Our classroom is not very racially diverse, so I wasn't sure how this exploration's theme was going to play out.  I didn't need to worry.  One of the great accomplishments of our times is embedding a sense of narrative into all areas of modern life.  We tell stories for almost every facet of teaching and this is especially true when we tackle a massive issue such as the abolition of slavery or the contributions of black culture and heritage.  It was fascinating to share with my students the stories about the underground railroad, the abolition of slavery, the rise of the civil rights movement and the contributions of key individuals in the search for equal rights.  I loved the chance to see the indignation in the kids' faces when they learned of the terrible treatment of slaves through the great stories we shared.  It certainly affirms your faith in the human soul.  And in this way you also get a chance to experience anew the same feelings of outrage when you first learned of the horrors of slavery. It's not a pleasant experience but it is memorable and that's what I was hoping to accomplish. I wanted the kids to remember these stories so that they would always recognize the signs of racism and discrimination

Our unit on Flight allowed me the luxury of pursuing some of my own personal interests.  I'm so glad the grade six curriculum includes it as a science unit because you can do so much with it.  We began simply by studying the concept of an airfoil and exploring the physics behind how planes fly.  We worked on many activities exploring lift, drag, gravity and thrust and kept these ideas in mind for our many explorations in this two week unit.  I managed to book a class trip to our local airport and we were fortunate enough to get a truly thorough tour of the Control Desk, airstrips, hangars, and a navigation equipment manufacturing company that had a facility on site.  The kids got to see all types of personal and commercial planes up close, examine the parts of aircraft and ask questions about their function, and meet some of the people who work at and maintain the airport.  It was fascinating.

The next part of the tour was superb.  We visited the production facility of Zennair, a local light aircraft producer.  These wonderful planes are built as kits and shipped around the world.  Our host, Chris Heinz, walked us through the plant and the kids stopped at each part of the assembly process.  The workers were happy to see us and put on a good show by doing their work efficiently and precisely. This very successful company highlighted for the kids that small businesses can thrive on hard work and high quality manufacturing.  Many of the students expressed a keen interest in pursuing an aviation career following the trip.

Our last component of the flight unit was to create rotating group work stations for further exploration in class.  The students created names for their groups and began a five day rotation.  (See more about this excellent teaching technique in the lesson plans section of this website.  Overall, the Flight unit was one of the most rewarding and stimulating units I've taught in a long time.  If I can figure out how to hide an ultralight in my back yard, I'm all set.  I'll tell my wife it's a lawn ornament.

Space Exploration has to be one of the most intriguing topics imaginable.  We started like we always do, asking great questions and finding out what we know, want to know and how to find out.  The overriding question this week was a classic:  Are we alone in the universe?  I was surprised at how many of the students just assumed that, given the vast expanse of the universe, we are not likely to be the only intelligent life form in the cosmos. I thought they would be more naturally skeptical, needing to see hard and fast evidence that our planet had been visited by other beings.  This lead me to do some very interesting research on scientific inquiry that pointed to earth's unique nature and the almost infinite 'just-right' conditions that have to occur for life to develop.  We explored some of these areas using a rich resource bank of books, internet sites and my new favourite, Learn360 videos.  I absolutely love using this resource because it quickly narrows topics by subject and grade and you don't have to worry at all about inappropriate content. 
In the end, the feelings of the students hardly budged at all.  After exploring pro and con arguments and viewing a few tremendously informative videos, the students remained pretty much fixed in their original feelings.  About ten percent felt that life was unique to earth, and an overwhelming ninety percent assumed extraterrestrial beings existed but hadn't yet made contact.  More and more, I'm falling into the habit of getting so engrossed in the subjects we're covering in class that I find myself looking forward to personal reading time after school to continue studying.  The great

This week's new exploration is a bit of a catch-all because I realized that the students are working very hard, but are often hampered by the often slow process of putting their ideas down on paper.  I'm always looking for efficient ways for the kids to produce work on their projects and the old 'hunt and peck' computer skills are clearly not fast enough to avoid frustration.  In our school board, typing and keyboarding skills are not offered any longer, so the students may never learn to touch-type.  I think my old grade ten typing course was one of the most useful educational experiences I've ever had.  Add all these ideas together and the solution seems to be that we need to slow down to speed up.  I need to take the time to encourage keyboarding skills, so every day for the next few weeks we are taking forty minutes to practice the basic touch typing techniques.  The kids are encouraged to practice at home and I will run a contest for most improved (not necessarily fastest or best) typist.  In the end, they may avoid the bad habits and inefficiencies of hunt and peck.  One of the challenges is going to be to make it fun.
The rest of this week is devoted to learning all sorts of communication skills.  Here's a short list:  creating podcasts, making iMovies for 'how to videos' similar to those seen on YouTube, writing stories using the voice dictation program Dragon Dictate, and blogging.  I'm afraid to go to lessons on Facebook and Twitter just yet until I have a good feel for safety and online security.  We intend to debate the value of texting versus talking on the phone.  Wish me luck.

