Teaching at the speed of light
How do we prepare students for a world that is changing faster than ever?
How do we prepare students for a world that has real problems?
How do we ensure we're not preparing students for the past?
Rikia will examine big global trends in the world and the future, in the hopes that they inspire new insights in how we prepare students today.
Rikia's presentation will be beamed over to Shawnigan Lake School so that both venues are connected in solidarity
ISABC Special Education Audit Session: Learn what the expectations are for the new Ministry Special Education Audit.
In this session participants will have a brief overview of what a BC Ministry of Education audit team is looking for in IEPs and special education complaince. We will look at the criteria regarding classifications and funding categories and how to ensure this information is incorporated into your documents. Your sample IEPs will be used as a basis for discussion.
**Please bring a sample IEP (with names blocked out) to compare to the audit checklist.
This session is a follow-up on last year's successful inclusion of students as critical partners in our collaborative conversations on 21C teaching, learning and community engagement. The core participants for this session will be student leaders drawn from ISABC schools with the support of the Service Learning & Student Engagement Educators (SEED) group. Students are challenged to develop a preliminary action plan on how to build stronger community and sustainable connections amongst ISABC schools, particularly in the realm of community engagement and service. The goal is to leave the forum with a student action-plan across schools that goes beyond last year's foundations. This plan will be presented to SEED members and others who are interested at a 'working lunch' that day from 12.40-1.30pm.
The session coordinated by ISABC school representatives Antony Wilson (Mulgrave School), Carrie Hughes-Grant (Meadowridge), Daryl Weaver (Southridge) and Rick Campanella (Stratford Hall) and others. We hope this developing ISABC #studentvoice forum will shape our 'other' conversations on what matters in our schools and beyond.
Aggression (Eric Solomon, 1973) - a pencil and paper game for students learning subtraction. It is so good, that I'd defend it replacing a whole year of elementary math curriculum. Seriously.
Beetle Sort - Replace uninspired matching games with a rich and nuanced puzzle created from the high resolution images of retired beetle collector, Udo Schmidt.
Hex (Piet Hein, 1942 & John Nash, 1947) - A game that is simple enough for all div 1, but was independently invented by two mathematicians (One being John Nash who you may know from the movie "A beautiful Mind"). Hex is a contender for the second most important game in the div 1 classroom.
Name Connector - A brand new puzzle within the last fortnight. It gives students practice spelling the names of their classmates and counting common letters. It is easy to understand, but so hard to solve that it would also work as an ice-breaker for executives.
This workshop focuses on the responsibility of teachers, especially administrators, to keep students emotionally, physically, intellectually and sexually safe. It opens with a brief introduction to the role of teacher regulation followed by an interactive workshop for administrators that allows participants to reflect on the nature of the student-teacher relationship. The workshop uses case studies to touch on misconduct, off-duty conduct, reporting breaches of the Standards, relevant court decisions, multiple jeopardy, inappropriate use of social media and what all of this means for administrators, teachers and their students.
At Southridge, Foundations is arguably one of the most successful courses offered. Come and engage in a discussion of the purpose, value, and pedagogy of Foundations of Math. Why would a university prep school offer Foundations of Math? How is different from Essentials of Math? How is it different from Pre-Calculus? Do universities really accept it for general entrance or for specific programmes? Who takes this course?
Collatz Conjecture (Lothar Collatz, 1937) - There is no excuse for students learning multiplication not to be exposed to this unsolved problem. It belongs in all curricular worldwide.
Fractured Fraction - This puzzle inspires students with equivalent fractions. It is one of the most aesthetically pleasing of MathPickle puzzles and that's important because probably 10-15% of students can be pulled into math through beauty.
Perudo or Liars Dice - At 500 years old, it is the most underestimated of the historic games. It can unapologetically be mentioned in the same breath as go, backgammon or chess.
Over the past 2 years, I have been bringing a deer hide into the Grade 7 classroom to use with my students as part of a Primitive Project. The goal is to create a cross-curricular, hands-on experience that the students will never forget. The kids end up taking the hide from being the pelt of a deer to becoming material (buckskin) that they can work with in an Art project. With the Primitive Project, the students also learn about food preservation methods by creating venison jerky, and get a chance to work together in groups to create friction fire kits with which they start fires. This project ends up tying Science (ecosystems, chemistry), Social Studies (ancient civilizations), and Art together with the added discussion of where food/leather comes from, thrown in.
In this session, we will talk about attempts to make learning a hands-on experience, and ways in which to build projects that are cross-curricular. We will discuss what is it like to take the risk of starting a project with which you may have little or no experience. Participants will have a chance observe/work with deer hides a multiple stages of completeness (you don't have to get your hands messy - but you can if you want to!). The take away from this session will hopefully involve building excitement about bringing your own hands-on, cross-curricular project into your classroom.