Tag Archives: Haiku

LLED 320 – Cow Poetry, Writing Instruction Principles, Haiku Revision, and the IUP Task: Update for Tuesday, 31 January 2012

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I started today by highlighting my objectives for the session:

  • Outline principles of effective writing instruction in a classroom
  • Experience some of those principles in action
  • Introduce the IUP task
  • Get you started reading our Lit Kit novels
  • Provide time for Group Presentation work

In the end, I think we met all but one of them.  Here’s how we did it…

Daily Write – Cow Poetry

After a reading of Cow Poetry and brainstorming a list of animals, you had a go at writing your own Animal Poetry.  Here’s the handout to support that task:

Here’s another way you could use Cow Poetry as part of an introduction to poetry class.  A former colleague of mine, Liz Orme in the Coquitlam School District, developed this one:

Energizer #1: Newspaper Telephone Death Race 3000 by Jan

12 Guiding Principles for An Effective Writing Program

We used the Ranking Ladder strategy to consider the guiding principles outlined on page 43 & 44 in the Student Diversity text.  After some partner talk, we took a class poll on which principles were ranked at the top or the bottom, analyzed the poll results for patterns, and tried to explain the patterns.

Here’s the handout that supported this activity:

Student Diversity Readings Conversation

In this part of the lesson, we partnered up to compare graphic organizers on the day’s reading – either Chapter 4 or Chapter 5 of the text.  To sum up, we talked about the use of graphic organizers for this task in particular and the efficacy of G.O.s in middle school classrooms in general.

Energizer #2: [I forget the name] by Sukhdeep

Haiku Revision

To get you thinking haiku again, I asked you to watch two video clips – a funny one and a serious one – and to bring the 5 criteria for a powerful haiku we developed in class back to the front of your brain.  Here are the clips:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwnqUmmJ-zE[/youtube]

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/2268876[/vimeo]

Next, we engaged in Author’s Club – a process for refining writing that I picked up at a writing workshop by Diana Cruchley.  Here’s the PDF I used to structure the Author’s Club work:

Here’s the PPT Slideshow I showed that served as a model mini-lesson on punctuation and line breaks in poetry:

For class on Tuesday, 21 February 2012, please revise and create a good, final copy of your 3 haiku.  Be sure to bring along the original draft versions of all 3 poems to class as well.

On the day the poems are due we will have a Poetry Playoff in which poets will face off in a single-elimination tournament as a showcase for their haiku writing prowess.

Energizer #3: Handshake Murder by Nicole

Integrated Unit Plan Task

I took some time to introduce the Integrated Unit Plan (IUP) task.  It’s due on Tuesday, 6 March 2012 and you can find the handout on the Assignments page of this blog.

To support you in the completion of this task, I’m holding 15-minute conferences at various times over the next few weeks.  Here’s the schedule:

Energizer #4: Mosquito. Salmon. Bear. by Alyssa

Group Presentation Preparation Time

To end class, I set aside some time for work on your group presentation task.  The first set of these 20-25 minute presentations on a teaching strategy or graphic organizer are due on Thursday, 9 February.  Please see an earlier post for the complete schedule.

That’s all for today.

Giddyup!

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8rEHbmYEtc[/youtube]

– Lawrence

LLED 320 – Nitobe Gardens Outing, Writing Task Details, and Haiku: Update for Thursday, 26 January 2012

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Nitobe Memorial Garden Field Trip

We had wonderful weather for our excursion to the Nitobe Memorial Garden this afternoon.  The goal of this outing to a traditional Japanese Tea and Stroll garden, was to gather 5-senses information for use in writing Haiku poetry, a Japanese poetic form.  Ahh, the synergy!  Here’s the note taking organizer:

Also, I wanted to model the value in getting your students out of the four walls of the school and into the “real world” for curricular purposes.

In-Class Writing Task Assessment Description

I took some time to describe the nature of this task and to outline the format I’d prefer.  You can find the task handout on the Assignements page of this blog.  Also, below you’ll see a photo of the layout and a model task from a previous year’s TC:

Here’s the generic, four-to-a-page rubrics for you to use if need be:

Please note that your completed task is due on Tuesday, 7 February 2012.  Please submit it all electronically or entirely on paper.

