The heart of creative education.
One jar filled with water, the other filled with snow… which one will roll down faster?
Question: Does a bottle filled with water or snow roll down a hill faster?
Prediction? Take your time. Think about it. Ask your friends, ask your kids, ask your parents.
Make sure to get explanations from yourself and all the people you ask, not just guesses.
In Canadian schools textbooks are usually large, hard cover, with glossy paper, filled with beautiful pictures, drawings, many “interesting factoids”, spanning a large amount of information. With these gorgeous books, the publishers and authors think that the books are devoured by our students, and that the students read them everyday expanding their mind. I don’t think this is really the case. There are many disadvantages to these textbooks
Continue reading “Textbooks – what is their purpose in our classroom?”This “frog” is an excellent building/crafting activity for kids. It takes less than 15 minutes to build and will have your kids playing with it all day! (credit: Lubię majsterkować, by Adam Słodowy). The cool behaviour is due to inertia and the rolling of the ball inside of the contraption.
What I teach in the class is usually not mirrored perfectly by the diploma exams. The types of questions I ask on my tests are different from those posed on the provincial exam. The topics emphasized by me (due to my preference or what I think is more important content) are not always the ones emphasized in the examinations at the end of the year. Therefore, when teaching such a course, during the final part of the year, I spend time on preparing my students for the provincial tests.
Continue reading “Thinking about Diploma Exams – the dilemma of a teacher”
Are students really all that different “Now” than they were “Before”? It is a very common proclamation that young people now have no respect, no motivation, and no problem solving ability. But really, I heard this for a while now, including when I was in school. And I still hear it now. Is each generation getting worse and worse, or do we just have that perception, that our generation was better somehow, and the generation before us, even more?
Continue reading “Students of “Now” versus “Before””
