Reading Bees!!

 The Reading Bees Program has been a success. I’ve been working with 4 to 5 students in grade 2 on a regular basis with their reading comprehension and fluency. I have found the most helpful strategies to be chunking, recognizing blends and endings. Also, blocking really helps too! 2 out of the 5 students have increased their level of reading ability by 3 or more levels since November. Even though some of the other students haven’t increased in levelled reading they have more confidence in their reading ability. All in all I can say that it has been and continues to be a success!

A good example of the ambition of some of the students is when Raj (changed the name for privacy) makes immediate connections with the cover of a book and tells me an entire story about he and his family's  adventure when they encountered a similar situation as what he saw in the picture of the cover. I would get lots of details and good inferences about things that could happen if certain things were true. I mean it, Raj has a vast imagination. 

It's been quite a challenge and a pleasure to teach these particular students how to improve their reading.

Investigations and Expressions!

A learning experience blossomed when I spent the day at Bishop Strachan School (BSS) as a teacher on a Professional Development day which brought back many memories as I had once attended BSS in high school. I gained valuable insight to the Reggio Inspired Approach to teaching in the Junior School. Some of the things I picked up on were the idea of the Knowledge Building Circle, the Investigations which develop from the students, the open space concept, very organized space saving and utilizing ideas, the Big Ideas which are used as a thread throughout the curriculum, Earspelling, Integrating Inquiry Based Learning into the Curriculum, Evolving students' ideas, and Performance Based Assessment. The facilitators were excellent as they led the session through an Emergent Project, Tour of the Junior School, Question and Answer session, Panel discussion with current teachers, Review of a Study in a Grade 2 class followed by a reflection period for all of the participants. It was well managed and highly regarded as the new and emerging method of teaching and way of helping the students learn best.

Grade 2 Health and Social Studies- Celebrations!

Where the evermore prevalent theme in today's urban schools is "inclusiveness," I delivered an enlightening lesson about a variety of Celebrations and the Food at which is served and eaten at them to a grade 2 class this week. This was a good opportunity for everyone in the class to learn about other's traditions which are passed from generation to generation as well as to share their own traditions. I used a collaborative Think-Pair-Share strategy to encourage the students to share their celebrations and to talk about the food at which it is served. Then we disscussed the many Celebrations as a group while I recorded their ideas on Anchor Charts. With some help from previous lessons in Social Studies they knew about almost all of the Celebrations I would have liked to have covered except Kwanzaa. It was a successful lesson where I received positive feedback from the Principal.

Please contact me if you would like a copy of the activity which I tried to upload but due to the pics it wasn't possible. The following foods were highlighted:

                                 

Diwali:   Mithai                                               Halloween:   Pumpkin Pie

               Barfi                                                                      Candy

Kwanzaa:    Sweet Potato Pie                         Chinese New Year:  Dumplings

                    Benne Cake                                                                  Fish

Eid:   Savayya                                                 Birthdays:   Cake

          Chicken Tikka                                                           Ice Cream

Chanukah:  Latke                                            Weddings:   Feast

                   Beef Brisket                                                     Personal Tastes

Christmas:   Turkey

                     Eggnog

 Definitions:

Diwali – mithai (sweatmeals) laddoo (flour & sugar & coconut sweet in ball shape), barfi (condensed milk & sugar with fruit flavour like mango or coconut)

Kwanzaa – Sweet Potato Pie, Benne Cake (Sesame cookies), Southern Fried Okra

Eid – Savayya (breakfast of toasted fine vermicelli noodles), Dates, Chicken Tikka, baked masala fish

Chanukah -  Latke ( potato pancakes), Sufganiyot (jelly doughnuts), Beef Brisket (roast), Vegetable Kugel (vegetable caserol)

Christmas – Turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, eggnog, shortbread

Halloween – Pumpkin Pie, Candy

Chinese New Year – Dumplings, Fish, Prawns

Birthdays – Cake, ice cream, pizza

Weddings -  Feast, Personal Tastes (depending on person’s culture)

Merry Chirstmas

What a wonderful time of the year with all of the magic that the spirit of Christmas brings around young children!

In light of the tragic incident which occured at Sandy Hook Elementary School Newtown, Connecticut where 26 people were killed by a gunman; mostly children, teachers, and the principal, we keep our students in mind and we wish that will never happen again.

To all my followers, I wish you the joy and peace that the season brings to you now and throughout the year!

Happy Holidays!

Karen

Grade 2 Health Education

After delivering a lesson on Healthy Eating to a grade 2 class yesterday I am reflecting on how things went. I led a great discussion based on a great website for Health Lessons and more specifically Healty Eating for grade 2. I collaborated with the Grade 2 Teacher, Mr. Volk to create a booklet using the worksheets found on this link and followed the general outline of this lesson to have a great discussion. I encouraged the students to brainstorm ideas of types of food, times for meals/snacks, how they feel when they are feeling hungry and how this feeling changes after they have eaten, then concluded with 'why' we need to eat. I created anchor charts with the students and used the Powerpoint as visuals. Follow up lessons will lead into making healthy eating choices. Things went fairly smooth and the students were quite excited to participate.

Thank you to Mr. Volk for sharing the website with me. I highly recommend the website which I used because it is comprehensive and has great ideas for all levels of students with respect to Health Education!

Girls Launch Their Own High-Interest STEM Project -- into Space | Edutopia

Girls Launch Their Own High-Interest STEM Project -- into Space | Edutopia

This is a fantasitc example of the fact that "Girls Can Do Anything!" Quote from BSS

Techniques that affect student learning the most!

Frist of all I would like to thank Dr. Anne Davies for sending this interview discussion link to me!

Dr. John Hattie, Professor and Director of the Melbourne Education Research Institute at theUniversity of Melbourne, Australia speaks to introduce a panel discussion entitled Visible Learning after his book. What I found most helpful was the list of techniques that have the most effect on student learning. When you watch the video these techniques are on the slide show beside Dr. Hattie. The top of the list is Student Expectations! Teachers must set standards higher than what students think of for themselves to keep challenging them. Most students don't know how well they can achieve until they unleash their potential. This is what the teacher needs to tap into and he/she can do this by setting good expectations for the students. This will help the student learn to self teach. I also noted that in the top ten was Micro Teaching of which I first heard at Teacher's College at Brock University. Cathy Miyata taught Micro Teaching in our Language Teaching class as well it was taught in our Cohort - this was our first Teaching project when we were working in our practicum. You know you've received good up to date education when you see recent studies indicating a reflection of the things that you've learned. Other techniques among the top ten are: Response to intervention, providing formative evaluation, classroom discussion - Grand Discussions  and feedback! Part of my Professional development is continually learning and when I see a review of what I've already learned I take the time to reflect on how I've demonstrated my learning and I seek to continue to put it into practice.