Dance Like No One is Watching

I was on my way home when I passed by a group of Grade 10 students practicing for some dance competition for the coming sports meeting. I can't help but notice one student who was dancing in his own moves. He nailed it!

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!

We got a day and half day off for the Mid-Autumn Festival, yay! I'm spending my afternoon marking. Tomorrow, I will be putting up students' designs on the wall tomorrow. I'm reading "An Hour of Coding" in the Educ 5203 Forum last night and it got doing the Disney Elsa Coding Exercise. It was fun, I did it this morning again and I almost forgot I had a class. It reminds me of my computer engineering days. It has been 20 years since I studied computer programming and I did not practice it anymore after I left school. I'm looking forward learning more about it. One of the Exploring Technology teachers is going to help me out learning how to create 2D games. In fact, I was thinking of using the coding of Elsa for Trigonometry unit of my class if I can. Getting excited!

Long Weekend - Should we give students homework?

I don't know what's trending in Canada right now but in China, teachers give homework for the students to complete during long weekends or holidays. The parents like the idea to see their kids working on something. But for me, it really depends on my lessons.

This coming weekend, is the Mid-Autumn Festival so we got two days off plus the weekend. My students asked me already if I'm giving them homework. I told them for now, I can't think of any since our lessons is very easy for them. At least they get time to relax or do their Chinese homework. Sometimes, I give homework during longer holidays like Chinese New Year or the October holiday. But mostly their homework is mostly related to their English improvement in Math like posters or Powerpoint presentations of their favorite Mathematicians and their achievements or favorite math topics and examples. If they are working on a project, half of the project is done before the holiday and the rest can be finish at home but they have to check in with me at least twice online for follow-up.

What's your opinion?

Clubs Clubs Clubs!

It's my favorite past time - Math Tutorial Club. Weird ey? I had been doing this for 4 years now and definitely I will keep doing it.

What's in my Math Tutorial Club?

It's a weekly meeting every Thursday after class wherein I stay at school for up to 3 hours in my classroom. Any students are welcome to drop by if they need help in their Math courses. I also send some of my students here whenever they have some assignment or journals to finish for the week. I use it for review time whenever we join Math Olympiads. Or if some students have difficulty in class and we don't have time to discuss, I ask them to come and we can continue discuss it in the club.

One good thing I like in this club is I can pull out my best students from previous year and let them tutor struggling students with my supervision. Sometimes, we play strategy games such as Monopoly, Settlers of Catan, San Guo Sha, and others if we have nothing to study about. And sometimes, we watch Blue Jays game too!

What club are you in?

Just Because I can....

Just because I can, doesn't mean I will.

I need to write about what just happened an hour ago. Instead of getting lunch at school cafeteria, me and my brother went to the school shop instead and buy some stuff. I badly need a pen because I'm marking my first quiz in Math and so I decided to pick a pen. I looked at the prices at it ranges from 8 or 15 yuan. I was shocked at the prices, it's very expensive I think. I know how much the prices more or less in China since I had been here long enough to know, a pen should be worth 1-4 yuan but a 15 yuan pen? I was whining loud at the shop and some of my students heard me and asked why. I told them the price was just ridiculously high and I refuse to buy it even I can afford it. It's a rip-off.  So I left the shop and I was thinking of buying out later on. Half an our later, I was sitting in my classroom and one student - Peter Hu (who probably heard me earlier) gave me a red pen. And he said it's only 2.5 yuan and he gave it to me as gift for Teacher's Day. Definitely, this made my day.  

I've been telling my students about wise shopping in Finance Math - just because they can afford to buy things, they will buy stuff because I#they can. They should learn about critical thinking and how important to check on prices and everything about a product because even if they have money, other people will take advantage of the costumers some times.

What's on my board?

So, what do you write on your board? I do write some stuff in the white board such as:

Math Porfolio

One of the greatest idea that I had implemented in my Math class is probably keeping math portfolio for each of the students. I know other teachers had been compiling their students' artifacts in portfolio and like them, I believe it's truly useful.

Here's what I think of the use of Math Portfolio:

1) It's a organizational tool for students to collect and put all their works in one folder.
2) When parents want to know about their kid's achievement, you can use this as evidence of what they do in class.
3) The portfolio is good tool for self reflection for students about their work.
4) This will be a very good review tool for Final review (which I think is the most important use.)

Do you use portfolio in class? What does it looks like? This year, I want to work with their Exploring Technology teacher and let them create an e-portfolio where they can take photos and videos of their work or while their doing their work. What do you think of this idea? Do you think it will work?


Here's some photos of my students's artifacts on their Math portfolio: