You send off your group to incorporate the ideas from your mini lesson – at least that’s your plan. And sometimes that’s exactly what happens. However, its more likely that some students may wander and forget what they’re supposed to do. So how do we get every student (at varying levels of writing proficiency) to…
Tag: professional learning
Latest Webinars to Tickle your Brain
MARCH 9, 2011 – Virtual Brain Seminar (Register Here) Sherelle Walker (CEO, Scientific Learning) and Martha Burns (Speech & Language Pathologist) – This duo session includes concrete, useful strategies for integrating Brain Fitness into schools as well as provide the latest in neuroscience and research. MARCH 18, 2011 – Our Changing Education Landscape (10:00-11:00) (Register…
Kurzweil 3000 – Session 3 Writing on the Calendar
This third session of Kurzweil 3000, which deals with writing supports has been rescheduled on the Staff Development Calendar to Wednesday February 23 (3:30-5:30) at Schou – TLC. Questions such as “How can Kurzweil support students who find written output challenging? What about the writers workshop process of braining, organizing, and drafting?” For more…
Digital Writing – Digital Teaching – Session 1
Digital Writing is… Session One (February 9, 2011): “If we engage students in real writing tasks and we use technology in such a way that it complements their innate need to find purposes and audiences for their work, we can have them engaged in a digital writing process that focuses first on the writer, then…
Powerful Messages Come Alive with Stop Motion Animation
Everyone has a story. The challenge is choosing how to bring it to life and who to share it with. Our Learning Series on Stop Motion Animation started today. Besides the technical “how to’s”, we discussed how to create voice, mood and motion. For example, what role does background music play in setting the tone,…
Words Their Way – Shedding Light on Process
Words Their Way is a program that offers a developmental curriculum for phonics/spelling instruction, reading fluency and vocabulary development. The hands-on activities engage students as they actively categorize their ‘word sorts’ and the assessment inventory provides a clear indicator of where each student is in the process of word development. We’ve been working with a…
How Readable is the Information?
Readability may be defined as ‘reading ease’ or how content can be successfully understood. Teachers know that comprehension is dependent on many variables, one of which is the readability level of information whether online or in print. It matters little if you have the best list of websites for research but the students have difficulties…
A Peek at February’s Learning Calendar
Here’s a snapshot of what’s coming just around the corner. You will find all details and registration on the Staff Development Calendar. Don’t forget that our district pro-d day is February 25th. *Please note that these are ‘learning series’ and attendance is necessary at all sessions. Reading/Writing with Kurzweil 3000 (Alternate Ed Group): Feb 2,…
Handy Apps that Make a Difference
Some tools are just fun and some are handy to have. Then there are the tools that come along your way that you just know will make a huge difference in some of your students’ lives. This list will change over time and across the environments you work. eType is a downloadable application that provides…
Words Their Way – Making Connections…Session1
Today we started our first of 4 learning sessions on Words Their Way, by Invernizzi, Bear, Templeton and Johnston. In a nutshell, the program provides a developmental curriculum for phonics/spelling instruction, while also promoting reading fluency and vocabulary development. Its hands-on approach marries well with what we know about how the brain uses categories to…
Writers Workshop Learning Series #3 – Mini Lessons
Once again we gathered as a group to explore the writing process. Some things we tackled this time: how to create colour coded folders and move our google documents into those folders (AAAhh, you can just feel the sigh of relief with this organizational structure) how to use the revision history as a way to…
Kurzweil #2: Annotating – Making Thinking Visible
When you read anything, many things happen in your head that nobody notices. But good readers know and can identify these things. Sometimes we call them “movies in our head, thinking abouts, connections, questions or just plain wonders…”. The Study Skills toolbar in Kurzweil 3000 allows great flexibility in making this thinking visible so we…
Kurzweil – Take Next Steps Session – Tues. Oct. 25
These are the handouts for the Kurzweil 3000 Refresher session. Writing Support Writing Support Practice/Play From Previous Sessions: Implementation Process Reference basics v11
Blogs – Learning Series – Challenge #2
Here is your homework for Oct 20th: Challenge Activity #2: To get a feel for how your blog will act in posts, please create a few posts and create categories (logical words meaningful to you) to organize them. (Some examples may be homework, events, news of the day, questions to ponder, questions to launch a…
Blogs – Learning Series – Challenge Activity 1
Before the next Blog workshop, please try to complete the following tasks: A) Upload 2 – 3 images to your media library. 100 pixels by 100 300 pixels by 300 original file upload and resize in editor B) Create a List of 3 Links C) Change your current theme and identify the changes observed? What…
Learning Sessions Focused on Connecting, Communicating…
Imagine a simple way to share and connect information with your parent community, your student community, your teaching community. Imagine being able to update that information or receive comments anytime, anywhere. In our busy schedules it is increasingly difficult to share everything that we feel is important — enter the web world. Using platforms like…
Welcome back
Welcome back to another year of exciting discoveries. As you may have guessed, we are working with a new look. Yes it’s a blog platform and offers much in the way of both sharing and having conversations. Over the next while, we will be adding to the site so please drop by often. Better yet,…