Sagonaska Students Explain Their Historic Attitudes Toward Learning

"becasue of mr. terupt" We Have Made History

We are currently reading the book called "because of mr. terupt" by Rob Buyea.  

We are just a few chapters in and so far it is a great read aloud.  The book is written from 7 different perspectives, 6 students and the teacher Mr. Terupt. We are starting to investigate point of view.  This will eventually lead us to our Learning Through the Arts sessions, where we will investigate the story behind the story. Although we had a very deliberate reason to read this book, we ended up highlighting some attitudes toward learning that have proven to be extremely important.

As we were making connections to the book, we asked the students to determine which character they thought they related to most.  This is where we struck gold.  Naturally, my teaching partner and I asked students why they chose the particular character.  One of our students asked "should we try to connect to the characters before coming to Sagonaska or after coming to Sagonaska?".  We said both! This is where the magic happened. We ended up having a fantastic conversation about what got in the way of learning at our old schools. I captured the students' thoughts as we talked.

All the large quotations are students' thoughts.  The quotes explained what got in the way of their learning.  All of the small writing explains why students thought the barriers in quotations were getting in the way of learning.  As a teacher, I have never been exposed to these thoughts directly from students before.  I thought that what these students came up with was extremely powerful and needed to be shared.  After debriefing, we realized that although it is important to reflect on these old attitudes, they are in fact historic and have changed.

Next week, we will be having a circle to come up with our attitudes toward learning now that students (and teachers) have been exposed to Sagonaska Demonstration School.

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).