As a K-5 international educator it’s not often that we’re discussing ways to promote safe spaces for LGBTQ members of the community. It’s almost as though it’s a taboo subject for elementary educators and you only start to see Rainbow flags appearing when students enter middle school. Where does the teaching of Diverse Family Structures…
Is it ever ‘too soon’ to take the training wheels off? “Change Tomorrow Today” is the 2017 title for our Grade 5 Exhibition at UWCSEA. But I’ve been wondering…how might teachers use this mantra in our own pedagogy? Can we change TODAY to better prepare students for TOMORROW? Although I’ve been teaching for ten years, this was my first…
Field Trip to Santi Rama School for the Deaf UOI: How We Express Ourselves CI: People can create and manipulate messages to target specific audiences. To introduce ourselves to students at Santi Rama School for the Deaf…Grade 4s prepared an ASL version of Owl City’s “Fireflies”! The purpose of this trip was to build a…
Planning for the Grade 8s In the first week of school, Mr. Brian invited our grade fours to be clients for his Grade 8 DT project: Kite Building. We were thrilled to have an opportunity to collaborate with Grade 8s! Last week students had a chance to design their ‘dream kite’! For homework, students explored…
Student Reflections & Sharing This week students finished their 1000s project and presented their findings with the class.Everyone completed a rubric & a group reflection(see below) on their project that explained the thinking behind their maths and also the challenges they faced throughout. Students then gave their first presentation to the class, and had classes…
Today we started a 3-day project called the 1000s Project… The project has been modified from the resource book by Julie Pier Brodie called “Constructing Ideas about Large Numbers” by Creative Publications. We started the lesson by watching a keynote presentation that prompted students to ask questions about the images they saw: Some comments they…
Last two weeks of school…enjoying reading and preparing for Grade 6! As our Grade 5 students prepare to exit the PYP and enter the MYP, we are focusing more on narrative books and literary devices. The last few weeks of school are often the most difficult for students to feel motivated…teachers as well! To…
We are partway through our mini visual learning project (for EAL students) to support learning in the homeroom classrooms. Grade 5 students are currently learning about Migration in our UOI “Where we are in Place & Time”. During EAL pull-out time (40 mins each day) we’ve been revisiting vocabulary and concepts on this theme. iPads…
Today during my Grade 5 EAL class, I decided to trial a new (free!) online visible thinking tool called ‘Mural.ly‘. Its claim is that it is ‘Google Docs for Visual People‘, which couldn’t better define myself or my EAL learners. Using Mural.ly with Beginner EAL students: Tuning-in to UOI vocabulary Students are able to upload…
We’ve now had a week’s buffer to think and reflect on our Grade 5 Exhibition How the World Works. What a journey it was! It seems miles away now that students and teachers have had a week’s holiday to ‘decompress’ from the long but rewarding journey! Some Challenges in review… This was definitely a challenging…
Innovative Learning in the Elementary Classroom 