Energizer #1: Spelling Tag by Heather

The Writing Process: An Illustrative Example with Haiku

I struggled with the idea of how to present an interactive lesson on entire writing process in just an hour or two.  In the end, I settled on a lesson that involved the writing of haiku poetry, a form often used in elementary & middle school poetry classes.  We started to follow the Writing Process (as envisioned by writing teacher Diana Cruchley.  I took a workshop from her 2 years ago) –

A Writing Process

and, to that end, engaged in a variety of pre-writing activities.  The activities were:

Brainwarming

Just as athletes get warm up their bodies before game play or practice, writers need to warm up their brains.  To this end, we worked through a Brainwarming activity designed by Julie Ferguson of Beacon Literary Services.  As a part of the Hillcrest Middle School staff, I took a workshop with her last year, enjoyed it, and I thought I’d pass along what I’d learned about improving the quality and quantity of the writing students do.

Here’s are some of the key pieces in Brainwarming:

  • Your favourite word
  • Power Words
  • Power Triplets
  • A 5-Winute Write
  • Writing quickly
  • Harnessing the power of the creative right brain
  • Supporting the diversity of learners –  from Gifted to LD – in your classroom

The PowerPoint below is the one I used in class to guide you through the exercise.  You can find more info at Julie’s website, if you are interested:

Modeling

We looked over numerous haiku, determined our favourite, and developed a list of key features for haiku poetry.  Here’s the list of poems we looked at:

If you’re yearning for more haiku, check out these Zombie Haiku:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd1Ws9QnmZY[/youtube]

or Biff from the Back to the Future trilogy with some funny haiku songs:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwnqUmmJ-zE[/youtube]

or these “classic” Redneck Haiku.

Here’s a wonderful visual representation of a traditional Japanese haiku:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ucc8l2Yg0qo&feature=related[/youtube]

Criteria Development

The haiku criteria we developed were almost bang on with the criteria outlined in the text I took this lesson from, Wordplaygrounds by John S. O’Connor.  His criteria are as follows:

Haiku poems…

  • Are short

Typically 3 short  lines with a maximum of 17 syllables.  They may follow a 5-7-5 pattern but need not.  Here’s a one line haiku by Lee Gurga:

trying the old pump a mouse pours out

  • Have a Twist (Juxtaposition of images)

Most haiku have two images, one on either side of a break in the poem.

  • Focus a “Haiku” moment in time

They capture moments of epiphany or discoveries about the world and our place in it.  To best capture the immediacy of the moment, haikus are generally written in the present tense and benefit from an economy of language.

  • Focus on nature, including human nature, shown concretely

Haiku avoid figurative language (similes, metaphors, personfication and the like) in favour of direct and specific descriptions of the world around us.

  • Are 5 senses specific

Powerful haikus are based on vivid imagery based on the five senses.

Pre-Writing

In an effort to make those criteria as clear as possible, we engaged in a variety of short writing tasks:

Word Seasons (handout: Word Seasons Word List)

I showed a list of words and asked you to associate each one with a season.

Sandwich Poems (handout: Sandwich Poems Examples)

These are three-line poems in which the first two lines and the second two lines form a different compound word.  Here’s an example:

fire

alarm

clock

Energizer #2: Who Am I? by Amanda

Drafting Based on an Image Pool

I gave out the first line of a haiku:

Halloween night —

then asked you to visualize your most memorable Halloween night and share a few images to create a class image pool.  After that, you generated a haiku of your own and many examples were shared with the class.  Here are a few of the poems written on the board (Thanks to Tim for today’s photos – LH):

Homework for Next Class Session

 

Haiku Writing

  1. Write 3 haikus that fit with the key features of haiku that we explored in class.  I suggest you use the info gathered from your Nitobe experience as a stimulus but this isn’t necessary.  Your poems can be on any topic.
  2. Bring your 3 haikus to class on Tuesday, 31 January 2012

Student Diversity Reading

Please read your assigned chapter in Student Diversity and summarize its main ideas in a graphic organizer of your choosing.  Bring your completed G.O. (and your S. D. text) to class on Tuesday, 31 January 2012. The readings are assigned by surname as follows:

  • Atsma t0 Jones = Chapter 4: Writers’ Workshop
  • Kent t0 Wright = Chapter 5: Introducing Narrative Writing

My goal with these readings is to deepen your understanding of the writing process in general and, specifically, how that process might play out in an elementary/middle school classroom.  My goal with having you use a graphic organizer is to play with ways that information can be summarized.  Graphic organizers are incredibly useful tools to support the learning of all students.

