Churchbridge Public School’s Second Annual Canoe Trip

On June 7^th, four students and two teachers from Churchbridge Public school drove to Misinnipe, Saskatchewan. We stayed the night at Otter rapids before meeting with our guide from The Churchill River Canoe Outfitters. After an amazing four days of paddling on a series of lakes we returned to Churchbridge late June 11^th. This year’s participants were Alex Margarit, Avery Cornelius, Jacob Reetz, Kevin Krantz with Mr. Unchulenko and Ms. Palmer as supervisors.

The four students participating were orientated on canoeing techniques, camp life, safety and environmental issues.  The canoe trip is an excellent opportunity to experience a part of northern Saskatchewan that few people in Saskatchewan ever experience.  Students were responsible for hauling their own gear and group equipment as well as setting up camp and preparing meals.  As well as canoe experience students were presented with the opportunity for exploration, fishing, and hiking.

As you can assume the costs involved to make this activity happen are not small. Although our school covers a portion of the transportation costs, students are required to fund the rest. In order to lessen some of the financial burden of this trip we applied to SOEEA for support. We used the $250.00 that SOEEA granted us to reduce the food and gas bills. On behalf of the students and staff of Churchbridge Public School I would like to send out a big thank you to SOEEA and SaskLotteries for their support!

If you are going to be in Grade Eleven or Twelve next year and are interested in being a part of the 2012 canoe trip please contact Ms. Palmer for more details.

Have a GREAT summer!

Ms. Palmer

I'm Back!

Hello,
With all of the craziness over the last month I have neglected to complete the blogposts. Although, I have continued and will continue to update the google calendar attached below. Due to the amount of days I will be away next month without computer access again please refer to the google calendar for any dates or times of events in class.
Thanks,
Ms. Palmer

April 27th, 2012

MATH 8
-Complete pages 180-182 # 1,3,7,9 and p. 186-187 # 2,4,5,6a,7a,8,9,10

GRADE 3
-Worked with the pedometers
-Created boats and sleds using static electricity and magnetism

ELA 9
-Read chapters 8-10
-Discussed memories and their importance to society
-Had an informal debate

PE 7/8
-Swedish Mile
-High Jump
-Shot put
-Ukrainian Baseball

There will be a track practice Monday after school next week.

April 23rd, 2012

MATH 8
-Worked through p. 170 together as a class.
-Started the vocabulary handout. Not homework.

GRADE 3
-Worked through two static electricity experiments.
-Had PE with the 1/2 class.

ELA 9
-Reviewed chapter 1 of The Giver
-Read chapter 2 together
-Discussed the idea of "release" and what would fall under this category.
-Independently or with a partner read chapters 3 and 4.
-Worked in groups to analyze the characters and community in the book.
-Wrote a paragraph long psychiatric evaluation of the main character Jonas.

April 19th, 2012

MATH 8
-Completed the division Exemplar

GRADE 3
-Badminton
-Comparing countries in Social studies.

Early dismissal.

April 18th, 2012

GRADE 3
-Guided reading
-Badminton
-Began our unit on Family

HEALTH 6/7
-Finished healthy ads from last class and started the tobacco assignment.

Track practice for grades 4-8 will occur today after school.
Early dismissal tomorrow.

April 17th, 2012

MATH 8
-Daily Math
-Mental Math
-Finished the exemplars
-Worked on the pre-test for our next unit

GRADE 3
-Guided Reading
-Developed our views on similarities and differences amongst people and how it relates to needs and wants.

ELA 9
-Finished Individuality posters
-Think, pair, shared our ideas on community
-Created our own personal utopia's.

PAA 8/9
-Finished and presented the Green classroom designs
-Worked on the Food lab habits and review sheets on safety in the kitchen.

Track practice tomorrow outside. Please dress warm.

HAVE A GREAT BREAK EVERYONE!

Floor Hockey

GREAT JOB Grade Three and Four girls at the Saltcoats floor hockey tournament. I know it wasn't easy with a mute coach but you worked hard and were sportsmanlike all day. You should be proud of yourselves!

March 28th, 2012

ELA 9
-Finished presenting final projects
-Prepared portfolio's for interviews next week.

SCIENCE 3
-Reviewed last class
-Created abstract art using magnets, paperclips, and paint.
-All Floor hockey notes need to be in by tomorrow.

PE 7/8
-Began preparing for Indoor T&F
-Continued with Badminton
-Return T&F forms by Friday of this week.

MATH 8
Worked on the Unit Review. We will continue this assignment tomorrow.
We will have a TEST WEDNESDAY APRIL 4TH.

PAA 8/9
-Viewed a narrated version of the Lorax and connected the themes and characters to the units we are studying.
-Researched an article on sustainability.

March 27th, 2012

MATH 8
-Daily Math
-Mental Math
-Do the Investigate p.462 with a partner
-Go over connect and ex. 1 & 2 together
-Assignment p.467-469 #s 6, 7, 9, 11, 13, 14,

GRADE 3
-Learned how to create our own magnets and what will be attracted by them. Remember to bring your Floor Hockey notes back by Thursday.

ELA 9
-Had a smashing good time at our Midieval feast. Thank you to all of the parents who helped the students with their dish.
-Began sharing the final Romeo and Juliet projects.

