Learning Skills and Work Habits journal, Math, Health/Media Literacy

Learning Skills and Work Habits

This reflective bit of writing is intended to get the students thinking about how they learn and what they may need to do to improve or set the bar higher for themselves.

As usual, I model this exercise with a short example:

The assignment is posted on Google Classroom.

Over the last few years, I have come to see these skills as being just as, if not more, important than the grades students will receive on their report cards this term.  A number of years ago, I listened to author Paul Tough talk about "non-cognitive" skills that we often see in this Learning Skills section:

Mathematics:

A review of Prime and Composite numbers will accompany an upcoming test on the Order of Operations.

https://www.pinterest.ca/pin/288652657344942753/

There are a few games I came across while doing some research, that we will try out to review before the test.

Media Literacy & Health:

All of the students had some opportunities to look through some wrappers and packaging of food and snack items that have been collected over the past couple of months.  While it is not a well-balanced collection of food items, our aim was to check out some of the nutrition labels; the long-term purpose of this exercise involves developing an awareness of what we put in our bodies.

We will continue to dissect these labels some more, but here are a few shots of the worksheets (I was out of the classroom at the time).

This was my initial sample for the class to mirror.

Not the best photo (lighting sucks), but each student became more familiar with some of the content on the nutrition labels.  On the Google Classroom site for this assignment, I posted a couple of Youtube videos providing some details on the labels.

It is not even Halloween yet, and I took my serving portion of these tasty snacks.  Not a lot of nutrition happening in these cookies.  Perhaps I will need to pay closer attention to the topic of the magazine in this photo if I keep snacking on these items!

 In our Media Literacy class, we will take a look at the CBC Marketplace program on food labels and how they can be misleading.  There will be a short, in-class set of questions to accompany this viewing.