A little family time down time today... the boys were eager to spend their $ at the New Glasgow Toy Factory, and I was eager to get some new jams at the jam factory across the road. 

On the way, we drove through the National Park and stopped in Stanhope -- a cold, windy day, but still a great beach adventure...

There were also several geocaches nearby, so we did a little of that, too (and even ran into some other geocachers on the road!)  Tats finally figured out how to use the stamp I had given her a few years ago, so we inaugurated that, too.

Since we had a little time to spare today, we finally decided to stop and check out the Great Canadian Soap Company, too.  Such fun! I highly recommend this delightful stop for anyone in the Rustico area!

As we had a little time to kill before the Ceilidh we were planning to attend later that evening, we stopped at Brackley Beach mid afternoon for some more wind-swept sand and sea.  Thank goodness we had some leftover treats from our morning visit to the Old Village Bakery in North Rustico to tie us over!

So, after two days straight of rain, the much-awaited campfire we had promised the boys for Sat night didn't work out so well.  The wood was soaking, as were the chairs surrounding the fire pit. 

Our alternate plan, however, worked out quite nicely:  Instead of a campfire, we roasted marshmallows over a burner on the stove, and sat down to watch and discuss the Michael Jackson: This is It documentary.

The best part of making s'mores on the stove is no mosquitoes, lol!

Like many others on their way into town the other day, we, too, were visually assaulted with a series of enormous, graphic posters lining the main street along the University.  The posters featured intentionally shocking images of aborted fetuses at various stages of development.

It seems that not everyone is as socially advanced in their thinking as those who organized the women's reproductive conference happening this week at UPEI.  "Abortion: The Unfinished Revolution", the first international reproductive justice conference, has brought together researchers from around the world to share ideas and information about the impact of women's right to choose whether and when to have children, and how to access the resources to parent those children effectively.  Charlottetown was chosen deliberately; the location is the capital city of Canada's only province that still puts up barriers for women who choose not to continue an unwanted pregnancy.  This lack of access to safe abortion care results in many women suffering failed abortions not unlike the self-mutilations performed with coat hangers in the 1960's and 70's.

Lack of safe abortion care can have greater societal impacts as well; in communities where women find themselves in unwanted pregnancy situations with lack of access to adequate resources,  an increase in child hunger and poverty in general is often the result.  Compelling evidence also exists to suggest a correlation between abortion and reduced crime rates.  While few would argue that terminating a pregnancy is a preferred birth control method, and most agree that abortion is a difficult and gut wrenching choice regardless of the situation, it's clear that it is a necessary choice for some.

Not everyone agrees that this conference is a good thing, however... "Show the Truth", an anti-choice group from Canada and the US, brought members to line the streets and hand out graphic brochures to children and others in the community in an attempt to "shock-educate". It's been causing quite a stir, even among the more traditional, "pro life" Islanders, who are somewhat less than thrilled with their 8-year-olds being handed a flyer depicting an allegedly 10-week-old aborted fetus, and the local paper has been abuzz with stories about both sides. 

(Interestingly, there were no signs or brochures showing pictures of women bleeding out after a failed abortion among the large posters lining the highway into town.  Children living in poverty were also not shown.  And images of domestic abuse were missing, too.  Funny, that.)

Right to Life PEI's spokesperson -- while supportive of Show the Truth's right to share their views -- was quick to point out that RTL had not invited them to the island, and was not made aware that they would be distributing the disturbing images to children (according to an article in the local paper here on Thursday, STT protesters had been going door-to-door handing out their pamphlets, and asking kids to "give them to your mom"!)

The anti-choice argument goes something like this:  "By supporting a woman's 'right to choose', we are supporting murder." 

Not only are these folks completely ignoring co-relevant statistics, but it's as though these people think that women choosing to terminate a pregnancy by default simultaneously want to "kill" their unborn children (assuming one defines an embryo or fetus as "child" or as being "alive".)  Yet even my 10-year-old son can articulate that the necessity of one choice does not automatically imply that the other outcome or inevitable "side effect" is desired.  In the overwhelming majority of cases, it's not!

"Neither side is good, Mom", noted Alex (my son), and went on to lament that there was currently no way to have simultaneous choice for women and ability for baby (he defines the cluster of growing cells inside a uterus to be a "baby" as soon as it is known about) to live. 

"I wish there was a way that the baby could survive by living in an incubator until it could be adopted", he said to me in the car on the way home yesterday, agreeing that not all women who find themselves in an unwanted pregnancy situation have jobs or life circumstances that allow them the luxury of carrying that unwanted pregnancy to term until the baby can be adopted out.

Ironically, while the conference's protesters are carting graphic posters of aborted fetuses about the province, thousands of volunteers and paid employees toil daily at women's shelters, food banks and with other social service agencies across our fine country, attempting to mitigate the mess that transpires when children are born to women who lack the power or the resources to adequately care for them.

In an ideal world, where women and men are valued equally, and where individual members of society come together to raise up our children in a meaningful, practical, hands-on, cooperative manner, there wouldn't be a need for a woman to make such an awful choice, ever. 

But we don't live in such a world.  We live in the REAL world, where rather than helping fight injustice for those already living in this often miserable world, protesters instead wave giant, one-sided, graphic images in the faces of those passing by, and intimidating already-traumatized women trying to make the best choice they can in an already-horrific personal situation.

In such a world, you're darned right women should have ready access to safe abortion and non-judgmental reproductive care. 

