Author Archives: resourcefulresourceteacher

Are You Paying Attention?

Posted on March 31, 2014 by resourcefulresourceteacher

20140331-215824.jpgI had an interesting conversation with some boys today. I asked,”What leads to remembering and learning?”

The answer: attention
Attention is the key to remembering and learning.

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We began brainstorming things that can interrupt attention (in green) and then what we can do about it (in red). I was really excited at the insight shown by my students. I was even more excited when one of them asked if he could take a picture of our brainstorming whiteboard – yay! More discussion to come… we are going to focus on how to pay better attention when you feel uninterested or distracted.

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Sweet Sweet Kids

Posted on March 25, 2014 by resourcefulresourceteacher

Look what I found on my white board today. It made my day.

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Learning How to Format a Paper MLA Style

Posted on March 20, 2014 by resourcefulresourceteacher

My grade eight students are learning how to format a paper.  We just spent time reading a grade ten student’s paper and highlighting the in-text citations so that they could become familiar with “citing”.  Next they each got a non-fiction book about birds and read about hummingbirds (my favourite).  Each student had to come up with two facts about the hummingbird.  We compiled these facts into a few paragraphs which I typed out and shared on GOOGLE drive.  Tomorrow the boys will add their in-text citations to the hummingbird passage.

We are using MLA formatting.  I came up with these separate posters to show the students that they must choose which one is appropriate to use i.e. do they have a book with an author, a website with no author, etc. (Some citing is confusing to me, so if you find any mistakes, let me know 🙂

We will also use bibme.org to create a bibliography or works cited page and Purdue Online Writing Lab (OWL)
to format the “other stuff”.

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I Love It When a Plan Comes Together

Posted on March 5, 2014 by resourcefulresourceteacher

My grade 7 and 8 math students have been working on geometry, and specifically, angles. Today we had a building time to make learning more authentic. I found this great website with free plans. Using a plan for a preschool picnic table, we measured everything in centimetres instead of inches to make it miniature size. We used thin styrofoam strips, small nails from my husband’s model railway set, as well as his miniature hack saw. This was fun!
We started with this:

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Students really showed some hidden talents! Talents in leadership, cooperation, and building skills! Here are two finished products:

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Silent Reminders

Posted on March 3, 2014 by resourcefulresourceteacher

It’s more difficult to slowly phase out verbal prompts than non-verbal prompts. In other words, if you remind a child to do a task over and over, he may always wait for your reminder. Non-verbal prompts, reminders with no words, can be used to achieve changed behaviour and then can be phased out for more independent compliance.

This is what an educational assistant (EA) and I put together for just such silent reminders (this is worn on the wrist of the teacher and the EA):

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It does seem more logical to remind someone to stay quiet without talking yourself.

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Appy Friday

Posted on February 27, 2014 by resourcefulresourceteacher

This app is free right now (I subscribe to “Apps Gone Free” and “Appsfire” to try many apps when they come on sale):

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This looks like a great app for the early learners! It first requires the child to match letters in the alphabet, then put the letters in order, and then moves on to finding the missing letters. The activities can be done with upper or lowercase letters.

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Visit to Michigan

Posted on February 25, 2014 by resourcefulresourceteacher

I recently spent three days in Michigan touring schools that do inclusive education really well. Our group’s host was an organization called CLC. I went on the trip with 4 administrators. This trip was a blessing in many ways.
Watch this video from Zeeland Christian School, one of the schools we visited and the school where I did my special education placement (the teacher talking on the video was my supervising teacher):

<p><a href=”http://vimeo.com/53889669″>Stronger Together: Inclusive Education</a> from <a href=”http://vimeo.com/user5259396″>Zeeland Christian School</a> on <a href=”https://vimeo.com”>Vimeo</a>.</p>

I have felt inspired to try some of the things that I saw and reorganize and share!  The value of each child is valued here, regardless of his ability to complete the curriculum.

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Appy Friday

Posted on February 8, 2014 by resourcefulresourceteacher

Useful app this week: Intro to Cursive. It was free one day on Apps Gone Free so I tried it with a third grader and definitely recommend it for extra cursive practice at home or at school.

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Easy Folders to Make For Centres

Posted on January 31, 2014 by resourcefulresourceteacher

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I poke paperclips through for children to easily manipulate and attach cards. This folder is for telling time. A Level 1bag has o’clock and thirty digital cards to match with analogue clock pictures. Level 2 is :00, :15, :30, and :45. Level 3 includes any minutes and Level 4 includes things like “quarter to”. Level 5 will match cards that say things like 10 minutes after 3:35, dealing with elapsed time. I simply have students bring a finished folder to me when complete and I check it and tell them whether or not they can go to the next level.

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Multiplying and Dividing Decimals by 10, 100, 1000

Posted on January 21, 2014 by resourcefulresourceteacher

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Kinesthetic – we moved the decimal left and right and shifted the place value words as needed.

LOTS of practice reading the numbers made.  Take away the place value labels as students improve.

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Interactive Notebook – (the page before this has an envelope with the same number set and decimal as above chart.) This handout was given to students to fill in.

Practice was done in pairs.   Students were given a starting number, rolled the dice, and changed the number as indicated by the dice.  Review how and when to place a zero in the number.

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