Teacher Extraordinaire - Portfolio of a Teacher and Lifelong Learner

Every year I try to get the students engaged in the scientific process at least once, in order to understand the form of something scientific that we're learning about. This year we looked at some science experiments about the weather / earth systems to help us understand a bit more about natural disasters. Unfortunately I cannot show images of any of the students doing the science experiments themselves, rather just some of the finished products. All experiments come from  Weather Wiz Kids . The experiments were pre-selected by myself with the consideration of how much students would learn about the science behind weather and earth systems by engaging in the experiment. Of course some experiments were also chosen with consideration for the "coolness factor" in order to get students truly interested and engaged. At first we did the good old "Mentos and Diet Cola" explosion as our example / examplar. We did research as a class, through videos, about how volc...

Although this post has nothing to do with student learning and student learning outcomes, I thought it would be fun to post this as another facet to myself as a teacher. I believe that, as teachers, if we want our students to exhibit a particular attitude, attribute, behaviour or outcome, we should be good role models and follow suit with that expectation whenever possible. Now of course, this post in no way states that all teachers and students should wear costumes, but as we all  want  our students to have fun in the process of learning, I think it's important that we as teachers have some fun too. Pictured are five costumes I wore over the course of literacy week, as wearing costumes is something that I genuinely enjoy and have fun doing! Of course I have no objective meter to measure how much my students liked or didn't like these costumes, but certainly the reception (by my Grade 3 class) was generally excellent! Many of them also had a fun time dressing up as thei...

I really enjoy cooking with my students whenever possible, as it enables them to get real life practice with concepts such as volume, weight and fractions. This past year student table groups were each randomly given a different sweet treat to create a recipe for. Then they had to bring in ingredients to make enough for a small serving for everyone to enjoy. The categories were - fruit salad, parfait, drinks and baking free cookies/cake. Below are pictures of what the students made. Students were also required to bring pencil and paper to record any changes they might have to their recipe and were instructed that their recipe must contain at least one fraction, one instance of using volume and one instance of using weight. Students all enjoyed making and eating these sweet snacks.