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.

AQ Inquiry

Last year I was able to take a fantastic AQ Certification through York University in Creating an Inquiry-based Learning Classroom. I loved the course and felt it blended beautifully with the work I was doing around Project-based Learning (PBL).

Several months ago I received an email from York University asking if I was interested in teaching the course. I jumped at the opportunity and started preparing.

The course is a blended course and utilizes Moodle and a face to face session. It has been incredible seeing the sharing and learning unfold in the moodle. Just as remarkable was the discussions that erupted at our in-class session at York.

 

GAFE Innovators Day 1

TCDSB been hosting Innovators series for the past several years. These workshops revolve around the NeXt lesson competencies and focus on creating a rich inquiry-based classroom.
This year the focus was on use of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) specifically Google Apps for Education (GAFE).
Attached is the GAFE slideshow used to for the presentation. The authors include Ben Di Millo, Anita Arpaia and myself.

Google & GAFE

Recently, I wrote my test to obtain my Google Education Certification. Inspired by my board recently becoming a Google board I have been actively researching the power of Google. Below is a small presentation I created to introduce others into the power of Google & Google Apps For Education (GAFE).

TCDSB Google Access

Here is a quick overview of Signing into Google & Google Classroom.
Enjoy!
For students and parents, please ensure all passwords are shared between student and parent. This account acts as a PROFESSIONAL account, not for personal use.
Throughout the year students will learn all about what it means to be a responsible Digital Citizen and become accountable for all their online interactions.

No More Isolation!!! Grade 6 Ontario Teachers Chat

I've been fortunate enough to have delivered workshops at some incredible conferences these past two weeks, but it is really good to be back home in the classroom. The trouble is I'm not ready for the learning to stop. Twitter and online articles are great, but I really want to open the dialogue and collaborate with others. I'm tired of working in isolation!!!
I work with great teachers in my school, but unfortunately, I'm the only grade 6 teacher and my brain turns a lot faster than my hands. I have some great ideas, but they never stop; EVER! Fortunately, I have wonderful girlfriend and friends who drag me away from work and force me to have a life outside of school.
Coming back from my tangent, I think it is important to live a balanced life and not try to do everything yourself. It is important to work with others, share ideas and resources. My latest project is to start a discussion for grade 6 teachers in Ontario. We all have a lot of great things happening in our classes and I think it is time we share them. The topic (possibly first of many) will revolve around best practices for EQAO preparation. Please take a few minutes to complete the below survey and participate in the chat.

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.

TCDSB EDCAMP

Saturday I had the great fortune of facilitating two sessions at the TCDSB EdCamp. As a group we discussed all the wonderful Web apps people were using. You can find the padlet we created as an artifact of your learning and discussions here.
Thank you for everyone who participated and contributed to the discussion. The best learning sometimes comes from the side conversations you have when you are ignoring the person at the front of the room presenting and that is where the genius of EdCamps come from. To find more about what EdCamps are please click here.

Flipped Class: Hosting Tools & Web 2.0

Flipping your class can be rewarding and innovative, but without the right tools it can fall apart quickly. Below is a presentation I delivered with Ms Vieira at a Flipped Literacy Workshop. These tools help make flipping content (found or created) easy. The resources all focus on the next steps after finding a quality video. They help deliver content and keep students accountable by adding questions, organizing information and other features used in making your flipped videos not notch.

For more information on flipping see my blog for other posts.

Diving into Flippin' Language

This is an updated Prezi of one I created for OAME last year. I've added new slides showing my new venture into flipping parts of my Language class.

Language Flipped Class (Hosting Web 2.0)

Big thanks goes out to Tanya Vieira for helping create this Prezi with me and presenting it at Day 1 of TCDSB's Flipped Literacy workshop.

Contained in the Prezi you will find a great overview of web 2.0 apps that aid in the creating and hosting of flipped videos. The philosophy behind flipping only begins with the video, but requires follow up and good teaching practices. With any luck the resources in this presentation will strength your videos and classroom practices.

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

Certified Class Dojo Mentor

I may not have a black belt in karate, but I am a mentor in Class Dojo. For those who may not know about this wonderful classroom management app/web 2.0 site, Class Dojo offers an engaging method to track student behaviour. Students are assigned a small avatar they can edit and teachers are provided a list of behaviours, both positive and negative, that they can use to track students behaviours. Students are awarded points based their actions in class. The behaviours are able to be fully modified to each classes need. An ongoing report is provided to parents that sign up for the free service. Also, teachers are able to message parents directly through the app/website.
My students start the year by defining the Learning Skills (Responsibility, Self-Regulation, Collaboration, Independent Work, etc), they then brainstorm what are positive and negative examples for each of these learning skills. Students and parents are able to keep track of their strengths and areas for improvement.
This is a fantastic website and I am proud to be considered a Dojo Mentor.

Here is a list of resources to help introduce it to your students and parent community.

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.

Flipped Lesson Math at OAME

This past week I had the fortune of presenting at the OAME with several great people. The Flipped Inquiry Team was a group of incredible teachers from around TCDSB that wanted to study the affects behind a flipped approach to learning. As part of this team I was able to play around with new ideas and challenge my own professional development. My class became a richer community and continued the shift to a more student centred class. My math lessons and teacher talk became delegated to a 5 minute video and class time opened up for students to play and explore with the math. Class questions are focused on taking ideas from theory to Real World problems.

It was a great honour to be able to talk at the OAME and present the ideas I had been playing with for the past several months.

Innovators Worshop

I was fortunate enough to be part of my boards (TCDSB) Innovators Workshop, because I'm such a big geek I was very honoured to be in a room full of great innovators in the board. The icing on the cake was that I was asked to give a small presentation on some of the Project-based Learning that I've done with my students.

Flipped Class

My new goal as of lately has been flipping my class.

Please find my Youtube channel here

For a great Introduction of Flipped Learning please see the Prezi attached

Winning the Coveted Holy Spirit Yellow Jersey!

This post is more for my principal who was disappointed when he saw I wasn't wearing the yellow jersey all day. The yellow jersey is given to a new teacher each month for their hard work in the school. We never do this job for the pay or recognition, but I guess flashy clothes should now be considered one of the perks of the job.

In truth this small note left on my desk from a student means a million times as much as the yellow jersey, but it is always a great feeling to be recognized by your peers. Yellow jersey today, formal teacher award tomorrow... at least in the next 10 years. hahaha

Education Resources -Collaboration

You are not ever alone in the 21st century. We work with others and you LEARN with others. The era where we have students working silently by themselves is over. It is a more critical skill to have students learning to collaborate and share ideas. They must identify and communicate goals, give constructive peer feedback and problem solve and work with different learning styles and personalities.

Some of the best tools for working with others are:

Google Drive

Prezi

Mural.ly

Evernote

21st Century Competencies

This past Friday I was able to swap classes with a friend and go back down to grade 2. My Grade 5 & 6s were treated too a much better art lesson than I could have ever done and I was able to share with the grade 2s one of my greatest life journeys.
I had the fortune to travel to Kenya several years ago and teach in a rural school in Pimbinet. The region had no running water, no electricity, but was home to the strongest community of people I've met. The people in the community showed my love, kindness and hope. The teaching in conditions, that at first seemed devastating and bleak, was revealed to be creative, hospitable and caring.
Below is a small video I had made a year ago to commemorate this experience and the 21st century competencies that can exist in even the most extreme places.