The Function(al) Teacher

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Technology

Technology is a funny thing, isn't it?! In this day and age, we are all surrounded by technology and it has evolved so much within the past 15 years. I still remember when the internet was just emerging when I was a kid. We had dial-up and wouldn't be allowed to be online for extended periods of time otherwise the land line would be out of commission for too long and people wouldn't be able to reach us (unless you had two lines). But wow, how the times have changed. Ask kids these days and they will probably have no clue what dial-up even means! They will never have to suffer from those awful screeching noises as they wait to connect to the internet! But in a way, I feel like the early years of the internet were good because it meant that people weren't on it 24/7. We were only allowed to go on for short periods at a time or if we need to research something. Looking back, technology has come so far from what it was. We find it weird and almost inconvenient now, if ...

Stats & MBF 3C

Liisa kickstarted last week's class by giving us some statistics. She talked about the four different levels of math courses that the Ontario secondary schools offer in grade 11. They are offered at the university level (MCR 3U), college level (MBF 3C), mixed (MCF 3M), and everyday / workplace (MEL 3E). She then had us make an educated guess on what percentage of students we think took each course. To my surprise, my guesses were pretty much spot on! I split my pie chart up almost the exact same way as the data. Liisa's stats were only specific to the District School Board of Niagara but I would assume that the stats would be pretty close province wide. Of course SES and location are important factors that would affect the data but probably not by much. Here was my prediction (I wrote the percentages in afterward when Liisa revealed the actual data): I based my estimates on my previous experience in high school. At my high school, most of the students took university mat...

Grade 11 (MCF 3M)

I always used to think that the mixed and open courses would be a little more challenging to teach. My reasoning was because there would be such a vast variety of learning styles all in one room and I would have to cater to all of them. In mixed classes you seem to get the "university-level" students, the "college-level" students and the students who fall far and in between. Its just as it's name infers - it's a mix! However, as I grew in my education and learned more about becoming an effective teacher, I realized that the mark of a good teacher is one who includes differentiated instruction in ALL courses that they teach, regardless of grade level/stream and subject. This week, three of my classmates did their presentations on the grade 11 mixed course. I especially enjoyed Victoria's mini-lesson. Her lesson was on trigonometry and she created a scavenger hunt-esque activity. Each group would start with the question at their tables. Then, once they s...

Grade 11 (MCR 3U)

I don't know about you, but I can say that grade 11 was probably my toughest year of high school. The transition from grade 10 to grade 11 was not very seamless in my experience. It's not only a time where you go from being a junior to a senior, but your courses are also going from academic to university or applied to college level courses. The workload also seems to increase and since most students are unsure of where to go in the future or what they want to do, they end up taking all of the "six-pack" courses to keep their options open (all three maths and all three sciences - and of course, English). During class this week, my colleagues presented on some very hard and challenging concepts in the grade 11 math curriculum. I especially enjoyed Sarah's presentation. Her presentation topic was trig identities and she had come up with such a creative way to get students to practice trig identities. She had created two matching activities. The first activity was a...

Grade 10

In last week's class, my classmates presented their "mini-lessons" based on a topic from the grade 10 curriculum. Their presentations were very interesting and effective. I wish I had seen these types of activities prior to going out on my teaching block because it would have been very useful in my grade 10 academic math class that I taught. My favourite of the three presentations was hands down the last one by Danielle. Her topic of the night was the Pythagorean Theorem. Grade 10 is the first time that students are exposed to the Pythagorean Theorem. For Danielle's mini-lesson, she came up with a board game for students to practice this concept and it is such a great consolidation piece. It could also be used as a great hook to follow the introduction of a previous lesson on Pythagorean Theorem. Here's a photo of what the game board looked like: Neat, right?! Students first start by rolling the dice and the numbers on each die represent the lengths of th...

I'm back!

Why hello again, it's been a while! So much has happened over this 7 week hiatus and there's so much to share. I am proud to say that I have successfully competed my first teaching block and I had a great experience!! I was placed at a high school in the HWDSB which is known for their academia and IB program. I taught a grade 10 academic math class and observed a 4C math class and a 2D science class. Over all, I had an amazing experience. My associate teacher and my students were great! It was so nice hearing everyone else's experiences when we shared in class. As we shared in our struggles / challenges, surprises, best moments and things we still needed to master, many of us had things in common. For example, a lot of us had similar "best moments" when we saw how rewarding this career really is. It is so satisfying and fulfilling when those "ah-ha" moments go off and the students truly understand a concept. I thought it was so neat how Liisa creat...