Family Math Night

Last night I was fortunate enough to give my first keynote address to a group of over 200 parents and at a Family Math Night at St Gregory's. The staff and parents were amazing and really passionate about exploring Play-based Learning. The presentation is below and really focuses on how we need to highlight students natural curiousity and making learning tangible for students.
I argue games are a rich starting point that helps students develop a growth mindset around their learning. Students play games and are more likely to take risks, try different strategies and make strong connections to the work. Games must be supported with higher order and meta cognitive questions if we want our students to consolidate their learning. Without these questions games can be great activities, but the learning doesn't last if students are not able to communicate and process their learning.
Take a look see the power of what Play-Based Learning really means.

Prodigy Math

Prodigy Math has long been a favourite in my class. Today I had the great fortune of being asked to present at St Jerome. I worked with several teachers in the morning training them on Prodigy and then working with their students getting them on and playing prodigy.
Below is a slideshow used to walk teachers through the essentials and best practices for Prodigy Math.

OAME 2015 Play-Based Learning in the Junior Classroom (GBL+Bloom's=BloomingLearners)

A goal of mine this past year has been to incorporate a sense of play in learning. We start each unit in mathematics with playing a game to engage prior knowledge, eliminate anxiety and have students experiment with the math. Many people advocate for games in the classroom, but in my research I was very disappointed with how little emphasis is placed on bringing in questions to outwardly communicate the learning. To make the learning tangible and comprehensive I believe students need to engage in higher order and metacognitive questions. In this method students make their learn real and form stronger connections to the concepts. 

Please find attached a symbaloo(website bookmarking tool) full of great resources for the math class.

Power of Lego in Math Class

I came across the infograph below some time ago and was extremely excited with the idea of using lego in the math class. Today I discovered the latest in my lego quest, Build with Chrome is a great tool that allows you to build with a variety of lego pieces online. 

Infographic taken from WeareTeachers

Minecraft Math

All my students are addicted to Minecraft, so why not use their passion to engage them and in one of the most tedious mathematical concepts. Teaching students to create various solids is a fun activity to help them understand Volume & Surface Area.

Build a culture of learners & wrong answers become exciting opportunities. Love seeing how excited Ss get with given a meaningful challenge
— Mr Butler (@jdbutler13) February 11, 2015

This year a goal of mine has been to fight students anxiety around mathematics. I wanted to create a safe environment where children enjoy math and taking risks. We've played games, made strong connections to real world examples and had fun. One of the most eye opening moments came a few weeks ago, when students were working on a difficult problem, but instead of being defeated the students were excited about going back and trying out different strategies to get the correct answer. This solidified everything we had been working towards this year.

Coding

Coding is the latest craze to sweep education. The applications are immense: the logical thinking, problem solving skills, reasoning, abstracting thinking are all so important in learning to code.
For this years Hour of Code, students were able to choose from a variety of options including tablet games, desktop and even offline options. I was able to help organize classes from grade 2 up to grade 8 to successfully participate in the hour of code. It was really rewarding seeing all the options students were given and how nicely activities were scaffolded.
One additional surprise was seeing how some of my more quiet, less tech-friendly girls took to coding. They really enjoyed trying different things and seeing how each little addition to their line of code and such a big impact to the program.
For more coding sites, click here.

Physical Fitness & Health in 21st Century

Physical fitness and healthy living are HUGE areas of importance today. Obesity numbers are at its highest points and for the first time ever children have a shorter life expectancy than their parents. If our goal is to prepare our students to better responsible adults then we need to teach them to make healthy responsible choices. Daily Physical Activity is an important part of our classroom practices. For years I have been using the Just Dance videos on Youtube and playing them for the kids to watch and dance along too.
Recently, I discovered this fantastic website that contains 100s on activities for students to watch and guide them through activities. GoNoodle gamifies your DPA lessons and measures your activities. Categories include: Dancing, Yoga, Sports, Math, Games and more. Try it yourself and see your students enjoy living a healthy lifestyle. Best of all it is all free!

STEM Challenges

Challenges inspire students to think creatively and reflect on their strategies. Having students build the tallest tower out of spaghetti and marshmallows or the most buoyant raft out of 10 sheets of paper allow students think critically. They need to make a plan, test out their ideas and revise their work.
We are constantly pleading with students to double check their work. Rich challenges sparks students interest and help motivate them to work better. Students are able to apply a theory to real world examples. Students can be hands on and get immediate feedback if they are successful or still require help.
I am a huge believer that we are not teaching students to memorize mindless facts or preparing the for the weekly test. We are inspiring students to be live long learners, researchers, problem solvers, critiquers of knowledge, skeptics, innovators, critical thinkers, team players, presenters and individuals that disrupt the status quo (Be the Change). If students can walk away from my class understanding the learning skills and the Four C's (Communication, Collaboration, Critical Thinking & Creativity). The result of a test will not matter in 10 years, but the ability to collaborate well, gather information (not memorize a worksheet) and critically respond to information will help students for the rest of their life.

Below are some resources to support challenges in the class:

Curiosity Machine

10 Team Building Critical Thinking Questions

DIY.org

Engineering in Elementary

Instructables

Beginning Teachers Conference: Assisted Technology

This past weekend I was asked by OECTA to present at the Beginning Teachers Conference. I presented on Assisted Technology(AT) as a tool for EVERYONE! AT helps students find their entry point no matter the where they are coming from and what they bring with them. Technology is a great vehicle that can help students find their voice (see video) and deliver their message, but it is just a tool. I've shown hundreds of tools and resources, but it is no substitute for good teaching practises.

The message I tried to get across was centred around differentiation. Differentiation of strategies and differentiation of tools. We cannot look at one tool and expect it to solve all our problems, in the same way we cannot look at a student and think one label (special needs identification) sums them up. For information and resources from my presentation please see the below links.

*Presentation                                         *Links                                            *Handout

Web 2.0 Session at #TCDSB21C EdCamp

This past weekend marked TCDSBs first Ed Camp. It was an incredible success. The #TCDSB21C EdCamp brought together a large amount of teachers all working together to better prepare students for the future. The passion by everyone in the room was inspiring. Everyone was feeding off one another and was motivated to learn from each other.
I was very fortunate to facilitate a discussion on Web 2.0 tools with my good friend Mario Stamegna. The energy in the room was fantastic as we all shared our favourite Web apps. we created a online survey through Kahoot and polled the crowd to discover a common interest. After we quickly gave a few of our favourite sites we opened the discussion up. Great discussions were had and everyone including myself, hopefully went home with several new websites to use with their class.

Making Math Fun!!!

Math is one of the scariest subjects for most students, they sit their scared to answer incase they are wrong. Students spent more time focused on dwelling in their errors or trying to play catch up than engaged and learning. I was one of these students, but now as a teacher math is by far my favourite subject to teach.
Game based learning has taken the fear out of math and allows students to work without being intimidated. These sites provide a creative, fun and non intimidating setting for students to learn AND THEY ARE ALL FREE!!!

XtraMath is a great website that helps students practise and learn basic computations. It also provides teachers/students reports each week on your child's progress.

 MangaHigh is another fun site that has hundreds of games that follows the Ontario Curriculum. Teachers can set challenges based curriculum expectations and track students progress.

Prodigy is a great website that is similar to mangahigh, but the students have challenges (still set by the teacher) all in the same role playing game (RPG). As your students answer questions they earn points to buy materials such as costumes and accessories for their character.