Saturday, October 22nd marked the first day of Ottawa University's Reading Week. Our condensed school and practicum schedule has been incredibly busy as of late, and so this week off has come at a much needed time. However, instead of taking a break from studying and planning, I took the phenomenal opportunity which I was presented and attended the EdInnovation 2016 Ottawa Bilingual Summit on Education held at La Cité College. This two day event offered sessions all day on innovative classroom practices and ideas, presented by teachers to teachers, with a strong focus on technology in the classroom. The goal of this event is to demonstrate strategies that promote student learning and higher education. The University of Ottawa was invited along and allotted spots for teacher candidates to attend this conference as well. This was my first experience at an event of this magnitude and I must say it was fantastic. The atmosphere in the main arena where we all congregated to begin the day was electric. After having time to reflect on my experience now, I am so grateful for this opportunity and am excited to share with you all of the amazing takeaways I have from attending. Due to my work schedule I was only able to attend the Saturday sessions, sharing my spot with another UOttawa teacher candidate. What follows is a run down of all the workshops I attended and a summary of what I learned from each one. There is also a link to each presenter's Google Doc where more information can be found on the presenters themselves and their topics of focus. KeyNote Speaker: Chris Hadfield
"We need to take advantage of all the genius there is out there, inspire, educate, enable. [...] Push the limits of what is impossible, enabling our young people to dream and find motivation to deliberately turn themselves into someone who can reach the maximum potential." As his final words rang out, the room exploded with applause. I turned to a fellow teacher candidate beside me and yelled over the sound, "I just want to go out there now and Do Stuff!". Not exactly eloquent, but I couldn't find any better words to describe the intense sense of drive I was all of a sudden feeling in relation to the words Chris Hadfield had just spoken. To say that the summit started out on the right foot would be an incredible understatement. From the gymnasium we broke off into the smaller workshops and everyone began making their way around the campus to find their next rooms. The two of us sitting together met up with one more Ottawa University teacher candidate and our group headed to our next session with the inspirational buzz following us where ever we went. Session 1: Escape Rooms and Deep LearningOur first hour long workshop was entitled "Deep Learning and Escape Rooms" and was presented by two current teachers from the OCSB. A link to their presentation can be found here. This session focused on how we can use the concept of an 'escape room' to engage students in inquiry-based learning with a specific focus on how to then link the curriculum to this open ended inquiry for assessment. Escape Rooms have become very popular recently, with the premise being exactly what it sounds like: you're locked in a room and you need to escape in an allotted amount of time, solving puzzles along the way to get your lock combinations or find keys to release you. I personally have attempted four different escape rooms in the city, breaking out of three of them successfully with my teammates. They are incredibly fun and I wanted to learn how I could bring this concept into the classroom and get my students involved in the creation of something like this. Above is a photo I took of the types of things the students created to go along with the two different escape rooms that the presenter's classes designed and completed. Based on everything I heard from this presentation, it appeared that although this would be a giant undertaking in not only the classroom but the whole school, it turned out to be incredibly worth it. The process of planning, designing, building, revising and advertising the escape room was excellent for promoting student voice, rapid brainstorming, reflection, collaborative inquiry and the sharing of and listening to multiple ideas. The level of student engagement was huge, and the things the students came up with blew our two presenters away with how creative they were. Finally, it was addressed how this type of project can actually be used for assessment and where curriculum links can be made and infused in the inquiry. Many opportunities for assessment came from students' reflections on their processes throughout the project. There was lots of writing infused into the brainstorming and planning phases. Mathematics and Science can be integrated throughout the process of deciding what sorts of clues will need to be solved in order for those who are actually doing the room to escape. Finally, many aspects of Social Studies were integrated in the researching of the potential 'back stories' each of the rooms would have. This was a fantastic way to start the day and it inspired me to begin to think that large scale projects like this should be brought into the classroom. Although they seem impossible, the outcomes will be amazing. Session 2: App-tastic - Plickers, Kahoot and ShowMe for assessmentThe second session brought us to a first year teacher who actually attended the summit last year and is now presenting at it this year. That fact in and of itself was incredibly inspirational, as it showed that even though we are not yet out of school and into our careers, growth and success within the educational field in Ottawa are possible. The link to the presentation can be found here. This session was all about using different Apps in your classroom to engage your students in valid and reliable assessments that they actually want to take part in and will save you as a teacher time afterwards in the grading and inputting of marks. The three Apps presented are Plickers, Kahoot, and ShowMe (links to each App are embedded). The presenter spent some time introducing and describing each app and offering examples of how she's used them in her own classroom. We were then given the chance to try out each app as a group, participating in whole class quizzes and seeing how the assessment tools work in practice. I enjoyed this session immensely, as I hope to be as aware of methods of technology integration in assessment as I can. I plan on using both Plickers and Kahoot in my classroom during my practicum this semester, as I believe my students will absolutely love them. Below is myself and two of my fellow teacher candidates, Reily and Caiti, having some fun with Plickers! Session 3: Everything is Awesome with Lego ®The third session of the day was not actually one I was planning on attending, but I am so glad I did. The