very sad by the events. I explained that I thought we could help by putting more kindness back into the world and paying very close attention to our words and actions. Then we brainstormed as many words that had to do with kindness as possible. 

Look at this impressive list!

And then we made a craft I decided to call Hand of Kindness. I first saw this idea on Pinterest (of course) and adapted it for this important activity.

Here's a look at how some of them turned out...pretty powerful, I think.

I am so proud of my students today and the touching memorial they created for the students, teachers and families of Newton. 

Glow and Grow

Jen over at Runde's Room has done it again!!! I originally posted about a self/peer/teacher formative assessment strategy that I learned at a workshop here, but today Jen took the idea and RAN away with it. Right into the land of fabulousness!!

Head over to Runde's Room to check out her anchor charts and 2 column reflection sheet. I LOVE IT ALL!! I am totally going to be "stealing" all these great ideas and using them to beef up my own student's use of the Glow and Grow strategy...I even have the perfect assessment piece! The Money Passports my students have been creating during the money stations I posted earlier today for the Bunny Hop Freebie.

What a great day it has been!

Math Talk and Two New Strategies to Try!!

I've had a goal this year to incorporate a lot of math talk and journaling into my math lessons. I want my students to have the opportunity to talk about their thinking and learn from their peers.

We have been studying multiplication for quite a bit now and my students have a really good handle on it...so when we started division I was a little shocked at how many of them seemed to struggle with the concept. It turned that a lot of them had memorized their multiplication facts but didn't really understand the concepts behind the multiplication and therefore couldn't apply it to their division problems.

Using a simple problem from the text book that required the students to use division we worked through a step-by-step process and took the time to have the students do a "gallery walk" through the room in order to see each other's strategies for solving the problem. Since it was a multi-step problem we were able to do two gallery walks!

I love using the gallery walk in my math class for a variety of reasons:
#1- it validates all the students work without having to post incorrect response in front of the entire class
#2 - students are able to see different ways of solving the same problem
#3 - students are able to see that other people are using the same strategy as them and it gives them more confidence.

After our gallery walks I had the students "collect" two different strategies than the one they used and copy them onto their own page, this way they would have a collection of ways to solve a division problem. Of course, we also made an anchor chart!!

It seemed to really help and I think my students had a better understanding of division.....but of course, being a teacher we need to assess it right? Even if it is just a formative assessment!

So, today I tried a new strategy I learned yesterday at my workshop on Culturally Responsive Practices. It's called a Talking Picture. The ideas is that it helps students who may not be comfortable expressing their ideas in writing or in conversation, instead they can show their understanding in a picture. I put up a very simple prompt.."What is division?" and then briefly discussed the strategy with my students. I told them that they could use words, pictures, symbols, numbers, colours, speech bubble...basically anything they wanted to show their answer to the prompt. Here's what some of them look like!

This an example of the original student work.

This shows where I have used orange marker to highlight where the student is glowing- this is similar to a strategy like "Stars and Wishes". You highlight where the student has demonstrated their understanding by using a colour or a symbol that indicates glowing. 

Then, to assess or indicate where a student had some mistakes or misconceptions I used a green marker to show that they needed to grow. 

Glow and Grow!! It's a great way to quickly do formative assessments of your student's understanding!

Both the "Talking Picture" strategy and the "Glow and Grow" were ideas I picked up at the Culturally Responsive Practices workshop and something I can see myself using again and again! I think "Talking Pictures" will make for a great diagnostic task for my next math unit on MONEY!!

How would you use these strategies...or have you already? I'd love to hear about it.

Culturally Responsive Practices

I spent the day today in a workshop for mentor leaders in my school board discussing culturally responsive practices. It was very interesting and informative...I think I will be reflecting on my own teaching practice for quite awhile after today.

The first thing that we did was have an icebreaker type activity called "Who's in the room?" You can do this by either having people physically stand up to indicate their inclusion in a group or answer a question. For example, we stood up if we taught in the K-8 panel. We stood up if we were currently mentoring a new teacher. We stood up if we had been mentored by Bruce Wellman. It was very interesting because you could see who you had things in common with and who you might be interested in networking with to learn more.