The interwebs are full of many sites with information on graphic organizers.  Here’s a few:

– Lawrence

LLED 320 – Poetry Playoffs, Reading Placemat, De Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats, Whole Class Novels, and Lit Circles: Update for Tuesday, 22 Feb 2011

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We covered a lot of ground today.  Here’s the highlights:

Poetry Playoffs

After reviewing the 8 Ps of Powerful Presentations:

  • Proper Articulation
  • Pronunciation
  • Power
  • Pace
  • Pause
  • Pitch
  • Passion
  • Poise

I asked you to rehearse your best haiku in case you were one of the 8 contestants chosen to face off.  Here’s the draw and how it turned out:

Congratulations to Kira on her victory.  In a related story, check out this clip to see Anthony Bourdain enjoying a bowl of “mysterious meat” pho and a beer:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsSiA-JHm0U[/youtube]

If you search this blog using the keywords Poetry Playoffs, you’ll find information I’ve posted last year on how to run a the PP in your class, if you’re interested.

Wrapping Up Writing in the Classroom

I mentioned that we just touched on writing in the classroom.  Also, I urged you to consider the principles of effective writing instruction as you teach.  Penultimately, in an effort to address several comments that arose as I marked your LLED 320 Writing Assessment Tasks, I pointed you toward the ESL Standards document (2001) developed to assist teachers with the assessment of writing, reading, and oral language work completed by EAL / ESL students.  It’s structured similarly to the Performance Standards document we used in class and you can find it on the Ministry of Education ESL website or below:

Finally, if you’re interested in a great LA survey text that has a good section on Writing To Learn, I recommended that you check out Marion Crowhurst’s Language and Learning Across the Curriculum (LB1576 .C76 1993 in Ed LIb).

Factors That Help Students Develop As Readers

We ended our previous session with by having you consider the factors that you thought helped students develop as readers.  I asked you to put your ideas together and create a placemat with a group of three others and try to come up with 3 – 5 factors that all group members could agree on.  After sharing the ideas of several groups, we compared the responses with the research:

I asked you to consider our upcoming reading activities through the lens of those 4 factors.

Considering Whole Class Novel Studies Using Using De Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats

With your graphic organizer of Chapter 6 – Whole Class Novel from Student Diversity in hand, I asked you to consider the WCN through the lens of one of De Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats.  After reading up on what type of thinking each hat represents using the handout below:

I asked for each group to report out on their thinking around WCNs.  To wrap up, we all put on our Blue Hat – the metacognitive hat – and discussed the process of using the 6 Thinking Hats.  It was pretty meta!

Lit Circles: Double-Entry Journal Task

One During-Reading activity that really promotes thoughtful engagement with lit circle books it journaling.  In an effort to model this process with you, I’m asking you to keep a Double-Entry Journal as a means to consider the lit circle activities we’re engaging in during class time.  The task will be completed in class and it’s due on Thursday, 3 March 2011.  Here’s the handout:

To this point you had experienced:

  • Book Talks
  • Time to Read (in class and at home)
  • Sticky Notes

I asked you to choose to of those ideas and to give me your thoughts on them in the My Thinking side of the journal.  We took 10 or so minutes in class to do this.

Lit Circles: Conversation Time

I modeled a Lit Circle conversation with the members of The Hunger Games reading group and utilizing a Fishbowl strategy.  After a quick debrief, I asked each reading group to meet and engage in a similar conversation.  The discussions were lively and could have run much longer than the time we had left in class.

That’s all for today.  As a good follow up to our in-class activities, I recommend reading Chapter 7 – Literature Circles: The Basics, the Big Ideas, and Beyond in Student Diversity. It provides more details on how Lit Circles addresses the factors that help students develop as readers and it illustrates a model of how one teacher uses Lit Circles in her classroom.

That’s all for today.

