Teaching Ideas -

Came across this great blog with lots of photos - the teaching ideas a great, and are a good jumping-off point to adapt for different grades and subjects. The examples are elementary, but secondary teachers can be creative and make them work for older learners: http://tunstalltimes.blogspot.ca/

Learning, not teaching!

Great article: Lessons for helicopter parents from a 71-year-old educator by Sarah Hampson, Globe and Mail, Published Monday, Sep. 05, 2011 6:00PM EDT

A few quotes:
There are many gifted teachers in both public and private systems, she emphasizes, but what worries her most is the rigidity of the typical classroom teaching style. “Time in the classroom for actual learning as opposed to teaching is shrinking,” she says. “There’s a very high expectation on academics and testing. A lot of time is spent on drumming in lessons and worrying about kids who haven’t made it. Children should be given time to learn things, to not be pushed.”

“[Teachers] shouldn’t just be taught what to teach, but how children learn though play, through trying things out, though supposing and testing,” she says. “All the resources are at their fingertips. But if they did understand how children learn, you would not see classrooms running on half-hour periods, each with a different unit. You would see more integrative, collaborative learning.”
A good teacher creates an environment in which it’s safe for the child to take risks, she explains. “Children have to take risks and know they’re not necessarily going to be right.”

Emond-Montgomery's teacher-submitted resources!

http://www.teachersupport.ca/ has many different resources across many subject areas. Thanks E-M for maintaining this great site.

CEA - material for educators

The Canadian Education Association has some great research, blogs and other materials

http://www.cea-ace.ca/

Ontario Education Act, Duties of Teachers

This is kind of intersting in that the language of the Education Act is a bit anachronistic. Have a look:

Duties of teacher
264. (1) It is the duty of a teacher and a temporary teacher,
teach (a) to teach diligently and faithfully the classes or subjects assigned to the teacher by the principal;
learning (b) to encourage the pupils in the pursuit of learning;
religion and morals (c) to inculcate by precept and example respect for religion and the principles of Judaeo-Christian morality and the highest regard for truth, justice, loyalty, love of country, humanity, benevolence, sobriety, industry, frugality, purity, temperance and all other virtues;
co-operation (d) to assist in developing co-operation and co-ordination of effort among the members of the staff of the school;
discipline (e) to maintain, under the direction of the principal, proper order and discipline in the teacher’s classroom and while on duty in the school and on the school ground

How fonts affect retention

Daniel Oppenheimer and Erikka Vaughan at Princeton did a study to figure out whether changing the font of written material could improve the long-term learning and retention of information presented to students - they did this with both university and high school students.

Students reviewing material in hard-to-read fonts did better on regular classroom assessment tests than did their randomly selected counterparts reading the same material in easier fonts.

The hard-to-read fonts were Haettenschweiler, Monotype Corsiva or Comic Sans Italicized. The control was whatever the teacher had been using previously -- usually Times New Roman or Arial.

You can read more about the study at http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S28/82/93O80/index.xml?section=topstories or the published findings in the journal, Cognition.

Pedagogies Toolkit

PEDAGOGIES TOOLKIT - OVER 70 TEACHING/LEARNING STRATEGIES FOR ALMOST ANY SUBJECT AND GRADE. LAURA PINTO, LAURA DRISCOLL & STEPHANIE SPARES
This book provides over seventy teaching/learning strategies for students of all ages categorized according to their use to present, apply and/or review curricular material. Each strategy can be adapted to just about any subject area and grade. At-a-glance strategy descriptions include: materials, description, ideal for, and cautions. Teachers and facilitators can pick up this volume, and simply flip through to select strategies which will make their classrooms more engaging and enhance the learning process.
Order at:
http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/1293865

The Salty Chip Multiliteracies Collective

The Salty Chip is a space for teachers and students to share and build upon their work as they develop their use of multiliteracies. http://www.saltychip.com/

It seeks to capture cultural and linguistic diversity and to make use of new and emerging communication technologies that consider pedagogy in a participatory culture.

Great site which allows teachers and students to vote on materials and strategies!!

Software to create comics

Comic Life is software which allows the user to create comics using their own or downloaded images. The free trial is only 30 days, but most likely some freeware exists somewhere.
http://plasq.com/comiclife-win

(thank you Patricia M. for this resource!)

Brain Teasers

Using a brain teaser or logic puzzle is a great way to open a class while giving the teacher time to set up as students work on them. A number of great books are generally available on remaindered tables, but many are available online as well. For instance:

(1) http://www.misronet.com/puzzles01.htm - not too
difficult for the most part - but not enough for a school year. A great
place to start though.

(2) http://www.allstarpuzzles.com/logic/index16.html - many of these are
too difficult - stick to those rated one or two stars for high school
students.

(3) http://www.brain-fun.com/Brain-Teasers/ - these seem to be a fairly
good level for high school students.