My colleague and I have had a number of discussions lately about student motivation, or more accurately, apparent lack thereof, when it comes to learning.  Increasingly, we are wondering if the teacher-driven system as currently set up is a considerable factor.

The topic is particularly relevant as I settle in to assess nearly 70 final assignments for a DI class I co-teach with a secondary colleague from my Board at Tyndale UCS.  The Karen Hume text we use for that course includes "student choice" as a key factor in its model for DI.

At first, I struggled with the notion that our current public education system would be labled as "teacher driven". 

I mean, aren't we all about being "student centred" these days?  Surely my classroom is not teacher directed... is it???  My colleague, however, pointed out to me that even when we work with students in small groups, and teach responsively to data collected from TLCP baselines and so on, we, the teachers, are still driving the what.  For example, he noted, the texts we select to read with students during guided reading, are still, well, teacher-selected.

We pondered what might happen if we allowed students to choose what they read, and when, and how.  Might it be possible that setting up our literacy block, for example, in such a way that it is totally student-driven (with of course some explicit teaching in Sept and Oct of various centres and possible activities to choose from), would encourage our students to become very focussed on material of interest, and therefore more engaged in learning, rather than the current reality in my class, where many students seem bored or disinterested in the reading, even when I think I have pulled out an engaging text to read with a small group?  And more importantly, might such a set-up enable us to meet more frequently and for longer periods of time with individual students, guiding them in their learning by providing descriptive feedback on a regular basis as they move through their own unique learning program?

Conceptually, such an approach both intrigues and frightens me, but already I am envisioning my revised "marks tracking sheet" -- instead of a class list, I have one page for each child, with sections for the reading, writing, oral language and media of the curriculum.  In my head, I am writing each student's entire language comment when I do report cards, instead of inputting all the reading marks, then the writing and so on for the whole class at once.

It could work...

Maybe the "unschooling" movement is not so negatively "alternative" as I had thought.  :-)  I look forward to exploring this more for next school year!

My Grade Threes heard about the playground burning down at High Park.  They wanted to do something to help, so they spent the week writing persuasive paragraphs convincing their peers to contribute loose change to the cause.

On Friday morning, we predicted how much, and then counted the collected money in the jar over the course of the week.

When I got home Friday night, I went online and made a donation for the total amount raised by my class.

This weekend, Trevor and I took the boys to High Park to check out the destruction first hand.  Although the toddler area was virtually untouched, the damage to the affected area was profound.  The once beautiful towers that rose high above the playground, and signalled its existance to all who drove down Parkside Drive, were completely burned to the ground.  The big slide was gone, too.  Police tape surrounded the area, and big red signs proclaimed “danger!” in loud letters.

(click photos to enlarge)

It was heartening to see many families with children, undeterred by the events of the past weekend, out at the park anyway, playing in the area that had been salvaged from the flames.

While at the park, we dropped in to see the High Park Zoo, and I was reminded that this gem, too, is in danger, thanks to some poor decisions made by our current "Mayor", Rob Ford.

Chatting with a volunteer who was out in the park doing some fundraising to help save the High Park Zoo, I discovered that one good thing about the terrible arson in the nearby playground was that attention had been quite focussed on High Park in general for the past week, and many people were rediscovering this Toronto landmark.  The small zoo, in dire need of funding to survive the city's budget cuts, has benefitted from the media spotlight of the past week.  As the community rallies to rebuild the playground, the nearby zoo has also gotten a little more attention, and will hopefully get the funding it needs to survive another year.

It seems that every cloud has its silver lining.

Should I floss my teeth, or fly an airplane?

Silly as this question might sound, the truth this, each day has only a limited number of hours, and it seems impossible to pack in all the things we “should” and want to do. 

Choices must be made.

I was thinking about this the other day, as I was driving the kids to German School, when it suddenly occurred to me that I had not flossed in a few days (any readers who are dentists, don’t panic, I have been brushing regularly!!)  Then I realised that I also hadn’t been monitoring my children to ensure that they had been brushing properly (I know they’re not flossing!!!), nor have I made Alex practise his pencil grip exercises from the OT, nor done German homework with him or Simon in the past two days, nor had them practise typing, nor made them tidy their desks, nor done my stretches, or written the next chapter of the book I am working on, or updated my prenatal course blog lately, or read the monograph of ESL and Math instruction I’ve been meaning to for the past 5 months, or… well, you get the general idea.

BUT… I have gone outside to ride bikes or play at the the park with my kids after dinner the past three nights, and I am learning to fly a plane, and I’m having my Grade 3 students create avatars of themselves so that they can use visuals and graphics and highly motivating technology to communicate their learning at school online, and I just finished writing an article for a national multiple births newsletter, and I rode my bike to work last week, and I brought home flowers for my partner and had lunch with a colleague and met one on one with 7 students during my Literacy Block in the past three days for a formal learning conference and had a nice long chat with my principal one night after school, and I even edited a ppt for another aviation website I am working on! 

And I wouldn’t want to give any of those things up to floss my teeth!

I've heard about bitstrips forever, and finally today got a chance to check it out with my students!  Each kid made an avatar, and we now have a complete class photo.  Soon we'll begin making comics to explore various subjects and get creative with different text forms.  But first, a little fun and experimentation....

A comprehensive package was distributed to and discussed with students, and graphic organizers were included to guide students in recording their research notes.  Intensive and extended 1:1 and small group support was offered to some students while others worked independently over the course of five days.

It never ceases to amaze me  how -- despite all these scaffolds -- such a wide range of end products is generated!

Having a comprehensive rating scale (see embedded document above) was helpful not only in evaluating students' work, but also in extricating specific feedback to provide students and their families some next steps for future projects.

As we prepare for April 11 “Day of Pink”,  events at our school, I have come across several significant resources.  Most recently, the following document from the Toronto District School Board, was sent to me by a friend from church, asking for my opinion: Challenging Homophobia and Heterosexism: A K-12 Curriculum Resource Guide.

In the wake of so many tragic bullying incidents and suicides amongst LGBTQ children and teens, school boards, governments, and various private and

Searching through  old photos to accompany a piece I am currently working on for a multiple births magazine I sometimes write for, I came across several photos from "the olden days", when we enlisted the help of so many neighbours, work colleagues, family and friends to help us survive the first few weeks/months with newborn twins. 

As you can see from the collection of photos below, it really does take a village to raise a chil, er, a set of twins, hehe!

The boys are almost 8 now, and it is nearly impossible to imagine a time when we could barely manage on our own -- so much "easier" are these days!!!

Click on any of the images below for enlarged versions of the photos with descriptive captions...

Flew out to St. Thomas, Ontario yesterday to visit my Great-Grandmother-in-Law, Vera Garrod!  90 years old, but still pretty sharp, she joined Trevor and the boys to drive over to meet us at the local airport for a picnic lunch.  (The good people at St Thomas Municipal were kind enough to give us a private room at the back of the building to set up our little lunch.)

See here for a few photos and more info about the flight.

How can anyone resist a sunshiny day like today?!  We spent the afternoon at a unique urban playground downtown, enjoying the warm temperatures... click on the first photo below for larger images, with descriptors:

Over two years ago, we sold our house in Toronto and moved into an apartment building.  This allowed us to buy a home in PEI.  This past winter, one of our neighbours down there sent me some photos of the house being built (before we bought it) -- it was remarkable to him, the whole modular home concept.

And neat for us to get some historical photos of our place!