Learning Never Stops

So much depends  on words  that you speak tempered by your tone embellished by the  curve  of your brow adorning your telling eyes. I love teaching poetry, and yes, you have rightly guessed...this is a sorry imitation of William Carlos Williams', The Red Wheelbarrow . But when days are dolesome, I ride on the wings of poesy and create my own.  So educators! How do you address your students when you are upset? http://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large/angry-owl-michael-rutkowski.jpg

These last 2 weeks have been busy. The students were introduced to the writing process and it took us over a week to get some pieces published. Though I felt quite drained by the end of it, the end result had me rubbing my hands in glee. Their final published work, (though still with a few minor errors), was a work of art! :) I am so proud of my little ones. Not only did the students learn about underlining verbs and nouns and adding resepective adverbs and adjectives, they also had to show when to use commas and quotation mark. Having created a checklist right at the beginning of the work shop helped them stay focused. All the skills they learnt during the course of this term were put to use. Using energetic sentence starters, adding new words from the word wall, and using the thesaurus were among some skills they had to exhibit. Here are some shots of my students at work. Where do you start a paragraph? 2nd draft The writing process, along with...

The other day, I was talking to a colleague about a post I had seen on Facebook. It was about how we need to be in the now as opposed to thinking about the past or fearing what's to come. She commented laughing, on how difficult it is to be in the present. I think she's absolutely right! The funny thing is, the only time we are in the NOW is when we enter the classroom. All our baggage, our fears are left by the door the moment we walk into the room. The students envelop us with their warmth, joy, and laughter. Their needs take precedence over anything else during those moments in the class. We are constantly looking around us, listening to what they have to say. I feel this is the closest to meditation I have ever been!

 These moments should happen more often in my classroom. My students were busy creating  videos, powerpoints, booklets, and posters in order to show their learning. Their unit of Inquiry was about Health and Wellbeing.  Their task :   Identify someone in your environment who is not leading a balanced lifestyle. Based on your understanding of what you have learned in this unit, create a week's plan that your patient needs to follow. Some students were busy borrowing glitter paint and colourful tape (I admit I do get irritated when they rush for these things without a plan, but as they were focusing on time and self-management skills, I had to curb my instincts and hold my tongue...hard job this is!); other students were video taping each other. The class was abuzz. Students were busy. Well, except one. My eyes fell on a child who was doing nothing  apart from watching others at work. At times, he would rush to their aid...

Something interesting happened the other day in my maths class. We had started a new topic, Division. I asked the students to turn on their laptops and talk about their understanding of division. They loved watching themselves talk. Some even put on an accent in order to sound posh! :) Watching the videos, it was clear that some students had a fair understanding of what division was, while other students had no clue. One student said multiplication is division. Another student said it is like division. Then as the lesson progressed, this slowly changed to- it is connected to division, and finally, one very shy and quiet student  exclaimed that it was inversely related to division. Bingo! She had made a connection to the concept of "inversion."  As this was a completely new topic in grade 3, the students started warming up to it using ice cream sticks, which we had in plenty. I asked them to grab a handful and share them equally amongst them...

http://sinistralscribblings.com/category/humor/ It takes a while to get a hang of things when you are doing a Master's course. APA style formatting....brrr the very words send a shiver down my spine. But really. It is not that hard. when you get your knuckles rapped a zillion times by a professor who insists on being called doctor. ( I've even stopped writing " it's" for fear of a disapproving frown from someone. For the past 7 weeks, I had been submitting my assignments to a a very particular professor who evaluated and analyzed each word I wrote. I kept getting my marks shorn off form every corner possible and was at my wits end... ...until the 6th and 7th week, when I finally made it! Her comments: Exemplary planning of instruction based on knowledge of classrooms school and community culture Exemplary instruction on appropriate stages of development, learning styles and needs Extremely clear and well organized and logical flow. ·    ...

This November, I went to Mumbai, India to attend the Category 3 workshop on Transdiciplinary Teaching and Learning. The place was buzzing with educators from all around the world. It was a great opportunity to mingle with people who spoke the same lingo! A lot of questions were answered in the workshop. I have tried to summarize the gist of it all in a short prezi. It would be great to hear from others about their take on this aspect of PYP. Any questions are welcome. I look forward to attending the session on #PYPCHAT which I believe may soon be on the agenda. Transdisciplinary Teaching in the PYP on Prezi