December 7th is the ATA professional learning day. This is a day for you as a teacher to work on something related to your professional growth plan.

Two of your colleagues have put together a session that they would like to offer to all of you.

The Sit and Get or Stand and Deliver method is something we often fall back on when needing to cover material or get through curriculum, but is proven to be one of the least effective way students learn. Join us for this highly interactive session full of practical ways to teach a variety of concepts by using Movement, Novelty, Deep Thinking Strategies, Interactive and Brain-Based Learning Strategies. There may only be 50 Ways to Leave Your Lover, but we promise, there are more than 50 ways to learn!

North only:  Shelly Cloke and Kim Wedman 1:00-3:00 FMHS Friday Dec. 7th


PLEASE REGISTER BY EMAILING SHELLY CLOKE OR KIM WEDMAN BY 3:30 MONDAY DECEMBER 3.

 The Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada has created a graphic novel, Social Smarts: Privacy, the Internet and You, to help young Canadians to better understand and navigate privacy issues in the online world. This 12-page graphic novel is designed to appeal to tweens and younger teens. Developed with feedback from youth, it tells the story of a brother and sister who learn (sometimes the hard way) about the privacy risks related to social networking, mobile devices and texting, and online gaming. The graphic novel includes detailed black and white illustrations so it can be easily reproduced by educators and parents.
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        The URL:  http://www.youthprivacy.ca/en/gn_intro.html

What does Formative Assessment look like in High School?
"Improving learning through assessment in a high school depends on a deep understanding of the Principles of Assessment, and five deceptively simple strategies along with one BIG idea. So what does it look like in the classroom?

Clarifying, Sharing and Understanding Learning Intentions
Provide feedback that moves learners forward
Engineer effective discussions that elicit evidence of learning -
Activate students as instructional resources for one another
Activate students as owners of their own learning

The BIG idea is teachers need to consistently use evidence they gather about student learning to adjust their teaching, regardless of which of the five strategies they choose. For high schools on the journey to creating a 'culture of assessment for learning', educators must look beyond how they've operated in the past and look to their learners to inform changes in assessment practice.
http://ideas.education.alberta.ca/hsc/blog/2012/10/31/what-does-formative-assessment-look-like-in-a-high-school/

Ian Jukes - series on  -  15 Ways to Be a Smarter Teacher
 Smart Teachers Understand That It’s About Them Not About Us......
Our job as educators is to make sure that, by the time they graduate, they don’t need us anymore. Our job is the same job we have as parents - to help our children learn to walk ... then walk away from. To help move them from a culture of dependency to a culture of self-reliance, and to walk on their own.
http://www.21stcenturyfluency.com/blogpost.cfm?blogID=3096




Nikos Theodosakis     - Please contact Nikos at [email protected]
if you have any questions or need support for the work you are doing with Inquiry learning.

 "Thank you again for inviting me to work with your teachers in Wild Rose last month. Just curious how they are doing with creating and launching their projects!
Here is a link to a book I mentioned during the workshop that my colleague Ian Jukes has put out on Project Based Learning, Literacy is Not Enough" 21st Century Fluencies for the Digital Age
I like how it follows the philosophy of integrating real world outcomes and projects into the design and planning of the project, as I was demonstrating to our workshop participants."
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12397574-literacy-is-not-enough
I would be happy to brainstorm ideas for your projects as well.
Take care, 
Nikos

The Brain and Senses

http://www.childrensuniversity.
manchester.ac.uk/media/services/
thechildrensuniversityofmanchester/
flash/brain.swf
Learn all about your body's control centre and where each part that controls each sense is located.

People become really quite remarkable when they start thinking that they can do things. when they believe in themselves they have the first secret of success.
-Norman Vincent Peale


Please take a minute to fill out this survey on the division professional learning day November 22.
https://docs.google.com/a/wrsd.ca/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dHZFTk5YMFU5ODlOcXE2MlVaV0QtUXc6MQ

What The World Eats
http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/what-the-world-eats


The Power of Good Questions
http://smartblogs.com/education/2012/11/20/fostering-curiosity-here-there-everywhere-john-barell/

Division Professional Learning Day - November 22
The focus for this day is SmartLearning, Assessment for learning and Inquiry learning
Please check out this google document to see what is available for you to participate in:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/16vqNk3OJVgTCetMd1PU57TTjmO397o5o0pWwxddEvaU/edit
Please let your school AISI contact teacher know what you will be doing on this day.

SmartLearning Rounds  - Evergreen School November 19th and 20th contact Mary                Strasbourg
                                                    - Pioneer School November 20, 21 contact Kim Wedman

Creating Makerspaces in Schools
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/creating-makerspaces-in-schools-mary-beth-hertz

"One of the things I love about attending edcamps is that the day is always unpredictable because you don't know what will be discussed or who will be leading conversations until that morning. What ensued was an inspiring day focused on tinkering, exploration and innovation."

"Teaching for learning requires adaptive mind-sets, flexibility, and persistence to puzzle through the day-to-day challenges. Subsequently, we have come to believe that when focusing on teaching and learning, the dispositions of the teacher's mind are more predictive than discrete behaviors. We believe that we need to move away from the old inspector model of teacher evaluation and embrace more teacher–researcher collaborations that work together to identify critical issues and develop a more finely tuned understanding of how teacher efficacy, consciousness, and the other states of mind influence and contribute to excellence in the classroom.

We want a wiser profession, one that is not only technically accurate, but also inspired, sensitive, and proactive. We want a profession that ensures teachers will respond to the world of the ever-changing, unimagined challenges of future generations. This requires a reworking or our entire system and places a premium on creating professional arenas of reflection and growth." - Carol Dweck

Why Third Grade Is So Important: The ‘Matthew Effect’
"What makes success in third grade so significant? It’s the year that students move from learning to read — decoding words using their knowledge of the alphabet — to reading to learn. The books children are expected to master are no longer simple primers but fact-filled texts on the solar system, Native Americans, the Civil War. Children who haven’t made the leap to fast, fluent reading begin at this moment to fall behind, and for most of them the gap will continue to grow. So third grade constitutes a critical transition "

Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2012/09/26/why-third-grade-is-so-important-the-matthew-effect/#ixzz2Bk6MyTrY

Ferrari Engines, Bicycle Brakes

Advice to educators about how to help students with ADHD fulfill the potential of their powerful brains.
http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/oct12/vol70/num02/Ferrari-Engines,-Bicycle-Brakes.aspx

www.2Learn.ca - has some new resources and professional development activities

These webinars will be of particular interest to:

• lead technology teachers;
• teacher-leaders;
• AISI Lead Teachers
  

The first three webinars in the series are scheduled as follows:

• Nov. 28, 2012 - Technology Supports for Inclusion and Assessment
• Dec. 11, 2012 - Online Resources and Meaningful Engagement
• Jan. 16, 2013 - Visual Literacy and Effective Questioning Strategies

Registration is linked above

Inclusion  - supporting every student
http://education.alberta.ca/admin/supportingstudent.aspx

Creativity and Education - why it Matters.....  infographic
http://www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pdfs/Adobe_Creativity_and_Education_Why_It_Matters_infographic.pdf