Your Options When Hands-On Learning is Overwhelming and Focussed Practice is Required

Today's mathematics is hands-on. This approach to teaching math puts math in context, makes it relevant, promotes problem-solving, creativity, co-operartion, analytical skills, and so much more.

It's wonderful to see such a dynamcic approach to mathematics, but to a student who is struggling specific skills, concepts, and processes, it can be overwhelming to be working on an activity that draws upon so many skills simultaneously.  Sometimes, focussed practice and practical application is what is needed.

If as student does not have a handle on a specific skill, it can make tackling other more encompassing projects frustrating and overwhelming.  Unfortunately, finding quality resources to practice these skills can be difficult. 

Some teachers rely on worksheets found as a result of a google search of the concept or skill, but they are often poorly designed.  The space to complete the work can be insufficient, they tend to be visually unappealing, and rarely include any application questions.

I have created many of my own resources and worksheets to practice specific skills, but I also use the Spectrum Math Series.   It's well-organized making it easy for teachers to pick out pages that cover the specific skills they would like to see a student practice, and builds on that practice with application questions that tie-in very well to the practice pages; there are no surprises for the student when they tackle the application questions.

The Spectrum Math Series covers all elementary grades from K to grade 8, and includes practice on skills such as addition, subtraction, multiplication and division of whole numbers, fractions, and decimals, percent, geometry, volume, statistics and probability, and more.  Each topic has a pretest followed by progressive excersizes with ample practice, and problem-solving/application questions. 

It's a great resource to have on hand to use as needed when extra practice is needed, reinforcement, or review.

Grade 3
Grade 6

Teaching Empathy: Thoughts and Ideas

Teaching empathy and sympathy is not something that can be taught from textbooks.  

That said, they remain qualities that teachers foster in their students... 

...when given the time and opportunity, that is. 

Often the focus in the classroom is on curriculum:  Math, science, reading, and writing.  Rarely does a teacher include in her daily plans time set aside for the practice of empathy.  (Whether it should be part of the daily plans is another debate entirely!).  That said, fostering empathy within our students likely happens incidentally several times a day.

In fact, we are doing it whether we want to or not; in the way we handle conflicts between students, handle a descrepnancy between performance and expectation, or even simply by the way we listen to our students when they share news or their thoughts on something. 
I am a strong believer that when it comes to fostering traits and qualities such as empathy, sympathy, compassion, and others, my role is secondary to that of parents.  

Opportunities within the classroom, however, can give further practice, additional challenges and pressures in applying those traits and qualities, and possibly a different perspective should a classmate or teacher practice the trait differently, apply it differently, or place a different value on it. 

Like the vast majority of teachers, I never included the practice of empathy as part of any lesson plan.  However, if given the opportunity, I would go beyond the incidental learning opportunities and allow my students ample, diliberate, and conscious practice of empathy and other traits and virtues.

By this I mean that I would make an attempt to point out and label empathetic behaviour in myself and in my students during the regular goings-on within the classroom and my students' day.  I might also open a discussion on what "empathy" means, what it looks like, and what it feels like to give and recieve it.  I might find a children's book in which empathy is a theme and read it to my class. 

And finally, I might give them homework to find an example of empathy being practiced in their own lives outside of the classroom walls, or to identifiy or create their own opportunity to practice empathy in their own homes or other community of which they are a part. 

Opportunities to Practice Empathy

One such opportunity might be for the children to write encouraging letters to children their own age who are fighting cancer (see KidsUniteToFight).  This is an initiative of C.O.L.E's foundation; an organization started by Moireen and Aaron Ruotsala after their 3-year-old son died of a rare form of cancer as a means of providing much-needed outreach and support for children and families facing a similar battle. 

Managing Your Inbox

Teaching is a juggling act and there is bound to be a ball or two that get dropped.  For me, the one thing that always got neglected was my e-mail inbox. 

Rarely did I have a chance to check it, and rarer still did I have a chance to act on the e-mails.  Newsletters from various organizations piled up unread, questions from parents got answered if they were able to catch up with me before or after school, and requests and to do's from my Director seemed to get lost somewhere in the shuffle.

An article I read recently has completely revamped how I handle e-mail, and it's made me more productive and less stressed.  I am a visual person and it was incredibly overwhelming to open my inbox to find a 100 messages there.  That amounts to 100 things I was supposed act on that I knew I was going to be able to get to.

