As mentioned earlier on this blog, students in our program have traditionally encountered difficulty attaining interviews with experts during our annual autumn Eminent Person study – as well as establishing mentorships in the spring’s In-Depth study. To combat this trend, this year the class enlisted parent volunteers to act as “practice” interview subjects. The topic […]
Read more "It Takes a Village"This year I have been entering the classroom-blogosphere alongside Paul Aitken, who as a district middle school humanities teacher had a hand in bringing along a few of the students who found their way into the high school gifted program I teach. Through Twitter, our blogs, and even – occaisionally, when nothing else will seem […]
Read more "Two Coquitlam Teachers: Sixty Blogs"In keeping an ongoing record of our class’ experiment in becoming globally connected and networking learners (teachers most humbly included), I will be occasionally sharing examples of student blogs along the lines of various assignments as a means of both celebrating and sharing exemplars of student blogs and writing, as well as inviting the reaches […]
Read more "Classroom Doors, Open to the World"And these paintings are not landscape paintings. Because there aren’t any landscapes up there, not in the old, tidy European sense, with a gentle hill, a curving river, a cottage, a mountain in the background, a golden evening sky. Instead there’s a tangle, a receding maze, in which you can become lost almost as soon […]
Read more "Keeping up with the TALONS"Every year our class participates in an Eminent Person Study to fulfill components of English and Socials curriculum. As well, the project’s culmination in the Night of the Notables, where our grade ten students (the class is almost evenly divided between grade nine & ten gifted students who attend our school from all over the […]
Read more "On Seeking Eminent People"In an effort to more fully implement the philosophy of our two-year gifted program (grade nine & ten) and its discovery-based interdisciplinary appraoch to study, I began thinking – months ago, even – about ways to integrate Personal Learning Networks and social media into the English and Socials curriculum. With a history textbook that is more than […]
Read more "A New Blogging Year"A few weeks ago a group of my friends headed south to George, Washington to attend the Sasquatch Music Festival and enjoy five days of revelry set against the backdrop of the Gorge Amphitheatre, taking in such acts as Fleet Foxes, Kings of Leon, M. Ward, and others over the course of the weekend. One […]
Read more "The Human Solution of Dancing"