The art exploration worked beautifully. We started the week with a great discussion about what art means to humanity, how modern art has changed people's expectations of what constitutes art, and what is the value given to artistic expression.  We then explored a wide variety of art forms and participated in all kinds of project work. Luckily, I was able to have a local modern artist come in and display his work for the kids.  The experience was truly memorable as the kids had a chance to ask all kinds of quirky and fun questions.  The works displayed were really challenging and it made for an engaging activity as they tried to figure out what the artist was up to in the piece, and then be able to ask him directly!  I bought three canvases each for the students and purchased a wide variety of acrylic paints.  The students were challenged to create three pieces: an abstract, realistic and self-portrait. They dove right in and made some beautiful canvases.  Next, we walked to a local art gallery that has formed a collective of local artists.  Here the students got to practice their newfound art appreciation skills and to work with another local artist on clay sculptures. The gallery even sent us home with a box full of paints to finish their sculptures in style!  By this time the students had really caught the bug, so we invited a professional photographer in to run a workshop on taking great pictures.  He displayed his amazing large-scale photos, discussed how he sets up shots, and told stories about working safely with wildlife.  We met him a few days later at a local lake and took pictures using his techniques.  All in all, it was a superb experience for everyone involved. 

We are in the middle of an art exploration unit this week that is ideally suited to inquiry based learning because it allows the students to really examine their own tastes and respond to conscious and unconscious motivations.  The week began with techniques suggested by Eric Jensen to stimulate the brain and get it into a state of readiness.  I began the lessons with games and physical activities to get the kids up and moving and thinking.  My experiences at the ASCD conference were profound in that I learned you really need to monitor and adjust to the the states of your students.  You need to have a handful of simple techniques at your disposal to deepen their thinking and learning.  I liked trying them with the class because it made my teaching much more self-reflective and forced me to constantly put myself in my students' shoes and anticipate their needs.  One great way to further comprehension and long-lasting learning is to consistently provide a sense of ANTICIPATION in your class.  When the students are constantly wondering what's going to happen next, they tend to pay much more attention and their retention of material is greatly enhance.  Superb stuff and it really works beautifully.

My Take on the ASCD Conference can be summed up best by stating that we are definitely on the right track with inquiry based learning.  I learned an amazing amount in a short time at the conference and was able to immediately apply the concepts to my classroom when I returned.  Grant Wiggins reinforced the idea that students need lots of timely and effective feedback to move their skills forward.  Being present and vigilant in the classroom and constantly letting students know how they're progressing with the learning is crucial to moving them efficiently forward. Nancy Frey outlined practical and supportive group work strategies that are crucial to developing a classroom that puts problem solving at the forefront of learning.  My favourite session was led by Eric Jensen who provided an outstanding activity-based workshop on techniques you can use RIGHT NOW to enhance learning in your students by stimulating their brains constantly and reading their STATES in the class.  Again, knowing your kids is absolutely critical to good teaching.  Finally, Louise and I attended a session on using technology with classroom instruction strategies that work.  Elizabeth Ross Hubbell's presentation highlighted great great iPad apps. The conference was an amazing experience, to say the least.

Pete and I attended the ASCD fall conference along with our principal Judith Gatt. The opportunities for learning were tremendous and we came back to school inspired and rejuvenated. Some of the speakers we heard from were Carol Ann Tomlinson, Robert Marzano, Grant Wiggins just to name a few. Two sessions I enjoyed the most were by Elizabeth Ross Hubbell and Alfred Solis. Elizabeth talked about using technology with classroom instruction that works. The potential to change our classrooms into dynamic and differentiated learning environment depends on our understanding of how iPads can be used to enhance the use of research based instructional strategies. Some of the apps she shared were: Infinote- for K-W-L chart, Idea Sketch - to create graphic organizers, eClicker, Mind meister, puppet pals...Amazing info all in two hours. Next Alfred Solis talked about Project-Based Learning. He is from the Buck Institute for Education. You can check out their website - www.bie.org/ for FREE material and resource for teachers.

This week was one I have been looking forward to for a long time.  I always loved studying the explorers as a kid and I was excited to be sharing some of my favourite memories of learning about all of these great and courageous people.  I decided to have a 'film festival' of great explorer movies to really grab the kids' interest.  I started with a wonderful resource that may be available to you or your school board called 'Learn 360'.  This comprehensive site has compiled thousands of videos on every imaginable topic and includes hundreds of movies about the explorers.  The magic of the site is that they've tied it to the curriculum standards, so you know you're not going to be viewing anything inappropriate.  I took a chronological approach, beginning with a short summary of the exploring accomplishments of the vikings and ending with a talk about modern explorers of the oceans and space.  The students formulated great questions to guide their inquiries such as "why were all the explorers men?" and "would the New World have been better off without having been discovered".  Next came a classic 'pick your explorer' research project, but we're doing it with a twist using our Smartboard software and Keynote.  Fantastic stuff so far! 

Truth in Advertising is a unit that the class is currently enjoying and it took the us a few lessons to explore how a carefully crafted a good advertisement is really the combination of a lot of factors.  First, we read some great articles on advertising in a unit from a Nelson literacy unit.  The kids didn't have a good sense of what motivates an advertiser to catch the viewer's attention in novel ways.  I was shocked to see how many of the kids had difficulty determining what was an ad and what was an article in the magazines I brought to class.  Two days of intense study of the core concepts in advertising left the students with a good general knowledge of the core concepts of point of view, gender role stereotyping, bias, target audience, and graphic techniques.  I was lucky enough to be able to use five interactive computer learning activities I had developed through eLearning Ontario.  These can be found on the eLearning site using the 'search' tool under grade five, English language, media literacy and finally the last expectation.  Check out these activities such as "Eye of Beholder", or "What's your Point of View?"
I really enjoyed using my own writing as a teaching tool.