– Lawrence

LLED 320 – Haiku Revision, Lit Circle Books Out & Intro to the Reading Process: Update for Thursday, 17 Feb 2011

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Haiku Revision

To get you thinking haiku again, I asked you to watch two video clips – a funny one and a serious one – and to bring the 5 criteria for a powerful haiku we developed in class back to the front of your brain.  Here are the clips:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwnqUmmJ-zE[/youtube]

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/2268876[/vimeo]

Next, after a short review of the principles of effective writing instruction, we engaged in Author’s Club – a process for refining writing that I picked up at a writing workshop by Diana Cruchley.  Here’s the PDF I used to structure the Author’s Club work:

Here’s the PPT Slideshow I showed that served as a model mini-lesson on punctuation and line breaks in poetry:

For Tuesday’s class, please revise and create a good, final copy of your best haiku.  Be sure to staple the original draft versions of all 3 poems to your best copy page.

In Tuesday’s class we will have Poetry Playoff in which 8 (or more!  I have an idea.) randomly chosen poets will face off in a single-elimination tournament as a showcase for their haiku writing prowess.

Lit Circle Books Distribution

As the kick off to our work with Literature Circles, I organized the distribution of the texts we’re going to read.  Due to time constraints, I gave an in depth book talk of only one book – The Crazy Man by Pamela Porter, Sarah book talked Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech and, for the rest, I only showed a book trailer or gave a quick blurb.

Here’s the list of in-depth book talks for most of the books in the kit:

Here are most of the book trailers and videos that I showed to “sell” the books:

Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufQeRrPQAbg&feature=fvwrel[/youtube]

Boy in the Striped Pajamas (actually a movie trailer) by John Boyne

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBdalsgNHsM&feature=related[/youtube]

The Giver by Lois Lowry

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNL77KnIRI8[/youtube]

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TnxXoMpF3c[/youtube]

Schooled by Louis Sachar

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gVC14-hcw4[/youtube]

If you were away from class and didn’t grab a book, please see me on Tuesday to get one.

Prior Knowledge on the Reading Process

As class wound down, I asked you to consider what you to consider factors that help students to develop as readers.  You wrote your ideas on a numbered sheet of paper.  Please bring that sheet and the mind map / graphic organizer you created to represent Ch 6 – The Whole Class Novel in the Student Diversity text to class on Tuesday… along with your haikus.

Cheers,

– Lawrence

LLED 320 – Unit Plan Conferences, KUD, Performance Tasks & DI: Update for Thursday, 3 Feb 2011

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Well, today’s class didn’t go quite as I’d envisioned.  In my mind, I spent too much time talking and, as a result, we didn’t get done all that I had hoped we would.  Anyway, here’s what we did accomplish:

Writing Tasks In

I’ve collected the pieces and will mark them over the next two weeks or so.  There’s a lot of them!

Assessment Q&A

I took some time to address some of the assessment questions that you had posed on exit slips at the end of a previous class.

Unit Planning: Individual Conferences

I’ve cancelled class on Thursday, 10 Feb 2011 to set aside some time for 15-minute conferences about your unit plans.  Also, to ensure that I had times set aside that suited everybody’s schedule, I also will be holding meetings on Tuesday, 15 Feb and Thursday, 24 Feb.  Here’s the schedule (as of 3 Feb):

In preparation for this meeting, please prepare the following items and bring them along to the conference:

  • Subject and topic of your unit (Science & Water systems, for example)
  • Key PLOs related to your topic
  • Desired Results / KUD (Knowledge, Understanding, and Do/Skills) for your unit
  • Rough ideas on assessment for your unit.
  • Ideas on how you might be able to integrate some aspect of LA – writing, representing, reading, viewing, speaking, or listening – into one of the unit’s lessons

Unit Planning: Goals, Performance Tasks, and Differentiated Instruction

I attended a Pro D Workshop last Friday with Cindy Strickland from ASCD.  She is a Differentiated Instruction guru doing work playing with and extending the DI thinking of Carol Tomlinson.  Seeing as the information I picked up was very relevant to our work on unit planning, I thought I’d share it with you in this class.

Here were my goals:

  • Demonstrate a way to outline a unit’s goals using a KUD framework
  • Show how performance tasks can be developed as a means for students to show their attainment of the KUD
  • Illustrate how performance tasks can be differentiated to better meet the needs of all students
  • Allow you to apply your understanding of performance tasks and differentiation to a unit you’re developing for the long practicum.

