Some more Best Practices

Best Practices
From our group we had a variety of schools to draw our experiences from. One student
teacher was in Kamloops, another in Duncan and two in the Greater Victoria area.
There were two public schools, a private Catholic school and an alternative
education school. I would like to share some of what we discussed in class on the
four topics.
1)Governance
-Keeping students busy will reduce the amount of interruptions and distractions.
-Use of a focus activity to start the class. A puzzle or question on the board to
get students in the mood for thinking or working.
-Calling attention to the student by name to bring their attention back to the
class instead of reprimanding them.
2) Resources/Materials
-Sony e-books were popular with students.
-Project work where students brought material from home and from family history.
- YouTube clips used in some classes to illustrate a point.
3) Activities/Teaching Strategies
- Building a 3-D model of a medieval village or town.
- A circle discussion about an article of an interview of a famous physicist as a lesson in a quantum physics class. Philosophical and personal to each student.
- Capitalizing on teacher’s personality.
4) Problems/Questions
- Staff complaints about under funding.
- One school was able to get a grant to purchase some smart boards but did not have the budget to pay the maintenance staff to install the boards. The maintenance workers union would not allow any none-union workers to do the instillation so the smart boards were left sitting in the school basement.
- One English teacher did every class in a computer lab. Students spent more time cruising the internet than working on the class assignment.
troy