The Week of February 15 - 19, 2016

What a wild week!

After an extra long weekend and a winter storm spawning havoc on travel, I was a little worried. I didn't think I was going to have time to get students prepared for their transition meetings!  Due to the pure grit of my students they are all very well prepared for their meetings.  Slideshows, videos and readings have been created and rehearsed.  These students continue to amaze me! At the beginning of the week I didn't think that we would be done. I am really looking forward to the students having a chance to show what they know about themselves, their growth as learners and what they have accomplished so far at Sagonaska.

Report cards have been mailed out! Look for them in your mailboxes.  After you have reviewed them with your kids, please sign them and send them back.  Please be sure your students are bringing their home going folders back to school.  We need them in order to send any important information and homework home.  Your child has an important newsletter from the director if education in their back packs.  Please take some time to read through the newsletter and fill out the survey,

Have a great weekend with family!

Three Things to Remind Your Students of Daily

Three Things I Remind My Students of Almost Daily

1.  There is no such thing as "NORMAL". For some reason, people are always comparing themselves to others.  I am not sure if this is innate or something that is learned over time.  However, when we compare ourselves to others, or we compare others to ourselves, we put ourselves in a very vulnerable position.  

It is no secret that the students I teach have learning disabilities.  I constantly remind my students that "if we were all "normal" we would all be the exact same". Thus, life would be boring. We would all look the same, we would all learn the same way, we would like the same things and we would all eat the same food!

Imagine all 7.4 billion people in the world loved pepperoni and cheese pizza and that's all we ate because we thought it was normal. We would all be extremely tired of eating pizza. We would never be exposed to french onion soup, lasagne, roti, cheeseburgers, pickles, sushi... The point here is that life would be EXTREMELY boring!

2. People who live with any sort of disability are intrinsically hardworking.  I know this is not a proven fact, however it is a strong theory.  I find that students with LD's have to work harder than students without. This is because they need to be cognizant of how their LD affects their learning and how they can work around their LD in order to learn. If you haven't seen Angela Lee Duckworth's TED talk on Grit, I suggest you take a peak. 

3. Every "need" a student faces can easily be seen as a "strength". I explain this to my students with many examples, my favourite is the student that has a memory deficit.  I say something like "If a student asks how to do something 7 times because they keep forgetting what to do, what is this student good at?".  At first I get a lot of baffled looks, then I say, "If a student is comfortable asking questions, they are likely strong self advocates!". If these students don't ask questions they will be left behind.

As a teacher in a school for students with LD's, I find a lot of kids with a lack of confidence in learning.  Many students I see, have been inadvertently conditioned to think they can't learn. When students are reminded that no one is the same, they are gritty and their needs highlight their strengths, their confidence begins to be restored.  This confidence in learning is a very important condition for learning. What will you say to your students tomorrow?

The Week of February 1 - 5, 2016

Eureka!

Mr. Hayes and I had a talk Wednesday night.  We chatted, at length, about how our students have hit their groove! Students are becoming more independent and taking their learning into their own hands! As a teacher, this is a big deal!  It tells us a lot about our kids.  Most importantly, it tells us that all of the hard work that they have been doing is paying off! I had a few good talks with the kids this week. Both chats were celebratory!.  The first talk was to celebrate the grit that the kids are full of.  It is important for our students to be recognized for their hard work so that they know they are hardworking.  The second talk we had this week was to explain to students how far they have come.  This allows the kids to really understand that they have made progress.  We looked at what DRA the student came in at and compared it to the DRA they are at now.  The looks on the kids faces, went from bewilderment to joy.  The bewilderment I think came from the kids comprehending the progress that they have made.  The joy obviously came from the understanding that the students are getting better at reading! 

I am very lucky to have a chance to be a part of your child's journey to becoming readers.

Transition Meetings are Coming!

We started last week getting ready for upcoming transition meetings.  We have asked the students several questions about their LD's.  Some of the answers that I have looked at are unbelievable! The thoughts and ideas they are sharing are extremely deep.  Something else I am doing is using the York Region's waterfall chart to help explain to the kids how their LD works.  Some powerful stuff here! The Waterfall chart is very technical and complicated to read so, I sat down and turned it into "kid friendly" language.  Don't worry, I sat with the school psychologist to be sure that I got it correct!

Scientists in the Classroom

Today we had Nancy and Lori from "Scientists in the Classroom" in our class! We had a very fun time learning about particles in matter.  I was excited to see how well the students were explaining their thinking. If you follow us on the Twitter, you will have seen our tweets about what we were doing.  If you haven't followed us on Twitter yet, you should! (@Mr_DzzzClass).

The Week of January 11 - 15, 2016

Students began the week by investigating the importance of point of view.  The entire school will be involved in "Learning Through the Arts" where a digital media artist (Martha) will be coming in and working with our students.  Sagonaska has been involved in this program for several years and it always proves to capture students' curiosity and gets them learning through the arts.

Students worked hard on their geography Minecraft assignments which you can look at in the other blog post called Our Sustainable Community Assignment. Students had a great time working through the assignment and did a great job illustrating their learning.

Students also had a full hour of brainstorming ways to Self Advocate when they get back to their home schools.  Something we take VERY seriously here at Sagonaska.

Have a fantastic weekend with family and friends!

Our Sustainable Community Assignement

Students have been working hard this week in Geography trying to create their own communities in Minecraft! The students were assigned three questions in Google classroom and were provided success criteria to help them out.

Here is what the assignment looks like...

After some independent work, students were given a chance to conference with teachers to see where they could bump their work up prior to handing it in.  The students did good job self regulating in order to get their job done.

As the teacher, I witnessed students who were not only engaged in their learning, but excited to share their learning too.  Our next step is to create short videos of the students' communities which explain the why behind the what. I can't wait to see what the students come up with!

NOOOOO... The Holiday is Over!

NOOOOO... The Holiday is Over!

It is Friday January 8, 2016 and you would never know that students are coming off of a two week vacation! For the most part, students fell right back into routines.  This tells me that the work that we are all doing together is working!
     On Monday as students were welcomed back to the classroom, we talked about setting goals in order to make our dreams come true. We begin with a dream, then make small goals that will help us to make our dreams come true, kind of like planning backwards.  In class, our dream is to be EVEN better students! Yes, even me, the teacher!  In order to do that, one of the goals we are working on is to "take advantage of the time we get here at Sagonaska".  Students don't want to be sitting in the classroom with eyes glazed over thinking about the skate park when their classmates are learning about the world's resources (we are learning how resources allow people to survive and thrive).  So as a class we discussed the importance of being active participants in our own education by taking the reigns! Students are stepping up to the plate and "walking the walk"!
    We changed our morning routine a little bit.  Instead of having morning announcements over the P.A. system, we have a brief circle lead by a different class each week. This gives us all a chance to greet each other first thing in the morning and set the tone for the day ahead. Ask your child if they like it so far.
     Now that we are really grasping the whole idea of decoding, I have asked that each student bring something to read from home.  Some students chose novels, magazines, graphic novels, picture books... anything really.  We are going to start to read these books instead of the run of the mill "piano books" we have been reading as of late.
     Students should also be deep into their audio books.  Prior to the break we talked about characters and character traits.  Students have a full blown character sketch due on Thursday January 28, 2016.  Please ask your student how they are doing with this activity.
     As you may or may not know, all of the students at Sagonaska use "Google Apps for Education".  Google has created a series of free apps and put an educational spin on them.  They are much like Microsoft's Office, but presented on a web based platform.  Just before the break, most teachers (including myself) got certified as Google Educators after writing a 3 hour exam.  Although the exam was long, the staff (Mr. Smit included) thought it was important to do this.  We want to "practice what we preach"!  If you haven't already, please ask your child to go through their Google Apps with you.  As advocators for your child, it is important that you know what they use to learn too!
     All in all we have had a fantastic week, and I can't wait for next week!

The Week of November 30 - December 4

It's already December!

All this week we are investigating the importance of healthy eating.  Lisa and Nav are registered dietitians helping us through not just the Canadian Food Guide, but the reasons behind it.  Lisa and Nav are the experts in the classroom!

Dinner with the Junior Girls

Tuesday night, all of the elementary teachers were invited to the Junior Girls' residence for supper.  We made homemade lasagna using my secret sauce recipe.  Although the oven took forever to bake dinner, and we had a lock down practice, dinner turned out to be fantastic! 

Around the table from left to right: Helen, Mr. Di Donato,Jessica, Rebecca, Emma, Maggie, Abbie, Molly D., Sarah, Mrs. LeSage, Bella (pink shirt by couch)

Sagonaska Works Out at Belleville Crossfit

Our class (minus Maggie who went with the grade 8's) on the way! Don't worry, we were parked when I snapped this one!

 Students working hard through their workout!

 Students learning the proper form of the burpee!

While at the Crossfit gym, Coach Bowman warmed the students up, taught them proper form and technique, then put them through a workout.  The work out consisted of 15 squats, 15 burpees, 15 sit ups and 15 push ups. Most students did at least three rounds! We have some seriously fit kids!

Goals

I am almost through reading diagnostic assessments with the students.  That means, our reading goals are changing!  We have made a system where students can see their progress because we have kept the achieved goals behind the current goals.

     We have new writing goals too! We are currently writing scripts to perform for the Holiday Extravaganza on December 17! Students are learning about the importance of descriptive writing with lots of organization, focus, descriptive details all in order to produce a clear mental image for our audience. 

This is the descriptive writing matrix that allows students to self assess their writing.  They also use this success criteria to help each other bump up their work.

     We are working through the math problem solving framework which was created right here at Sagonaksa by our very own Mr. Richardson and Mr. Brown!

So far the students in grade 7 have investigated the first 4 sections. Next week we will be working though the last two parts! This framework allows students to plan exactly how they will solve problems in math!