After showing a short PPT on clouds – Clouds PPT Slideshow– to get you up to speed with what information the students working on this weather unit had been working with, I showed you an example of three summative performance tasks for the weather unit and asked you to determine, by looking at the tasks, what you thought the KUD of the unit was.  In other words, what did the teacher expect her students to Know, Understand, and Do that was related to clouds?

After that, you thought of other final product scenarios that the students could complete that would show their KUD but tap into different student interests and abilities.  This is where the differentiation piece came in.

How can we, as teachers, provide varied opportunities for students to show us what they know?  As we answer this question, we can start to find ways to differentiate our instruction and our assessment in ways that are responsive to the needs of all students.

Here’s the handout we used in class:

Unit Planning: GRASPS Peformance Tasks

Performance tasks are summative assessments that are:

  • personalized
  • open-ended
  • complex
  • based on real-world work
  • aimed at an identified audience

The Understanding By Design (UBD) unit planning model we’ve been working with in 310 class promotes the design of performance tasks based on the features suggested by the acronym GRASPS:

  • G=goal
  • R=role
  • A=audience
  • S=situation
  • P=product, performance, & purpose
  • S=standards & criteria

We analyzed the cloud unit performance tasks through the lens of the GRASPS aspects and then did one of two things:

  1. Looked at other performance tasks to see how they demonstrated the GRASPS elements
  2. Developed a GRASPS based performance task for a unit you’ll be teaching on the long prac.

Here’s a handout with all sorts of info related to performance tasks, including a handy dandy list of Possible Student Roles and Audiences in addition to Possible Products and Performances:

Haikus Handed In

As a ticket out the door, I collected your 3 haiku poems.  We’ll be revising these in a future lesson seeing as we ran out of time this class.

– Lawrence

LLED 320 – Housekeeping, Unit Planning Intro, Brainwarming, and Haikuing: Update for Thursday, 27 January 2011

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We started with some housekeeping items:

Temperature Check
Here’s the accompanying Kingpin video clip:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VUSLiR0ZmbQ[/youtube]

Writing Assessment Task Q & A
This task is due on Thursday, 3 February 2011.  Please submit it in one electronic package via email or as a complete paper copy.

Authorfest Info

Class is cancelled on Tuesday, 1 February to encourage you to attend Authorfest from 4:00 – 5:30 in Wood 2.  I handed out a bibliography of the attending authors.  It’s also available here:

Integrated Unit Planning Task

I handed out the task sheet for the LLED 320 Unit Plan task due on Tuesday, 8 March 2011.  You can find the handout here:

Also, here’s the resource evaluation sheet you’ll need:

To get a visual sense of what’s expected, here’s a sample from a few years ago:

Writing in the Elementary / Middle Classroom

I had some guiding principles for the teaching of writing to share but, before then, I wanted to play with a pre-writing / warm up strategy.  Here’s the info

Brainwarming

Just as athletes get warm up their bodies before game play or practice, writers need to warm up their brains.  To this end, we worked through a Brainwarming activity designed by Julie Ferguson of Beacon Literary Services.  As a part of the Hillcrest Middle School staff, I took a workshop with her last year, enjoyed it, and I thought I’d pass along what I’d learned about improving the quality and quantity of the writing students do.

Here’s are some of the key pieces in Brainwarming:

  • Your favourite word
  • Power Words
  • Power Triplets
  • A 5-Winute Write
  • Writing quickly
  • Harnessing the power of the creative right brain
  • Supporting the diversity of learners –  from Gifted to LD – in your classroom

The PowerPoint below is the one I used in class to guide you through the exercise.  You can find more info at Julie’s website, if you are interested:

12 Guiding Principles For An Effective Writing Program

We used the Ranking Ladder strategy followed up with Inside / Outside Circles to process 12 guiding principles related to writing instruction.   The conversation was vigourous.  Here’s the handout:

Engaging in The Writing Process

I struggled with the idea of how to present an interactive lesson on entire writing process in just over an hour.  In the end, I settled on a lesson that involved the writing of haiku poetry, a form often used in elementary & middle school poetry classes.  We started to follow the Writing Process (as envisioned by writing teacher Diana Cruchley.  I took a workshop from her 2 years ago) –

A Writing Process

and, to that end, engaged in a variety of pre-writing activities.  The activities were:

