As a part of our school SWISI program, we work on math skills during our assigned time. For this activity students will be scanning QR codes that align with the unit they are working on in math at the time.
In the dance craze research project for my Grade 7 Physical Education class there was a large component of collaboration. The students were put into small groups of either 3 or 4 and had to work together to complete the assignment. They needed to collaborate and make sure each individual was on board with the type of dance they were going to do and each do equal amount of work on the project. The collaboration was the largest part of this piece because of the amount to time students needed to discuss and work as a group to complete the assignment and present it to the class. They need some collaboration time outside of the class to practice in order to help teach their peers the steps to the dance as well. This group has a tough time with collaborating with one another, but this activity I would view as a success as most students and groups were able to work together and collectively to finish their project. Each group member completed a peer assessment on each group member to show if each member had done equal amount of work and was a contributing group member and helped the group succeed.
Flash Mob –
Collaboration was highlighted in my classroom when students undertook dancing and pop culture in the arts ed curriculum (This is a major focus at grade 5). Together with my intern, we decided to create something unique with the students that hadn’t previously been done in our school, and that the students could have ownership and pride in.
Science Background:
• Exothermic reaction
• A great demonstration to show how chemical energy is changed into heat energy. This can be used to illustrate how food is digested into a useable energy for the body.
• Chemical changes of materials
Materials: gummi bear candy, potassium chlorate, large test tube, ring stand, bunsen burner or other heat source, tongs
As an opportunity to bring technology into the classroom, I chose to take my students on a virtual field trip to the San Diego Zoo. It was a fun way to review some of the learning that we did in the fall. It also allowed me to introduce a new way of experiencing the zoo and a field trip to the students. We used several of the zoo’s live cameras, and actually observed the animals, and then used the videos and web pages to discuss mammals, amphibians, birds, arthropods, and reptiles. Students had a snack, and brought a stuffed animal that they used to share the type of animal, the interactions with humans, and the life cycle as well as the habitat and diet of their animal.
Upon completion of the Solids and Liquids unit in Grade 2 Science, students have been exposed to a wide variety of the properties of solids and liquids. In order to address higher levels of thinking, such as evaluation, synthesizing and creating, I used this performance task to allow my students to summarize, show and use what they had learned throughout the unit. This challenge allowed students to creatively build a boat, using common household materials. They then tested its capacity to float and carry a load, assessed its effectiveness and lastly revised and improved it.
Goals:
To create performance tasks that increase student engagement
To provide an opportunity for students to show what they know
To give students choice
To encourage students to Lead their Learning
My plan for my 21st century competency dealt with critical thinking and collaboration in
my Physical Education 9 class. The assignment I had students participate in was in designing a
game that involved offensive and defensive strategies. The students also had to brainstorm
game objectives, physical skills being used, teamwork skill, game rules, penalties, and scoring
system. Before we began developing our games, we looked at the evolution of sport. For
instance, we looked at how volleyball and badminton scoring systems have changes in the past
20 years. We also looked at sports like hockey and football and the rule changes from the early
days of the sport to what we see today. Finally, students developed a game and taught it to the
class. They thought about what worked well and what did not and adjusted their games
according to their findings.
My goal was to create a booklet of creativity challenges to use with Grade 1 to 3 students.
Based on the model of Destination Imagination, I planned challenges that were relevant to the
curricula we were studying at the time. All challenges were chosen from Entry Level activities. I also wanted to foster collaboration, so all challenges were planned with that in mind. My final
artifact is a collection of challenges that I have housed in a duotang. Contact me if you would
like more information. I have included a few sample challenges that were adapted from the
Destination Imagination books, as well as a list of all the activities I collected, at the end of this
document.
Differentiation is what we do to enable more students to meet outcomes. It is the way in which we respond to the learning differences our students have which means it is also an ongoing reflective process.
We gather data before, during and after instruction in order to choose the right tools in order to reach the needs of our learners. The teacher who plans instruction to accommodate the differences among student’s, designs or chooses the best pre-assessment tools. The results are then used to enhance the instruction and learning experiences on the journey.
Digital Passport is an interactive learning tool for grades three to five that teaches
and tests the basics of digital safety, etiquette, and citizenship. Students learn
foundational skills from online games and videos, while deepening their learning
through collaborative offline activities. Digital Passport has interactive games for
students, a comprehensive teacher dashboard that includes student reporting,
additional downloadable classroom materials and module guide. Digital Passport
consists of five topical modules: (1) Privacy, (2) Cyberbullying, (3) Communication,
(4) Creative Credit, and (5) Search.
*Digital Passport follow the policy guide for Digital Citizenship Education in
Saskatchewan Schools
Science Background:
• Liquids have characteristic properties based on the molecules they are made of.
• The properties of liquids depend on the attractions the molecules of the liquid have for each other and for other substances.
• Liquids can dissolve certain other liquids, depending on the attractions between the molecules of both liquids.
• Polar liquids, like water, dissolve other liquids which are polar or somewhat polar.
• Polar liquids, like water, do not dissolve nonpolar liquids like oil.
Materials: Water, Vegetable oil, Isopropyl rubbing alcohol, 70%, Corn syrup, 3 Clear plastic cups, 3 Small cups, 3 Popsicle sticks or stirrers
The Issue: How should the land around water systems be used?
Imagine you live in a town near a lake in Saskatchewan. For drinking water, the town uses
ground water from a local well. The ground water comes from an aquifer that sits below land
that is being developed for a feedlot.
Classification: DL6.2 Examine how humans organize understanding of the diversity of living things.
Characteristics and Behaviours: DL6.3 Analyze the characteristics and behaviours of vertebrates (i.e., mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish) and invertebrates.
Adaptations: DL6.4 Examine and describe structures and behaviours that help individual living organisms survive in their environments in the short term and species of living organisms adapt to their environments in the long term.
My artifact is an inquiry project for Doing the Right Thing in ELA 9. This artifact focuses on creativity as students are required to complete a project through creative media and work on an individual challenge or issue that is important to them. This project requires students to think critically and innovatively. The project consists of six phases that help break down the task of creating such a product.
Explicitly teach connotative and denotative language. (See notes & scanned advertisements, which are completed as a class – teacher directed - and handout, which is done in a small group and then corrected as a class). Students will then partner up, select an innocent everyday item, get it approved, and design a “safe” or “family friendly” advertisement for placement in an innocuous magazine such as Family Circle, Canadian Home Workshop, or Knitting World. Students then start thinking outside the box for what loaded language they can incorporate into their advertisement to appeal to readers’ humour and sell to a very different audience. These advertisements will be somewhat racier and more riské as they are designed to be placed in magazines such as Men’s Health, Cosmopolitan, and the like. I then encourage students to complete the ads using an appropriate computer program, but this isn’t a set requirement. Some students are very artistic and prefer to free hand their work.
Project:
You are a teenager with an amazing idea for a new documentary that you are sure everyone will want to see! You just know that if this documentary gets picked up you will hit the big time. In order for this documentary to hit the big screen, you first have to pitch it to a big time Executive Director, and convince him/her that this film is worth the money.
In this excerpt, Robert Ross, a 19-year-old Canadian officer during WWI, "faces the horrors of war and makes desperate decisions to protect the soldiers whose lives he holds in his hands."
The following resources includes literature examples for modules in grade 10 ELA.
The following are Saskatchewan's Core Learning Resources and curriculum's for grades 1-11.