Really Great note keeping program

OneNote is a Microsoft program that you use to organize class notes, lesson plans, unit plans. It's a teachers best friend as well as an excellent tool for your students... OneNote is a place to gather your information, find what you need fast and share your notes and information with others. I recommend that every one get this program to alleviate some of the stress associated with creating lesson plans. You can get a 60 days free trial on the website.
It may take a while to orientate yourself with its tools, but it is well worth it.

History through historical fiction

I was interested in Adrian French’s mosaic project and his use of the novel the Three Day Road as a supplementary text for his unit on WWI. I look forward to one day including novels or poetry into my own history classes and I came across an article that I think will be helpful. The article, by Penny Clark, is titled “Literature and Canadian History: A Match Made in Heaven ?” and was published in the Canadian Social Studies Journal. Despite the somewhat sceptical sounding title, Clark supports the incorporation of historical fiction into the history classroom. She sees literature as a great way to engage historical empathy in students. The article provides a set of selection criteria to help teachers choose historical novels for the classroom. Clark concludes with a quite a long list of historical fiction novels and the time period or topic in Canadian history that each book is associated with. It is potentially a great resource! I will attach the link in case you are interested.

http://www.quasar.ualberta.ca/css/Css_37_1/ARliterature_canhistory_marriage.htm

Field Trips in Victoria!

Hello Everyone,
I realized that many of us are going to be doing our practicums in the city but have not grown up here so we may not be aware of all the experiential learning opportunities in the area. I have listed a few below with their links but if you know of any others please add them to the list so that all of our students get the benefit from getting out of the classroom!

Royal British Columbia Museum: http://www.royalbcmuseum.bc.ca/MainSite/default.aspx
Victoria Native Friendship Centre: http://www.vnfc.ca/
Ocean Discovery Centre: http://www.oceandiscovery.ca/
BC Parliament Buildings: http://www.leg.bc.ca/
Royal Wax Museum: http://www.waxmuseum.bc.ca/
Belfry Theatre: http://www.belfry.bc.ca/
Royal and McPherson Theatres: http://www.rmts.bc.ca/
Craigdarroch Castle: http://www.craigdarrochcastle.com/
Abkhazi garden: http://blog.conservancy.bc.ca/

As I said this is a very short list and I think some of the most powerful field trips would be through connections with local First Nations groups, War Veterans Societies and . So get out there and see what this community has to offer!

Why Teach Canadian History?

This article is a must read for all aspiring Social Studies teachers in Canada. It attacks tradition methods of teaching history that rely on "myth based" and "heritage building" techniques. Rather than regurgitating an official or traditional interpretation of past events, this article suggests that Social Studies teachers should be getting students engaged in interpreting past and present events for themselves. The focus in this particular theory is on teaching historical methods with a Canadian context as the backdrop. The narrative being told is devalued in favour of having students examine source material (be it textbooks, songs, speeches or pictures) in a critical way. The goal is to develop students who are able to navigate the information that they are bombarded with. Hopefully more teachers will use these ideas to help students examine their worldview and the media that they encounter for veracity, bias, context and ultimately make informed, logical decisions about what to believe. If you have a couple minutes this is definitely a worthwhile read!

Right to Play

I remembered thinking about this one in September after Kali posted a message about the NHL eco-challenge but never getting around to posting it. I had read many articles about NHLer Andrew Ference and his personal quest to make the world a better place through his fame (in a relative sense, not compared to other players) and financial resources. Here is a clip of him on "The Hour" with George Strombolopolous http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bvfSqKxzXk as you can see he's rocking a Right to Play shirt in the video and is a beauty talking about his broken leg. Point is, that he is a very positive role model to show to your students. Back to the start of the post, Right to Play is an organization which attempts to spread sport (or play) to disadvantaged populations around the world. They started as an Olympic organization but continued to grow. Now they boast an incredibly impressive athlete list (Gretzky, Thornton, Ference, Malholtra, Reghier just from memory in the NHL), and are becoming a very large and influential group in the world. As someone who considers himself an athelete, I tend to latch on to things such as this and think that many students will be able to find inspiration in right to play or andrew ference's story.

Sir Ken Robinson

www.ted.com

If you need some inspiration on how to make school more interesting, why we should harbour creativity in our classroom or feel the need to challange the way that education has become a commodity in our society watch this video from Sir Ken Robinson (school kills creativity in students). It is funny, he's engaging and if you really want to be a hit with students I think we could learn from his use of humour in speech. After checking out the video, look at the rest of the ted.com website. The number of resources on here are awesome and there are some great videos for use in the classroom or just for personal learning or inspiration. Check it out, you won't be disappointed!

Community Time!

I would just like to give a "shout out" to Jimmy Joe for his amazing work up front today! Complete with the UN hat and pin, he set the tone for respect among the delegates and showed unmatched confidence as he summarized our ideas and made us all truly feel welcome!

Thank you for all the hard work you have already put into enriching our classroom! You will make a great teacher!