This blog began in Room 52 at AMG Junior and Senior Public School in 2011.
This site has followed me to a few schools since then and now joined the roster of retired blogs in the social media universe. The journey and reflection will continue in different and exciting spaces.
Room 52 remains one of the most significant places of teaching and learning for me and grateful to the students and staff who supported me there. Thank you.
After looking at the introductory (or review) section of the textbook, and this great graphic from Pinterest, let's take a look at these two things. One of them is silly, the other not, but both of them are informative:
I am also thinking of how we can use the concepts of a translation, reflection, and rotation in a short Dance/Movement routine!
Pink Day
I was very impressed to see members of the Student Council visit Room 28 and engage them in some great discussions about issues related to Bullying, Transphobia, and Homophobia. I mentioned to them that I have taught in 5 schools and never seen a more proactive and involved Student Council.
Student Council discussion with our class
These were some awesome messages produced by our students to challenge the many forms of bullying we see everyday.
To summarize, because I am not writing a research report, Thomas Armstrong is interested in looking at the strengths of individuals who may have ADHD, be on the Autistic Spectrum or have other brain differences. This does not mean that brain differences, like all differences, can be challenging in different situations, but it the key idea is that there is strength in diversity.
I mentioned to the class about an old episode of Arthur where George meets Carl, who has Apbergers Syndrome which is on the Autistic spectrum.
This morning, I saw a link to a CBC documentary on David Teitel. I remember him, when he was a cashier at Noah's Health food store at Spadina and Bloor. He would often share interesting statistics and facts and I had no idea how he came up with them. At the time, I did not know that he would exemplify the idea of Neurodiversity before I had the faintest idea that I would be a teacher and embrace the different ways our brains function.
Math HW:
Review of select questions from the homework assigned last week:
Space information:
Saya brought this to my attention for the project. The link is below the image.
I am going to propose to Ms. Kramer that we view this film as part of the Toronto International Film Festival for Kids. It is beautiful, eye-opening and mind-stretching.
School Cash Online
In May, there will be a trip to the Ontario Science Centre. As part of the payment, this trip will be paid for using the school cash online system (http://www.tdsb.on.ca/aboutus/schoolcashonline.aspx). This is the direction all schools are moving towards in the TDSB. Ms. Kramer let me know that she will provide me with a handout/reminder paper of the steps involved in signing up for this payment system if you haven't already.
Neurodiversity
Today, we began a discussion on how we are alike and how we are different. Sometimes we forget that there can be diversity in how our brains work. I first wrote about this a week or so ago when I introduced the character of Julia, from Sesame Street. Here is a CBC news story:
We will continue this discussion. I think it is an important one.
TDSB Parent & Student survey:
This went home today for you to fill out. Please return it in the same envelope, when you are done.
The student survey will be completed in class over the next couple of days.
On this rainy day, we finally got around to doing one of the EQAO Reading questions. We voted to read the story on Marilyn Bell. Here are some shots of the students at work:
After, we took a look at samples of how some responses were scored and the feedback they received from the evaluators. Hopefully, this review over the next 6-7 weeks will familiarize the students with the type of thinking and work they will be doing on the assessment.
FYI, you will journey into the other quadrants next year, when they introduce the concept of Integers. Personally, I think you could do it now:
This will mark our journey into the strand of Geometry. The Homework, for the weekend, are on the following pages:
Health and Physical Education: Healthy Living
Human Development and Sexual Health
I realize that this topic can be a bit intimidating and uncomfortable for some students, but I would like to provide a safe and healthy place for the students in Room 28 to ask some questions about early adolescence and topics related to puberty.
To do so, I have generated a short, anonymous, homework question based on the two expectations we will be looking at in the Grade 6 Health curriculum.
Julia is a new character introduced on Sesame Street who has Autism. I very proud to say that a close family friend, Professor Rhonda McEwen helped in the consultation phase for this new character.
April is Autism Awareness Month. We have talked about what the Autism spectrum is and will continue to do so. One of the documentaries we will watch during the Hot Docs for Schools festival has to do with a world champion pinball player on the spectrum.
Science Work:
There were a group of students from Brampton who won second prize in a NASA contest about adapting to life in space. The Ames Research centre has an international contest every year and this group fo 17-year-olds did a 138 page project about "... a self-sustaining community in space, the future of humanity, where people are going to go after Earth."
Here are the two homework items from the "Tiandre and Josh" questions:
I posted this video a week or so ago. It was just after we worked with the coloured cubes to help us with our understanding of how mean can work and the idea of the IAS. Let us watch it again:
The Kyla Basketball question and answer has already been looked at. Here are the leveled answers, according to the EQAO scoring for this question. As we prepare for the upcoming assessment, you will learn more about this coding system. The codes are: 10, 20, 30, and 40. At the bottom of each of these pages, except for my answer, you can read some of the reasons for why the students got the scores they did.
My response:
Orrf
As I posted earlier, we spent some time planning for yesterday's class and I, and Ms. Bunston, were very pleased with the results.
Cereal Box Book Talks
I am working on taking some elements from a couple of Cereal Talk Book Talks and making one for our class. I will have this for you soon. In the meantime, here are a couple of images to illustrate some parts of the project:
Blogger has a limit on the size of files that I can upload. I will share one of the videos here and the others tomorrow. On Tuesday, before Orrf, we will spend some of the class practicing some music that we learned last week.
I am hoping, with some practice, even with close to half the class being at a Badminton tournament, that we will have improved on the sound in this video:
I am hoping we can work toward this:
Yes, I know I posted this last week, but it is pretty cool. Who is to say that this is not possible?
Homework:
Study Sheet on Ideal Average Sum due on Thursday, April 5 (final test)
It seems as though we have reached an interesting level of comfort with certain topics. Consider the following popular cafe in Toronto's Koreatown:
To my surprise, I was faced with this ad, from Saturday's newspaper and thought: I can use this as another illustration for the upcoming Media assignment!!
All of my markings point to items on the Success Criteria needed for your assignment.
When I showed this to my daughter, she told me about another product that is on the market. At that point, I realized that the topics of discussion and profit in North American culture have shifted:
