Recent Changes

Gallery Walk
Walk around and look at everyone else's work, add stuff you think might be missing.
Word Wall
Write definitions on papers, post them on the wall - decorate and learn all at the same time!
Fold the Line
Line up in varying degrees of agreement, have opposites debate!
Consolidation
Ticket out the Door

Fermi Problems
Great way to present a problem, reinforces that the answer is not as important as the process and the concepts.
Mind Maps
Good tool for starting a new unit, or reviewing content
Brainstorming
Oldie, but a goodie!
POE
Predict, observe, explain -> awesome for sciences
Problem based learning
better known as: figure it out on your own! Let the students explore, trial and error, with minor guidance.
Debates
Good way to involve the class, research a topic, defend your position.
Placemats
Somewhat structured brainstorming
Gallery Walk
Walk around and look at everyone else's work, add stuff you think might be missing.
Consolidation
Ticket out the Door
Start - Stop - Continue
I used this one as a variation on the ticket out the door and really liked the results as well, keeping it anonymous let some students present honest opinions. It was also a good way to fish for some compliments! ;)
Thumbs Up - Thumbs down
quick gauge of class comfort level with topics, somewhat anonymous if done quickly.
Clickers
Quick and anonymous - and fun for the kids. Also incorporates technology
Smiley comfort level
Quick ticket out the door, the simplicity of an image might encourage a student to say they are not comfortable as opposed to putting that into words.
thisisatablespacerthisisatablesdd
Note to self: tables are not easy to manipulate here...

Think-Pair-Share
Used this guy all the time! it was really good, you can toss into anything. Sometimes the keeners get flustered because they want to share their stuff with the class right away, but they live.
Jigsaw
Split students into expert groups to learn one topic, then form new groups (one student from each of the first groups) to teach to their peers what they just learned. good for covering material rapidly or review.
Student as Coach
Have one student coach another student through solving a question - not solve it for them, encourage and guide.
Students signing off on work
Increases accountability!
Fermi Problems
Great way to present a problem, reinforces that the answer is not as important as the process and the concepts.
Consolidation
Ticket out the Door
I used this one as a variation on the ticket out the door and really liked the results as well, keeping it anonymous let some students present honest opinions. It was also a good way to fish for some compliments! ;)
thisisatablespacerthisisatablesdd
Note to self: tables are not easy to manipulate here...

Technology
Clickers - I think these are a great way to get some quick feedback, either as a pre-assessment or consolidation
PiratePolls - Similar to clickers, this is a great way to get some quick feedback, more suitable for a computer lab situation or a laptop school. Alternatively if all of hte students have cellphones this could be a cool way to use them in class!
http://www.polleverywhere.com/
Surveys - Also good for gathering information, these can be set up ahead of time and done at the student's leisure.
http://www.surveymonkey.com/
Pirate Pad - be feasible.
http://piratepad.net/front-page/
Wikis - I think I would definitely use these, or something similar - Moodle would be wonderful and has similar functionality available.
Blogs - Again, I like the theory, and hope to be able to use Moodle or something similar with this functionality built in.
Jing - Will definitely use this, good little tool, could be used either to give instruction, or encourage students to use it to put together quick presentations.
Camtasia - A good software equivalent to Jing without internet requirements - licensing isn't free though.
Moodle - we still haven't' covered this in any courses, but I attended a workshop with the DDSB about it and really thought it had a lot of potential as a learning tool.
Virtual Manipulatives - as great as manipulatives are in the classroom, their virtual counterparts are also very useful! these come in a wide variety of flavours as well, from flash sites/applications to making up some custom ones to use on the smart board
TinkerPlots - Good tool for studying data, could be time consuming to set up. resources also available online.
Spreadsheets - Pretty much a standard tool these days, but great for data management. Microsoft Excel is great, but since OpenOffice is free some school boards are going in that direction, might be worth brushing up on.
Geometer's Sketchpad - Good tool with lots of resources available online.
SmartIdeas - Concept mapping software, seems really cool - durham board has a license.
CmapTools - Free concept mapping tool - maybe too clunky for the younger grades at least. Could easily be used to prepare one before a class though, good export to image/webpage options.
Smart Boards - I think these are absolutely wonderful, not only do they have great potential for learing and a lot of useful tools, but the students love them and are automatically engaged when one is being used and doubly so if you let them use it!
Graphing Calculators - I still like them!

This was another lesson that I was observed while teaching. It went quite well, we saved the quiz for the end of the lesson this time, although the lesson included a review of all previously covered shapes. Although a piece of paper may seem cheap on the manipulative scale, it worked well, they all cut it up, came up with some good solutions. Again, the smart board was a good way to review and eventually develop a formula.
The rest of my lessons taught on placement were Language ones.
Sample Lessons -> some more great lessons to check out!
High School
Sample Lessons -> we have a really good start here, I won't recopy it all out.

Frayer Model
I really liked using this strategy to introduce a topic, some tips for future use however, add in some review terms or something so that there are more topics - I only had 3 and the groups were too large to manage. The review Terminology can also be useful if you have a weaker group, giving them the easier terms can help boost their confidence.
searchSearch for math inMath
Have the students search the newspaper
didn't for math stuff. didn't try this
Think-Pair-Share
Used this guy all the time! it was really good, you can toss into anything. Sometimes the keeners get flustered because they want to share their stuff with the class right away, but they live.

Frayer Model
I really liked using this strategy to introduce a topic, some tips for future use however, add in some review terms or something so that there are more topics - I only had 3 and the groups were too large to manage. The review Terminology can also be useful if you have a weaker group, giving them the easier terms can help boost their confidence.
search for math in the newspaper
didn't try this one out, seemed like it could be neat though
Think-Pair-Share
Used this guy all the time! it was really good, you can toss into anything. Sometimes the keeners get flustered because they want to share their stuff with the class right away, but they live.
Consolidation
Ticket out the Door

Grade 7
Data Management
first placement - I only posted a few lesson plans, but have them to go along with all of the other topics.
How to make a pie chart
{7pHowToMakeAPieChart.docx} {Chart example.ods} {How to Make a Pie Chart.notebook}
In this lesson I was able to improve vastly on the results of my minds-on activity. The first time I presented it as a simple situation (you have a million dollars, invest in A or B?), subsequent times I added background info (Guess what guys, I won the lotto last night, big time! Since I like you all so much, I'll give you each a million dollars, on one condition, invest it in A or B.) - this really got them hooked, added enthusiasm, humour and all that really helped!
Unit Review
This lesson was fun - review the basics, then spend some time on whatever the class feels they need clarification on.
Unit Test
Writing my first Unit test - Some lessons were learned. I made it much too big. I made the last question too hard. I'm too easy of a marker as well. In one question I had them find the median of an even number of results. A good chunk of the students "forgot" one term for this question. I only penalized them very lightly, my AT said he would have assumed they dropped the term on purpose because they didn't know how to handle that situation.
Area and Perimeter of squares and Rectangles
AreaThe next few lessons were lots of fun since they progressed so naturally and built on the previous one each time. This first one should have been review. I was surprized here how many of the students don't bother to think about what they're doing. They tried to just remember the formula and apply it. These are pretty simple equations, there's no need to memorize, just think about it!
Area and Perimeter of parralleograms
Areaparallelograms
We also did quizzes along the way on a daily basis starting at this point en lieu of a mid-unit test. More lessons to be learned! instructions must be specific to the point of absurdity at this level. Still managed to make them too long as well. I wanted them to calculate the area and perimeter of Triangleone square, 2 rectangles. the next class was able to just pick one - the other 2 were challenge questions. The lesson itself I thought went well, until the quiz the next day. A good chunk of the students couldn't distinguish between Length, Width, Base and Height. from this point I asked them to clearly label on the shapes where they were pulling their variables from.
Area and perimeter of Triangles
This was a good lesson, able to use the smartboard to my advantage, cloning, flipping and appending the triangles in various ways right before their eyes. The quiz results were good on this one too, they had learned to include all the information I needed. at this point they all knew the difference between cm and cm^2, or at least got it right on the quiz.
Area and perimeter of Trapezoids
{7pTrapezoids.docx} {trapezoid lesson.notebook} {Shape quiz - triangle.docx} {Shape.docx}
This was another lesson that I was observed while teaching. It went quite well, we saved the quiz for the end of the lesson this time, although the lesson included a review of all previously covered shapes. Although a piece of paper may seem cheap on the manipulative scale, it worked well, they all cut it up, came up with some good solutions. Again, the smart board was a good way to review and eventually develop a formula.
The rest of my lessons taught on placement were Language ones.
High School
Sample Lessons -> we have a really good start here, I won't recopy it all out.
My second placement will be teaching Computer Science, so I won't be able to test any of them out :( (although I am super pumped about teaching computer science)