Modeling

We looked over a dozen haiku, determined our favourite, and developed a list of key features for haiku poetry.  Here’s the list of poems we looked at:

I also shared a few of my favourite Redneck Haiku.  They can be found here.   If you’re yearning for more, check out these Zombie Haiku:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pd1Ws9QnmZY&feature=PlayList&p=332A297059FDF20E&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=9[/youtube]

or Biff from the Back to the Future Trilogy with some funny haiku songs:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwnqUmmJ-zE[/youtube]

Criteria Development

The haiku criteria we developed were almost bang on with the criteria outlined in the text I took this lesson from, Wordplaygrounds by John S. O’Connor.  His criteria are as follows:

Haiku poems…

  • Are short

Typically 3 short  lines with a maximum of 17 syllables.  They may follow a 5-7-5 pattern but need not.  Here’s a one line haiku by Lee Gurga:

trying the old pump a mouse pours out

  • Have a Twist (Internal Comparison / Juxtaposition)

Most haiku have two images, one on either side of a break in the poem.

  • Have a “Haiku” moment in time

They capture moments of epiphany or discoveries about the world and our place in it.  To best capture the immediacy of the moment, haikus are generally written in the present tense and benefit from an economy of language.

  • Focus on nature, including human nature, shown concretely

Haiku avoid figurative language (similes, metaphors, personfication and the like) in favour of direct and specific descriptions of the world around us.

  • Are 5 senses specific

Powerful haikus are based on vivid imagery based on the five senses.

Pre-Writing

In an effort to make those criteria as clear as possible, we engaged in a variety of short writing tasks:

Word Seasons (handout: Word Seasons Word List)

I showed a list of words and asked you to associate each one with a season.

Sandwich Poems (handout: Sandwich Poems Examples)

These are three-line poems in which the first two lines and the second two lines form a different compound word.  Here’s an example:

fire

alarm

clock

Drafting Based on an Image Pool

I gave out the first line of a haiku:

Halloween night —

then asked you to visualize your most memorable Halloween night and share a few images to create a class image pool.  After that, you generated a haiku of your own and many examples were shared with the class.  Unfortunately, I neglected to collect any of the Halloween haiku for publication on the blog.  If you have yours handy, please feel free to write a comment containing your three lines.

We ran out of time for the scheduled nature walk aimed at gathering information for a haiku.  So, your homework for next class is as follows:

  1. Go on a nature walk
  2. Gather 5 sense information on the back of your Sample Haiku handout
  3. Write 3 haikus that fit with the key features of haiku that we explored in class
  4. Bring your 3 haikus to class on Thursday,  3 February 2011.

See you on Tuesday at Authorfest. Please remenber that our regularly scheduled class is cancelled so you can attend this event.

– Lawrence

LLED 320 – Group Presentations, Day 1: Update for Thursday, 11 Feb 2010

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Blog Use Survey

Thanks to all who completed the Blog Survey during today’s class.  I look forward to reviewing the information and improving the blog for this and future years.

Haikus

There have been some excellent haikus sent in to this point.  If you have yet to submit your work – 1 or 2 revised haikus – please do so over the next day or two.  They were due in today’s class.

Group Presentations

Thanks to all the presenters for presenting engaging presentations.  Here are the titles along with the supporting files.  If you have yet to submit your PPT or handout, please do so ASAP for the benefit of your classmates.  The handouts in particular should provide a valuable resource during practicum, as you look for ways to engage the learners in your classes:

  • Story Behind the Poem – Lee, Chelsea, and Alison

Story Behind the Poem Handout

  • Venn Diagrams – Doug and Melissa

Venn Diagram Handout

  • Visual Thinking – Ryan, Charlotte, and Stephanie

Visual Thinking Handout

  • Talk Show / Hot Seat – Desmond, Chris, and Andrea

Talk Show Handout

Talk Show PPT

  • Sort and Predict – Pearl, Amber, and Shabtika

Sort and Predict Handout

Sort and Predict PPT

Enjoy your Olympic Break.  I’ve been taking in some of the Olympic athlete’s practice sessions, video camera in hand.  Check out this cool footage:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fe2RGUE4joM&NR=1[/youtube]

and this, too:

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJ3ROw2DbbU&feature=related[/youtube]

Go Canada Go!

– Lawrence