Miss M's Learning Space

As part of our class for teaching dance, we explored the opportunity for a cross-curricular connection between language and dance. The activity we did, specifically, was targeted towards grade 6 students and there is a video of our interpretation of this activity below. Language  This activity involves creating a dance in response to a poem. The poem we used was Christine Jackson's Departures , and it was read aloud while students perform the dance with soft music that adds to the mood of the poem. This connects to the curriculum expectation reading 1.6: extend understanding of text /ideas by connecting, comparing and contrasting the ideas in them to their own knowledge, experience, and insights , to familiar texts and to the world around them. It requires students to interpret the poem's themes and represent them in a different way.  Dance This activity connects to the dance curriculum expectation A1.2 use dance as a language to interpret and depict central ...

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...

Screen Time - Part 1 NPR (2015). Screen Time - Part 1 [Online Image]. Retrieved from: http://n.pr/1KbeEb Podcasts are a wonderful source of media for teaching students about oral communication (specifically listening) since there are podcasts covering almost every topic under the sun, and they're typically more interesting than a book being read aloud since they're designed to be consumed orally. The specific podcast I chose to discuss today is one by the radio station NPR (National Public Radio) that brings together several TED talks of similar topics. This one, screen time - part 1, talks about how advances in technology are changing not only how we communicate but who we are. The language can be challenging at times and the topics fairly advanced, but it may be what's necessary to spark interest in students and push them to more advanced listening and thinking. Before, and During, the Podcast I would prepare students for a podcast by asking them to mak...

MsJordanReads (ND). Roll-A-Story [Online Resource]. Retrieved from: http://bit.ly/206TZAA This unit is based on the activity I found on Classroom Freebies Too which led me to Teachers Pay Teachers . The activity is called 'Roll-A-Story' and it's an excellent starting point to create a series of lessons that will help students develop their writing skills. Depending on how the activity is framed it can be useful for many grade levels. The resource itself is recommended for grade 1-4, but in this post I'm going to be going over a way it can be used in grade 7, or late grade 6. To the right is the actual Roll-a-Story handout; students roll a dice 3 times in order to get a random character, setting, and problem. This puts advanced students in a position where they must think creatively in order to combine those three elements logically. My suggestion, is to use this resource as a starting point to help students come up with an idea before spending at least a coupl...

I found an excellent resource on EduGAINS called Critical Literacy: Is Reading Dangerous?  It goes through a sample lesson for teaching critical literacy of a poem, but I'm going to outline how it could be applied to the reading of persuasive articles.  The idea of the lesson plan is to discuss how reading could be ‘dangerous’ and includes strategies for differentiated instruction, small group and large group activities, a rubric, and curriculum connections. Activity Outline The majority of the lesson plan would apply directly to the critical literacy of a persuasive article with a few minor exceptions. For example, the lesson plan begins with critical learning, and curriculum expectations (see below) which would remain as they are for a persuasive article.  Literacy Gains: Transforming Instructional Practice Supports – Grade 7 language (N.D.) Retrieved from: http://bit.ly/1LSvhua Minds On Literacy Gains: Transforming Instructional Pra...

The following is an idea adapted from several resources around the web. The first is   Media-Visual Literacy and Presidential Politics   by Frank Baker  from Middle Web on using campaign images as a way of studying images (a component of media literacy), and the second is this article from the Ontario government about incorporating writing with filming skits. The Ontario government article is very general, and the article from MiddleWeb is the basis for the content in the activity listed below. Both are excellent resources and would provide a new and exciting approach to language arts; particularly for writing. The following idea is intended to be a multi-lesson series since the activities will take time (in particular the filming portion). Part 1: Media Studies Media-Visual Literacy and Presidential Politics  is  written for American students so it would require some adaptations, but I think the idea is still very much applicable to Canadian politics as...