The implementation phase begins

I began the implementation phase with my ENG 1P0 class today.  We did the pre-survey and it was easy for them to understand the questions and complete the survey.  It took them less than 5 minutes.  I am very anxious to take a look at the results for my class. 

We chose to use the term "topic" rather than be specific about the subject matter so that we could all use the same survey.  I was a bit worried that some students might find that wording hard to follow but I explained the topic was Shakespeare and/or Romeo & Juliet and there were no problems at all.  Daniella is having her ENG 1L0 class try the survey tomorrow and we will see if her Locally Developed or Life Skills students have any trouble with the wording.

A few reminders for us later, when we write up the project:

• To make it easier for them, I turned the url into a bit.ly url : http://bit.ly/cotesurvey.
• There is a repeat question in the survey which needs to be changed.

Liana

Welcome to our fellow TLLP participants

I have just linked our blog to the TLLP e-learning site as our first artifact.  Welcome to our first viewers.  We are going to begin our classroom implementation stage right after Christmas and will have much more content then.

We have received our professional reading materials and will have an update of these titles and our reviews of the books after our next meeting in January.

Please check back soon.

Liana, Daniella, Joe and Marc

Math Activities

After teaching the Essential Math class for many years, I decided to incorporate a variety of teaching strategies and activities that I felt would benefit my Grade 10 Applied Math Class. Having a larger number of students in the class as opposed to the small class size and Educational Assistant support in the essential class, I knew the activities that were being introduced would be challenging. My goal was to review the unit of Rates and Ratios through a variety of hands on activities. Some examples include: Comic Strip Grid Art, Wooden Dinosaur Model Building, Play doe Recipe, and a Treasure Map Creation. While completing the assignments, I will be evaluating the overall effectiveness of the activity, interest level of the students, and connection to the curriculum.

Marc

Session #2

It seems as though the talking and the planning are coming to an end, and the 'doing' is beginning. I was a bit relieved that we were actually able to produce something tangible on Thursday and to me that means that we are ready to implement some of our ideas. Personally, once the Learning Centres are up and running I will have a better idea of where I am headed. Our packages and manipulatives are looking good and I think my students will enjoy them. I also worry about the idea of a locally developed class working in a somewhat independent centre. They seem to really stuggle with anything that is self-directed. Perhaps this is something to keep in mind when I prepare the instructions - they should be clear, simple and easy to understand. Next step - final touches on manipulatives and lesson plans. Hopefully this can be in place for the week of Dec.12th.

What's next??
We will once again meet tomorrow to continue to develop and explore the TTLP. By utilizing a variety of learning strategies, we hope to reach students with greater success. For example, implementing strategies such as Choice Boards and Group Centers may increase the overall interest and effort of the learners. My goal is to establish a Unit in Math that will engage students through a variety of learning strategies and activities.

How do we measure our success?
Students will be participating in a pre-survey before the unit of study and post-survey at the conclusion of the Unit. We hope with the data we can come to a conclusion on the success of the TTLP.

Here is a Link to the Pre-survey
https://docs.google.com/a/wecdsb.on.ca/spreadsheet/viewform?hl=en_US&formkey=dFNPZHZNRjJzYkZrMHNzOTJrdUdoTkE6MQ#gid=0

Reinforcing Differentiated Instruction

Thus far we've explored numerous DI strategies at all levels of assessment (anectodal, formative, and summative). Ultimately, this exploration will lead to the most effective approaches in reaching the middle-learner. As discussed in our first session, the characteristics of the middle-learner vary from student to student. Thus, it is necessary to provide multiple learning strategies throughout a unit of study. Currently the goal is two-fold, in that we not only want to raise the level of evaluation for our middle-learners, but also increase their engagment to learn. In my opinion the engagement to learn is more important to secure continued success throughout a given course, and thus will be the focus that I will stress throughout our TLLP sessions.

J. Castagna

Our next session is coming up...

I just wanted to quickly post our goals for our next meeting on Thursday, Nov 17 in the morning.

Purchase all material needed.
Make charts to be laminated at CEC.
Set up a budget.
Solidify our lesson ideas to be posted on the blog and google site.

I am excited to get the project underway in our classrooms.