Miss M's Learning Space

As a class, we were asked to find a truly innovative lesson plan to critique. While we all found wonderful lesson plans, they weren't necessarily that innovative. Innovation describes something that hasn't been done before. The lesson plan I found was about exploring what it means to be Canadian through metaphor was interesting, but not necessarily innovative. The idea is from Inquiry PACs and uses the following poem as a launch point. Does anyone know any really innovative lessons they can share?

The most obvious benefit to teaching financial literacy directly is that dealing with money is something students are going to do for the rest of their lives, and is typically one of the most stressful parts of one’s life. Learning about budgeting is such an essential skill. But, beyond the benefits to the student themselves, it’s also beneficial to society as a whole. People who are knowledgeable with money will typically carry less debt, and the economic crash of 2008 was largely the result of people buying houses they couldn’t really afford and driving house prices artificially upwards. Ideally, if students learn how to create an accurate, livable budget, then they won’t overspend and get deep into debt . The following EDUGains videos about financial literacy in Ontario elementary schools and acting out distribution of wealth through drama outline different aspects of financial literacy as well as ideas for incorporating it into your classroom. Some ideas I thought were really

I thought I knew a lot about FNMI history and beliefs, but now I realize how wrong I was. As I’ve learned more about the first peoples of Canada I have grown a profound respect and admiration of them. It wasn’t until I read the “ Exploring the Ethical Standard for the Teaching Profession through Anishinaabe Art ” resource that I truly realized my lack of knowledge. The piece of art for the ethical standard of care has a drastically different meaning then the one I interpreted. My interpretation was that we need to care for all people (referring to the elderly people on the sides), but in reality those people are caring for the story that is being conveyed by the teacher in the middle. Before that, I didn’t realize the importance of the story, and I knew about the oral history traditions but never applied that knowledge. This resource is phenomenal, and definitely worth a look since it provides a FNMI perspective on the teaching profession. The Ethical Standard of Care. Artis

This demo, from Bill Nye the Science Guy, would make an awesome introduction to the grade 8 water systems unit. The purpose of this demonstration is to explain thermohaline circulation. Thermohaline circulation is a factor that affects the circulation of water in the oceans (it is explained in more detail in the scientific explanation section). The idea behind this experiment is not simply to teach students what thermohaline currents are, but rather to build a foundation of water system knowledge so when students move into the inquiry stage of the class they can understand the effects of global warming on ocean currents and what that means for other ocean systems as well as earth systems. When explaining what the experiment represents, it’s important to include the impact this phenomena has on other earth systems. For example, scientists have speculated that the current slow down of thermohaline circulation could lead to a a dampening of the warming being experienced in No

Kid’s Help Phone is a relatively well known hotline that offers immediate support to children and teens experiencing a crisis or who simply need guidance and support. Their website explains that the hot line is 24/7, and the counselors on the other end of the line will not tell you what to do, but rather will provide the caller with information in order to help them make their own decision. Any calls made are anonymous, and the language used on the site to encourage people to call if they need to is kid-friendly and non-threatening. However, the Kid’s Help Phone website offers a lot more than just the phone number for their help line. In addition to their live chat feature, they have an ‘ info booth ’ tab which contains information on a wide range of topics including, but not limited to: LGBTQ issues, bullying, emotional health, violence and abuse, friendships, family issues, physical health, FNMI issues, and even have a whole section devoted to sexting . The pages contain a wide ra

As part of our social studies class, we created a lesson that integrated social studies, drama, and language arts and attempted to teach children about different perspectives involved in historical events. We chose the residential schools and framed the lesson as if Martians had moved to earth, and each student was given a character to play (whether it was a Martian or an Earthling) as well as a situation they had to resolve and present dramatically. I will explain further in a later post, but the results of the lesson on my peers at Brock was fantastic. Walker, Amanda (2016).  Before I get into detail about what happened during the run-through, tough, I need to discuss some of the challenges of creating this lesson. For starters, it took us a while to come up with an idea that really hit home the concept we were trying to get at. We started by facilitating a privilege walk where every student moved forward/backward based on their profile, but we decided it wasn't pointed en

During my placement, my associate and I attempted an inquiry project that completely failed. The intention was for students to do research on a person they found inspiring, and then share the biography with the class. Then, each student would try to find connections between their inspiring person and other people’s. For example, one person did research on Malala Yousafzi who was heavily influenced by Gandhi, and someone else in the class was researching Gandhi so they would (in theory) discuss why they think Gandhi had an impact or how Gandhi had an impact. However, it was exceptionally challenging to facilitate. Each student was working at a different pace, and several would make statements like ‘no one has ever inspired me’. In addition, several would look up a few facts and then be done for the day and play on their devices (which was hard to police considering the general chaos in the room). As a result, I never felt like I could facilitate all the unique learning challenges, whet

If you had asked me yesterday whether I thought an inter-disciplinary system was a good idea I would’ve agreed with you, but now I see why it’s such a good idea. The comment “ comprehension is comprehension whether it’s in science or literacy ” really resonated with me, and made me think back to how I struggled finding meaningful content for my grade 7s when I was teaching language arts during my placement. I had the Nelson Literacy set which is a wonderful resource, but all the articles were examined in isolation. There was no connection between the articles and the student’s own life. I think if I’d approached it through the lens of integrating multiple curriculums it might have been more engaging for students. I also think the idea of having a large project that is worked on in multiple classes is a great idea since here’d be no gaps between stages of learning and students would learn more explicitly how to carry skills across various subject areas. Currently, when students take a