In an attempt to get beyond the “Angry Birds” – type - app that my kids seem so drawn to, I recently perused the app store in search of something more, well, educational.  What I found was a sea of misleading garbage, some fun, and a few actually quite useful teaching apps.

Below I will share a short review of 3 math-related apps, that I hope to use both in my classroom, and at home with Alex and Simon:

The question of where to go presented a bit of a challenge.  We wanted to be someplace warm for the 8-10 months we will be gone.  LGBTQ-friendly was also a factor, and one which quickly eliminated many of my own personal "first choice" destinations.  Another language, but one which would be relatively accessible (at least superficially) was a consideration; an added benefit was my mother's insistence that I learn a few basic phrases of Spanish before heading out on high school band trips to Spain, Mexico and Costa Rica so many years ago.  Access to Alex and Simon's Dad was important; He and the boys'll want to connect in person every 6-8 weeks or so while we're "away"; it wouldn't do to be travelling for 21 hours across various time zones every two months...

Argentina seemed to fit the bill for many of these considerations.  The fact that it is so close to Antarctica and penguins is an added bonus for the more animal-enthusiastic travellers in our group (namely, Simon)!

Those who have been following my Smart Bansho blog will know that my colleague and I have been experimenting with a "new" way to teach math this year, using lessons on the Smart Board.  One thing I've been finding quite challenging personally is how to effectively capture the collective learning of the class at the end of a lesson.

Sometimes, we spend so long working on a problem or a challenge that there is little time at the end of the period to encapsulate all the little "a-ha" moments students have had throughout a learning activity.  The nice thing about having such a large IWB in my classroom is that I can show multiple solutions or approaches to a problem, and still have space left to record general observations from the collective.

Today we represented 3-digit numbers in as many ways as we could.  Some students used multiple base-ten block representations, while others used money to show the number.  A few also came up with some interesting analogies.

At the end of the lesson, after we had shared some students' solutions, I took a moment to record "What we learned" on the right hand side of the board, to summarize the learning.  I left the board up during lunch, so that students could reflect on and continue to discuss with peers their learning as they ate.  :-)

I used concept attainment -- one of my favourite instructional strategies -- to teach sentences today.

I had noticed that many of my students' writing included "sentences" that were either lacking a capital or punctuation at the beginning and end, or that simply did not make sense because they did not encapsulate complete thoughts.  So, using my fabulous new IWB, I put together a wee little concept attainment lesson, hid each example and tester until I touched it, and away we went (see screen shot to the left).

Ahhh, but there is never just a “wee little” lesson when it comes to concept attainment; that is why it is such a powerful strategy!!!

Just as we had compiled a list of probable criteria based on the examples, and were beginning the testers, one of my students raised a pertinent point...    You see, the students had noticed that all the examples on the left began with a capital letter, ended with a period, and “made sense”.  These were indeed the critical aspects of the concept of a “sentence” I had hoped they would notice, and we listed them as necessary criteria for being in the left column. (See handwritten list on the bottom left of the screenshot).

But then, then came the tester, “I like pizza”, and my little friend, who is usually quite unfocussed, but who was extremely engaged with our little “guess my rule game” (another advantage of concept attainment is that even the most challenging students are drawn in by the game-like characteristic of this strategy) noted that it goes on the right (correct!) because it is “not about school, and all the ones on the left are about school”  (OOPS!!!)

Yes, Ms. Teschow, that is what comes of not carefully constructing the data set and looking it over in advance to ensure it is demonstrative of the concepts you want to teach, and ONLY the concepts you want to teach!!!

Soooo.... I congratulated my little friend on her keen eye, and then quickly added another "yes" example (see black box on the left of the screenshot).  I noted that although the previously listed examples indeed all had something to do with school, this new one certainly belonged on the left as well, therefore, we need not add “school stuff” to the criteria list.  I then challenged her to explain why the pizza (black box on the right of the screen shot) did indeed NOT fit into the left column.

Happily, the student soon saw that in addition to not having anything to do with school, the pizza phrase was not a complete sentence, as it lacked a period.

The essence of “What makes a sentence?” was soon established, and students went off to write some sentences of their own, ensuring that each one began with a capital letter, ended with a period, and expressed a complete thought.

For those readers lucky enough to have a Smart Board in their classroom, please feel free to use the lesson below.  (It is in Smart Notebook 11 format.)

For my fellow Rush fans... a few shots from last week's concert in Toronto.  Although I did not have a decent camera on hand, the custodian at Trevor's school -- who was also at the concert -- did, and kindly shared these.

Thanks Chris Scott for sharing these visual reminders of an evening with Rush, 2012!

We're off to Toronto! 

As part of our "schema-building" plan for the year, my Grade 3 teaching partner and I have decided to take our students, many of whom rarely leave their local community, downtown Toronto.  Riding the public transit bus in Mississauga and then thesubway in Toronto will be a huge experience in itself, and once we get there, students will explore one part of the city "on their own" in a small group with two adults, including a teacher.

Although the trip itself is fairly cheap ($5 a kid to cover transit costs there and back for two systems), the planning has been monumental!  For a suburban school that rarely goes anywhere without an official school bus, convincing the powers that be that taking 45 eight-year-olds to downtown Toronto for the day is not only a great learning opportunity but also a SAFE and manageable task has been a rather time-consuming.  Nevertheless, all are now on board, and are quite excited about next week's trip.  Letters have been sent home, rain dates arranged, money collected, tickets bought, student sketch booklets prepared, and on and on and on... and all that while writing progress reports, which are due to the office next week!

If you are a teacher working in a school board outside a large urban centre, consider taking a trip like this -- it will doubtless be life-altering for some students!

(a little late for World Teacher's Day, but oh well!)

What would I be if I weren’t a teacher?  Since the time when I was in Kindergarten, I have wanted to be a teacher.  In fact, I was one of those kids who played “school” with whomever I could find to coerce into playing with me (sometimes that meant I was only in the company of my stuffed animals, who willingly played the roles of my “student”, sitting obligingly behind “desks” made from boxes collected at the nearby LCBO!!!)

As the years progressed, I sometimes toyed with the idea of becoming a writer (spurred on by a 6-year-long pen-pal relationship with Canadian children’s author, Gordon Korman!), or perhaps a child psychologist (I liked the look of "Vera C. Teschow, Child Pyschologist" on a little home-made sign I had designed for myself!), but Teacher never left the top three.

I have been a public educator now for well over a decade, and only rarely do I toy with the idea of doing anything else.  I have been a Resource Consultant and a Vice Principal with my Board, and have worked on projects with the Ministry of Ed, and even taught teachers at the university's faculty of education, but I always come back to the classroom.  Sometimes I fantasize about being a funeral director (my fascination with thanatology), or a manager at McDonalds (my desperate desire  to not “take work home” every night)… but the truth is, I love my job – at least, the actual teaching part of it – and as frustrating as the “system” can sometimes be, I don’t think I could feel as fulfilled as I do as a teacher, in any other field.