The Function(al) Teacher

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...

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...

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...