Blogging in the age of Social Isolation

I am on day 8 of my 14-day self-isolation to ensure that I am not in contact with the COVID-19 virus.  I am usually one to think and reflect a lot but feel that someone else may have a better take on things than I do.

http://www.matthewrmorris.com/pedagogy/5-things-will-change-coronavirus/

I first met Matthew close to 10 years ago on a school trip to Camp Wahanowin.  He Teaches in the TDSB and is very wise and it would be a joy to Teach with someone like him.

I would've thought that I might have wanted to keep publishing on this blog, given I was so close to reaching the 1000-post milestone but I was feeling at a loss for thoughts.  No; perhaps not a lack of thought but a lack of energy. Since Google Classroom took over the landscape, the blog does not serve as the place for students to find information on the day's activities.  Actually, I don't even have students right now.

This role, as an SSTC, is supposed to extend until June but who knows when school will be called back.  I did not want the blog to serve as a sounding board of what I was doing in the schools I was supporting but I wanted it to have some relation to the Learning and Teaching happening in those spaces.  So, I think I have stumbled upon something, which is kind of odd, considering that no schooling is happening in the age of social isolation.

I thought I would share some of the images of the Learning taking place and how my role is supporting that.  I am scheduled to be back in the classroom for September and it is my intent to bring all that I have learned back to my classroom.  For now, I would like to share some of what I have observed.   

Round Table

This exercise was something I learned about from visiting Sean Henderson's class at Runnymede CI.  where the JETS approaching to Teaching and Learning was taking place.

Joy 

Empathy

Thinking

Strategies

Here were the expectations to the exercise, which unfolded over a series of days:

The text in question was an article on gender roles and the rigidity that exists for Boys and Girls (and conversely, Men and Women) to act and perform in a certain way.  The students were instructed on how to annotate the article -- along with another YouTube video associated with the article.

The idea of annotating is to have the students learn to read critically while making notes.

You can see the writing he was doing to record his thoughts,
 prior to the
class discussion.

Despite the writing, Students still think that the highlighter the only
 way to
 go, when notetaking

Students do not know how to do this on their own.  This skill needs to be taught and modeled for them and this they need to see, understand and practice.

The lesson saw the students interact with one another and a variety of IGTs (Informational Graphic Texts).  The Big Idea of the lessons were to see how gender ideas become "boxed" in.

Here are the student responses to the IGTs:

The Round Table part comes back when the students reconvene in a large circle to discuss the texts that were looked at.  Ms. Jimenez used this Reading, Oral Communication activity as a springboard into Writing exercises.  It is quite a versatile approach to looking at current events or issues a class may want to explore.  I imagine a Media Literacy activity could've been pulled out, as well.

 Mathematics:  annotations & fractions

On the same tip of annotating an article, word problems or Math questions can be annotated too.

While I do not have a photo of a student doing this, I have an example of a question I used to assist students with grappling the meaning of this problem:

This picture is not the best example of annotation.  It looks more like the question is solved, rather than the annotation of the question.  I think I had a better example and will see if I can find it and post it up.  As the Students learn to annotate a question, the emphasis is not on getting to the correct answer, but the process and sense-making of the question at hand.

Although this is from last year, I can use this to illustrate the explicit Teaching that should happen before students are expected to be able to annotate on their own.  After this, the Students would begin to work on an example on their own and be supported as they made their way to working independently.  Also, this is not explicitly an example from a Math class.  This was from a Health class.  

My other SSTC partner, Paula, and I realized that for students to have a deeper appreciation and understanding of particular Math concepts, they had to make sense of certain things.  Similar to the annotated image above, understanding the parts helps to make sense of the whole.  In fractions, we actually looked at parts and wholes.

Even though I cut off the photo, Vincent (Student) and I decided that the Hexagon could be divided into 3-thirds made up of 3 rhombi.  The question wanted us to order the fractions, so we did it by putting our shapes in order,

I am not going to explain the Student work, but we wanted the students to see the relationships among the shapes so the students could see the relationship between a whole and part, a cornerstone to understanding how fractions work.

After, we introduced Cuisenaire rods to see the relationships among the shapes.

These manipulatives are good for seeing how Improper fractions work compared to a Mixed fraction.

In this example, we had to order fractions and decided, that the brown one would represent 1 whole (1.0).

For both of these investigations, I really thought the class could use some more time consolidating this learning.  Often, a Teacher feels the pressure to move on to another topic before they have really understood the work they are currently immersed in.  So, I always believe that time should be taken, especially as we work through fractions.  Fractions involve Multiplicative Thinking and Proportional Reasoning, which I think can be taught in an effective manner if we use manipulatives and then ask students to articulate what they learned from working with manipulatives.

TDSB Creates & Fabulous Five Poets of Nelson Mandela

Last year, I had a colleague who did a wonderful job getting a duo of students to perform at the annual TDSB Creates presentation.  They put together a Spoken Word piece that I found so powerful.  When I was asked by the Grade 8 Teacher if I would work with a group of students, I jumped at this opportunity.

It is unfortunate that the festival has been canceled.  For the two months I worked with them, I learned so much and was amazed at how they found their voices in preparation for their wicked choral poem.  Thanks.

I do wish you all the best of your Health during these difficult trying times.  Reach out to others who may need help or ask for help, should you need it.  Consider this resource page on the TDSB website.

Be well.