Welcome to the St.James Assiniboia School Division!

This is a blog devoted to new teachers. Whether you are having a tough time with your students or want to share your successes in the classroom,have a question or want to share some reflections, talking with other teachers can be a great help, both professionally and personally. This blog will be the place for collaboration and sharing. We want to also encourage all of our readers to offer advice and share their own stories and experiences. Here we will blog about all things teaching and learning. WELCOME to our blog spot.


Showing posts with label Engagement in Learning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Engagement in Learning. Show all posts

Saturday, September 15, 2012

If our kids are not engaged, they are disengaged!

As a follow up to my last post, I will share some of the Web 2.0 tools that were introduced to me by Heidi Hayes Jacobs.  She suggests that in order to upgrade our teaching practices, we must use the contemporary tools that are currently readily available.

Gapminder - a place where statistics and world data come alive.



Museum BoxThis site provides the tools for you to build up an argument or description of an event, person or historical period by placing items in a virtual box. What items, for example, would you put in a box to describe your life; the life of a Victorian Servant or Roman soldier; or to show that slavery was wrong and unnecessary? You can display anything from a text file to a movie.

Timetoast - Timetoast allows people to create interactive timelines, which they can share anywhere on the web. Anyone can join Timetoast and start creating and sharing their own timelines, all they need is a valid email address. It's completely free!


Google Lit Trips - Google Lit Trips are free downloadable files that mark the journeys of characters from famous literature on the surface of Google Earth. At each location along the journey there are placemarks with pop-up windows containing a variety of resources including relevant media, thought provoking discussion starters, and links to supplementary information about “real world” references made in that particular portion of the story. The focus is on creating engaging and relevant literary experiences for students.

Wordle - Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.

These are just a few ideas to get you thinking about a possible "upgrade". 

When people are having fun, they will be engaged.

For a little inspiration....
Check out thefuntheory.com



Would you take the stairs?

Monday, March 19, 2012

I can't believe Spring is just around the corner.....

cc licensed ( BY SD ) 
flickr photo by timo_w2s: http://flickr.com/photos/timo_w2s/460045024/

I cannot believe how quickly the last few months have passed by.   I have been busy visiting classrooms and enjoying the opportunity to observe the work of our new teachers....what an amazing privilege!  

As we approach the well deserved break, I invite you to take some time to reflect on and think about a few questions & in turn, post some comments:

How can we improve student engagement in learning?

This may be a very ambiguous question to answer, but it is one of the most important issues to consider when working with our young people.  We need to think deeply about our students...the  21st century learner... and their individual learning needs.  We must examine and revisit traditional teaching pedagogy and upgrade our daily classroom practices with student engaging pedagogy.

So, what is student engaging pedagogy?  

How can we create classroom conditions that elevate learning opportunities for all students? 

Our work is sensitive and critical.  How we design learning for our students today, will affect them for the rest of their lives.   Not only is it important for students to learn today, but is equally -if not more - important for students to strengthen and develop the capacity to learn for all of their tomorrows.
cc licensed ( BY NC ND )
 flickr photo by Shopping Diva: http://flickr.com/photos/shoppingdiva/181269963/

I look forward to your hearing about your reflections ;-) Let's get the conversation started....