Now that I am consistently putting into practice the tips in this article I do not have an inbox with an overwhelming number of messages, and I've been able to prioritize better, filing newsletters away in folders with subject lines that accurately describe the contents so that I can access it when I need it, rather than feeling like I had to read it now, relevant or not. 

If you are overwhelmed by your inbox here is the article that helped me:  Is it time for an inbox detox? 

Other resources include:

Inbox Detox E-Book

E-mail Assessment Quiz

Carlisle Resident Nathan Tidridge Publishes Book on Monarchy

Waterdown highschool teacher Nathan Tidridge has published a book on Canada's relationship with the Crown called Canada's Constitutional Monarchy.  Mr. Tidridge wrote the text in response to the lack of accurate resources on the role of the monarchy in our country.

The book is available at Pickwick Books in Waterdown.  Read the article featured in the Flamborough Review here.

Access his website http://www.canadiancrown.com/ to find information which compliments the book.  You will find information on the author, additional interesting details about the Canadian Crown.

Waterdown's Own Gord Anderson has Book Published on War of 1812

Gord Anderson, an accountant from Waterdown, Ontario, has published a book called Beyond the Great War.  The book, a historical fiction based on facts, is a novel for teens and highschool readers about the War of 1812. 

You can purchase the book at Pickwick Books in Waterdown Ontario.  Read the recent article in the Flamborough Review here.

New Online Resource for Literacy

I just added a new resource which is now featured in the resource section of this website under "Online Literacy".  It is a link to a website called The Power Of Reading. 

Once registered, students can write simple stories with the help of an adult where they become the main character.  Another part I love is that once the stories have been written they can be uploaded to the parent's Facebook account to share their child's story with all of their friends.
Check it out in the Resources section!

Best Practices for Silent Reading: An Article Summary

In 2000, the National Reading Panel published a report in an effort to identify "effective instructional reading approaches" and determine "their readiness for application in the classroom" (Report of the National Reading Panel, 2000).   As part of their research, the panel sought to answer the question:  "Do programs that increase the amount of children’s independent reading [such as D.E.A.R.] improve reading achievement and motivation?" (Report of the National Reading Panel, 2000).

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The report published by the National Reading

Panel was an evidence-based assessment of

the scientific research literature on Reading

and it's implications for reading instruction.
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Despite the extensive use of independent reading practices in schools across North America (Report of the National Reading Panel, 2000) the panel could not find any evidence to suggest that independent silent reading in isolation reliably improves reading achievement or reading skills. 

At the same time, there is also no evidence to suggest that time set aside for silent reading should be eliminated from instructional time altogether.  In a recent article by called Reconsidering Silent Reading (featured on LD Online, 2011), the author encourages educators to revisit silent reading programs and consider how they are both implemented, and supplemented with other activities, to increase their value to student reading achievement. 

Outlined in the article are some important classroom conditions taken from the book Revisiting Silent Reading: New Directions for Teachers and Researchers by Hiebert and Reutzel (2010) that will improve the practice of silent reading in classrooms.  Their suggestions include:

1. Allow students to select their own reading material. 
2. Students should be engaged in silent reading and remain on-task.
3. Ensure students are held accountable for what they are reading and understanding.
4. Silent Reading Programs should include time for interaction and feedback.

Allow students to select their own reading material. Reading material for silent reading activities should be chosen by the student, and students should be able to select from a variety of different reading materials and genres.  The material should be of interest to the child and be at an appropriate reading level.  This is especially important for struggling readers who tend to pick books that they are not capable of reading. 
Students should be engaged in silent reading and remain on-task.  Students should understand that silent reading time is time to practice their reading skills.  Over time, students should be working to increase their capacity to remain in silent reading tasks for longer durations, and should be actively working to improve specific reading skills.

Ensure students are held accountable for what they are reading and understanding.  Students should be held accountable for the time spent in silent reading activities.  The method of accountability should be quick, easy, and straight forward, and can even provide evidence of whether or not certain skills, such as stamina, are improving. 

Silent Reading Programs should include time for interaction and feedback.  Conversations and interactions between students, and between student and teacher should be encouraged, planned for, and supported.  While modelling good reading habits is important, engaging in DEAR at the same as your students may not be time well spent.  Engaging students in conversation about what they are reading may better support their developing reading skills.

For more information on how to support your students in your silent reading program, consider becoming familiar with Reutzel, Jones and Newman Scaffolded Silent Reading approach (2010). See Exploring Scaffolded Silent Reading, or Scaffolded Silent Reading, or this search results page.

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