presenter is an absolute genius when I comes to all things LEGO®. The amount of things that one can use LEGO® for in the classroom was actually mind blowing. The link to the presentation can be found here. The most obvious area where LEGO® can be integrated in your classroom is in Math. Curriculum expectations in all strands can be addressed using these tiny little blocks that students (or people of any age, really) love so much. We can address number sense (counting, multiplying, representing numbers), measurement (measurable attributes of objects, standard and non-standard units), geometry (positional language, shapes and figures), patterning (recognize, build and describe patterns) and data management (graphing, estimating) all with LEGO® blocks. LEGO® is versatile, showable (won't break easily if stuck down to a board and can be moved around the classroom), and easily assembled. We can also integrate literacy skills into working with LEGO®, as students can write about what they create in story or personal narrative forms or rules for games or movements though their LEGO® creations. Once again, I found myself thinking about all the awesome things I will be able to do with my students in my upcoming practicum using the things I learned about LEGO® in just under an hour. Session 4: Breaking Out-The Creation ProcessThe final session of the day brought us full-circle back to 'escaping' from things and how this works in education. This workshop was all about BreakoutEdu, a program which helps educators set up their own classroom breakouts. The BreakoutEdu website gives you a summary of what this product is and links to go about purchasing your own kit. However, our presenter gave us information on the alternative methods you can use to go about bringing breakouts to your classroom yourself. The link to the presentation can be found here. We were given some information on the types of breakouts our presenter's students have created in the past and the process she goes through with them each time they begin a new one. We also got to attempt two different breakouts that her students had just created (the photo above shows the proof that we did indeed breakout!). Students get to work collaboratively to solve the puzzles to breakout, as well as when they are in the creation process for making their own. This activity fosters teamwork and communication and is just plain fun. I enjoyed this session very much, as it showed me a smaller scale alternative to the first session's ideas of escape rooms. The concepts are similar, however much less involved and consuming. Students will love using their knowledge of school learned curriculum concepts and applying them to solving or creating breakout puzzles. Once again, a fantastic idea I am glad to be aware of. Final Notes and ThoughtsAs I look back on my notes from the day, there is one thing that sticks out to me the most. It is something Chris Hadfield said at the very start of the day, however I feel that this theme permeated the entire summit and was surrounding us all.
Permission to Dream We are in charge of the growth of our future generations. Possibilities and positive mindsets begin with teachers. There are so many options out there for everyone, we just need to realize that we have permission to dream about them and be encouraged to do anything we want. Our students deserve the best education possible and it is through attending days like EdInnovation 2016 that we as teachers can begin to build this education with them. Once again I am truly so grateful to the University of Ottawa, the Faculty of Education, and all the professors who worked to get these spots for teacher candidates to attend this summit. I hope you enjoyed my thoughts and comments on this conference, and would love to hear your feedback. Thank you again, Miss. Coleman
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I truly cannot believe that is already October 2nd! It feels like just yesterday that I was reflecting on my first day back, and now it's been four weeks and the time has flown. September has been incredibly busy. I spent my first two weeks of school in the classroom at St. Michael Catholic School, which was absolutely amazing. I already feel as though I have learned so much and it has only just begun. I have also had two weeks of classes at the university, which have been very informative and have given me so many valuable resources for my future teaching career. Some of the tasks which I have been involved with so far include thinking about curriculum planning and reflecting upon my own experiences in elementary and secondary school in relation to explicit, hidden and null curriculum, critiquing a Phys. Ed. or Social Studies resource I have used in the classroom before, as well as presenting a grade appropriate gym lesson to my colleagues and explaining its relevance to the Ontario curriculum. There is still so much to do, and finding my school/study/work balance is going to be crucial for me to succeed during this semester. Meet Ms. Watson's ClassAs I mentioned previously, I am placed in a Grade 4/5 combined class at St. Michael school in Ottawa. I already love every day I get to spend with these fantastic students and cannot wait for my 6 week Practicum to begin in November.
One of my favourite responsibilities with these kids is the creation and maintenance of our very own classroom website. I am very interested in learning about ways to integrate technology into my classroom, and a year long class website and blog was something I was very excited about starting and overseeing. I personally wrote the first three blog entries for the class, with some input from the students, but mostly on my own to showcase what we had been up to each week. This past week however, we turned the creation of the weekly blog post into a language activity, and so I took a group of six students and we co-wrote this week's update. If you follow the link below, you will be able to see the very first student-written post for Ms. Watson's 4/5 class. mswatsonsclub.weebly.com/classroom-blog/best-week-ever Feel free to further explore our class site and catch up on all the awesome activities we've done and the experiences we've had in our first month. Stay tuned for my next post where I talk about all the exciting ways I have discovered to integrate technology into the classroom, my further university class assignments, and the interesting lessons I have created for my 4/5's so far. Thanks again for reading! -Miss. Coleman |
AuthorJessica Coleman holds a Bachelor of Education as well as an Honours Bachelor of Social Sciences, both from the University of Ottawa. She is an Ontario College of Teachers certified teacher, currently working towards a Masters of Education degree at uOttaw, as well. Archives
September 2018
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