The second activity we did was similar except that we used clickers to indicate our answers. In this case we were able to answer more sensitive question anonymously. Each participant had a clicker and we used it to answer yes or no to questions based on culture, gender, religion, etc without being singled out. Then we could discuss the responses based on a graph that was displayed of the results. (If you've ever played the trivia style game that is in some restaurants/pubs then you should know what I mean by clickers.) It was interesting to see the results of questions like-
"Have you ever been the target of racial graffiti in the workplace?"
"Have you ever felt unable to voice your opinion because of your gender?"
"Have you ever felt that someone was hired based on their gender/ethnicity/culture/religion?"

Everyone was able to "participate" in the discussion completely anonymously! And it made for some intriguing results....

I would love to get some of these clickers for my school! It would be a great way to see the pulse of your students...how many are understanding a concept? It would enable to quieter students an outlet to "participate" in class without speaking in front of a large group. You can also type in response numerically or with letters. The possibilities are endless.

Once we had completed these two ice breakers we moved onto the nitty gritty of the day's agenda. The overall idea of the workshop was that we need to be aware of who we are culturally and our own beliefs and values so that we can confront and prejudices we might hold. Only then can we be open to creating a culturally responsive teaching practice. It's an important step to creating an inclusive learning environment.

Cross-Curricular


We spent some time talking about how we can use culturally responsive practices in a cross-curricular way. One suggestion was made in regards to the types of word problems or story problems that are used in math class.

This is a Grade 4 example:

Instead of...


If you wake up at 7:30 a.m., and it takes you 10 minutes to eat your breakfast, 5 minutes to brush your teeth, 25 minutes to wash and get dressed, 5 minutes to get your backpack ready, and 20 minutes to get to school, will you be at school by 9:00 a.m.? (Taken from the Ontario curriculum document for Math)

Try...

Think about your morning schedule. What time do you wake up? What routines do you follow in the morning as you get ready for school? How long does it take you to do each of the tasks? How does your morning routine compare to the morning routine of a child in a developing country?


The same math expectations are addressed in both problems...elapsed time...but the second question also looks at the math through a cultural lens. And, it's not that hard to do!

I am very interested to try this in my own class. I do recognize that a question such as this would require some pre-teaching or schema development. It may be necessary to research the morning routine of a child in a developing country...but what a great opportunity for a rich discussion based on such a simple math expectation! As a Grade 4 teacher, I could also ask students in compare their morning routine to the morning routine of a child in the middle ages and it not only integrates culture but social studies as well!

Assessment


The next topic of discussion was based around assessment and the work of Anne Davies. We discussed her ideas around the triangulation of assessment- observation, conversation, and products. Essentially these three ideas form the basis of your assessment practices, a triangle with the student in the centre. We brainstormed all the types of assessment we currently use in our classrooms and then placed them where we thought they best fit on the triangle. I was very proud of myself to see that my assessment practices have moved from largely product-based to a lot more observation and conversation. I think I have developed more confidence in my own abilities to assess my students that I don't always need to see a written product in order to give my students a grade!

When we are using conversations and observations it is still very important to have a checklist or a set of criteria based on the curriculum. In this way we can still differentiate our instruction/assessment, we can be inclusive and culturally responsive!

One very interesting strategy I learned that I am going to try out in my class tomorrow (and then tell YOU all about it!!) is Talking Pictures. Ask your students to draw a picture illustrating what they know about a topic. I am going to ask them to draw what they know about division. I am then going to assess their drawings using "Glow/Grow". If the student has demonstrated an understanding based on the question/topic you have posted then you use a symbol (smiley face, check mark, plus sign) that indicates that the student is glowing in this area. Any place that shows the students still needs to work or has some misconceptions you use a symbol (minus sign, question mark) where the student needs to grow.

Resources


Here are some books and resources that were also discussed today at the workshop:

Math That Matter by Davide Stocker

Maria the Remarkable by Tara Langlois & Patti McIntosh


The Guide to Effective Literacy Instruction- Volume 7, Media

Good Questions- Great Ways to Differentiate Math Instruction