And the choice of whether or not to avail herself of such services belongs solely to the woman. Case closed.

Finally managed to swing by the berry patch we drive past each day on our way to Ch'town but have not yet stopped at.  Raspberries were in season, and at about $2.50 a box, offered a temptation we couldn't pass up. 

Within minutes, the boys and I were in the berry field, and half an hour later, we had about 300 fresh raspberries and at least as many mosquito bites!

We also picked up a sac of potatoes and a bag of green beans from the same farm, then headed home to eat our fresh produce for dinner.

Yet another reason to love PEI!

We're plugged in, that's for sure!

For a variety of reasons (not the least of which being the sheer incompetence of Ma Bell), we made the decision a few years ago to no longer have wifi at the house in PEI.  This means that instead of screen sucking for many hours of the day during our precious time off each summer, we're instead forced to read, spend time at the beach, play board games and just hang out in the  great outdoors. 


It's fabulous, mostly, but I will confess that we get a bit antsy after several days offline.   To feed our addictions, we spend a few hours every now and again at Beanz, a most excellent fair-trade cafe in downtown Charlottetown, which also offers free wifi.

In addition to enjoying the most scrumptious home-made squares and reasonably healthy lunch choices while there, we spend time updating our apps, watching professional videos for school, surfing the net, blogging, and skyping with Alex and Simon's Dad. This week while the boys were at an Arts camp in town, I even got to spend several days in succession online, attending a week-long math series for teachers.

Overall, I'd say I'm pretty satisfied with my internet-free summer home situation.  But only because of the free internet that is available -- along with the Island's tastiest peanut butter and chocolate squares -- nearby!

One of the resources that lives in the Assessment, Evaluation and Reporting (AER) section of the EduGains website is a collection of videos on questioning.  Following the work of several teachers Primary to Secondary, this video series offers an insight into developing, asking and assessing responses to a variety of different types of questions.  The importance of planning questions in advance and anticipating possible student misconceptions are highlighted, as is the importance of wait time.

Unlike some of the other "big picture", jargon-sprinkled videos on the site, the section on questioning is actually quite practical, offering very specific tools for developing effective questions at different grade levels and in different subject areas.  An example of a what an open-ended teacher-class discussion, based on a student response, might look like is also included, as is a viewing guide featuring self assessment and teacher question development templates.

I loved how these videos began with teachers using questioning ineffectively, and then walked viewers through their growth, disseminated with "behind the scenes" commentary.

Each video is 10 or fewer minutes in length, providing just enough of a snippet for a viewing session to discuss with colleagues, and each video snippet builds on the preceding one, although they can certainly be used in isolation as well. 

The later videos incorporate the more subtle "layering" of instructional strategies.  For example, one of my favourite structures to integrate into questioning is "think-pair-share", i.e. "Think about this for a moment... now turn and talk to someone nearby..." before sharing out loud with the class.  This is modeled with considerable effectiveness in the 5th video in the series, "Engaging Students in the Conversation".

Another organizer that works well on top of wait time with questioning is randomly calling on students, rather than asking them to raise their hands (pulling popsicle sticks with students' names on them out of a can is a great way to increase accountability: you never know when your name will come up!)  The "no hands" strategy is also modeled in the 5th video.

What I really appreciated is the diversity and authenticity of this video series.  Questions/concerns are openly addressed, and the classrooms represented reflect the classrooms I teach in every day in Ontario.

The Questioning video series is a good one, I think, offering useful professional learning for those with access to the internet who may want to pursue their own PD, and providing sound samples for staff developers looking for real-life examples to use in workshop facilitation.

One of the reasons I love being a member of PEIFA is that I get to read the world's most unique emails... here's one you don't see everyday; this was forwarded by our our president:

To celebrate the 150th anniversary of the Charlottetown conference, a "celebration zone" has been set up down near Peake's Wharf in town.  Yesterday after Art Camp, we decided to check it out!

While there we saw a busker performance; he was from Buenos Aires of all places!!!

We also happened across an ENORMOUS cruise ship that happened to be docked at the pier.  It was the first time the boys had seen such a big boat, and we had an interesting schema-building opportunity about life on a cruise ship.

This morning, I attended the first session in a four-day, online learning series on Proportional Reasoning.  During the session, we watched a video, which I want to share, because I believe it provides an excellent model of how to effectively debrief group work and honour a range of student thinking, while guiding learning and assessing fairly.

It's a Ministry video, produced in a combined Grade 6/7 class.  Several groups debrief their solutions to a problem involving proportional reasoning (curriculum connections here).  I struggled with the first few, because the solutions produced "incorrect" responses...  Why is the teacher spending so much time on the wrong answer, I wondered?! 

But then the teacher's brilliance shines through:

The teacher reserves judgement on the first two groups' responses, and asks the other students to consider the solutions.  He then asks two other groups to come up to the board to share their responses.  Now the term "doubling" arises from one of the students, and the teacher invites the student to "tell us more about that". 

From here, students are given an opportunity to consider this new bit of information.  Both dogs (in the problem) grow 3 kg.  But the second dog doubles its weight, while the first dog just gets 3 kg bigger.

Once the students have a chance to chat about this, the teacher -- rather than confirming which solutions are "correct" -- has students independently complete an exit ticket telling what they think.  In this way, the teacher is able to ascertain what individual students know and understand about proportional reasoning, and more specifically, multiplicative thinking/doubling.  But not until they've all had the chance to benefit from the collective learning of the class. 

Brilliant!