Miss M's Learning Space

As part of the Affiliate Federation Day (sponsored by OECTA) I had the privilege of attending the ' ICanyet Student Driven Student Portfolios ' workshop. The idea behind the workshop was to learn about the power of having a growth mindset in all subject areas and creating a student portfolio in order to monitor progress. The workshop was packed full of information and resources from Dan Montanaro (@mrm1mr), so I've selected my top 3 take-aways to share here. Student Driven Portfolios in Student-Led Conferences I've heard about student-led conferences before, but only briefly and not in great detail. The idea is that students take ownership of their work and behaviours in order to share with their parents in place of traditional parent-teacher interviews. Dan's method was having students save all of their work through the term in a portfolio and then curate the key pieces they think shows their growth as a student to share in a presentation to their parents. ...

This week I had the privilege of attending Brock University's Arts Matter Conference . The day was divided into 4 workshops and concluded with a performance, and I thought I would share some of the ideas with you here. Dance We began the day by exploring dance in the curriculum. I haven't done a lot of work with dance before so this was completely new to me. We talked about how miming isn't the same as dance and were introduced to Action Pak cards . These cards are a teacher resource designed to level the playing field in the realm of dance and make it accessible to all students - especially those who are uncomfortable because they don't 'know' dance.  Drama In drama we explored Story Drama and it was truly powerful. Basically, you read part of a book (we used Henry's Freedom Box ) and do activities at each pause to help you understand and connect with the book. We did a couple of Tableaus depicting various scenes and the most powerful activi...

During my down time this summer I decided to take a media literacy online module offered by Brock. I've distilled here some of the take-aways from this module. This video is a great introduction to what media literacy is . As a side note: Jennifer Thiessen has several videos diving into media literacy and it's influence on children on her youtube channel .  Key Concepts of Media Literacy :  Media are constructions Audiences negotiate meaning Media have commercial implications Media have social and political implications Each medium has a unique aesthetic form In addition to evaluating media's message, it's important for students to apply their critical thinking to evaluate the legitimacy of resources. For example, when choosing resources to inform their opinion they need to understand where the information is coming from (i.e. is the website trustworthy and founded?).  There are several ready-made lessons for direct-teaching critical evaluat...

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...