March 26th, 2012

HEALTH 6/7
-Read the first two chapters of Maureen Ulrich's books before meeting her the following period. No homework.

ELA 9
-Last day to work on the Romeo and Juliet projects. Everyone will present at our Midieval feast tomorrow afternoon.

GRADE 3 PE
-Practiced for the floor hockey tournament. Please return parent letters by Thursday of this week.

PE 7/8
-Continued with our Badminton unit

March 20th, 2012

ELA 9
-Worked on Romeo and Juliet Projects

GRADE 3
-Worked on the Children's Rights ABC book

MATH 8
-Corrected Mental Math
-Went over yesterdays assignment
-Completed p. 450-452 # 4,5,6,7,8,9,11,12. This assignment will be impossible without linking cubes so if you do not have them at home you can complete the assignment tomorrow in Math.

PAA 8/9
-Worked on the Western Red Lilly project
-Set up the Aerogarden

Best of luck to everyone at the music festival!

March 19th, 2012

GRADE 3
-Worked on the Children's Rights ABC book. We will continue working on this tomorrow.
-Practiced for the floor hockey tournament on April 3rd and 4th.

ELA 9
-Those who did not go to festival worked on their Romeo and Juliet projects.

Blog Post #1

· Blog Post 1: Explain the e-learning principles your lesson includes and how they promote critical thinking skills.

Clark and Mayer (2008) describe critical thinking as the “evaluation of products and ideas” (p.342). Although many of the e-learning principles were considered and applied to this lesson, the principles within the storyboard that most effectively promote critical thinking skills are:

• Personalization – Presenting information in an informal, conversational style cognitively prepares the learner to engage with the material being delivered.
• Pretraining – Teaching some of the key concepts and facts early in the lesson helps learners new to the self-regulation theories reduce the amount of cognitive processing needed to make sense of the ideas.
• Segmentation – Breaking the lesson into small portions helps novice learners understand and retain the information for longer periods of time by avoiding cognitive overload. Understanding the content more deeply provides them with more opportunities to analyze the content and make connections to the different applications.
• Worked examples – Providing students with an example of how to identify and remedy self-regulation issues within the classroom visually demonstrates correct actions and a template to follow for future situations.
• The modality principle – Including narration as opposed to text helps the learners to make meaningful connections between the content, examples provided, and real life experiences.

All of the preceding methods work together to reduce the amount of cognitive processes necessary to understand the theories of self regulation and how to apply them to their own classes. When students are not straining their resources to comprehend the lesson they have more chances to practice the concepts and critically analyze the effectiveness of their efforts. Therefore, each of the e-learning principles allow the instructor to progress the learning from basic understanding to higher order thought processing that involves manipulation of the ideas and applications.

Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2008). E-learning and the science of instruction, 2nd edition. Pfeiffer: San Francisco, CA.

Blog Post #2

· Blog Post 2: Evaluate how you applied research-based guidelines to your lesson and how these guidelines enhance learning.

Abiding by the contiguity principle, which refers to placing appropriate amounts of text in close proximity to the graphic it is attempting to describe has proven to require less cognitive energy than if the text was separated from the topic. Since each section of the lesson is segmented into small portions, each slide is self-sustaining. This eliminates any referencing back and forth between slides where the learner can become frustrated and confused.

Practice exercises were also implemented after each small section of the presentation and followed up by effective feedback. Providing students with opportunities to apply their knowledge in a practical and work-specific format has proven to enhance the long-term learning effects of the lesson. The feedback given after each practice exercise clarifies for the student their progress and how to improve. Rather than simply stating whether or not the student’s response or action was right or wrong, explanatory feedback will be provided so that the learner can identify their errors and make improvements.

A collaborative activity is used at the end of the lesson to further the learning experiences. By sharing ideas, perspectives, and experiences the students learn to critically analyze each other’s contributions to determine how they can be improved and applied to their situations. Clark and Mayer note Slavin (2011) in e-learning and the science of instruction for stating that “Cooperative learning methods are extensively researched and under certain well-specified conditions they are known to substantially improve student achievement in most subjects and grade levels” (p. 344).

Clark, R. C., & Mayer, R. E. (2008). E-learning and the science of instruction, 2nd edition. Pfeiffer: San Francisco, CA.

Blog Post #3

· Blog Post 3: Describe where simulations or games might be appropriate to use to enhance learning in your lesson.

Simulations would work very well to enhance the learning within this lesson. Adjusting the practice questions so that they are simulations rather than just questions, answers, and feedback would help the students transfer their knowledge into work applicable situations. The lesson is currently set up so that after each segmented lesson students would have an opportunity to test their knowledge by answering specific questions about what they just learned. Changing the questions to simulations or including simulations after the questions would promote student engagement and require the learners to combine all of their skills to complete the work-specific task at hand. An example of this would be creating a simulated classroom full of different types of learners. The role of the teacher would be played by the person completing the simulation. The goal of the simulation would be to identify as many different student self-regulation difficulties as possible. The next level would require the teacher to choose the most effective and appropriate tool to help the student regulate their own learning. Finally, the last step may ask the participant to assess the effectiveness of their efforts in the previous level and to adjust their tactics according to the student responses. The types of students used for the simulation could be based on data collected by occupational therapists in their area. Therefore, participants would have to identify their general location before beginning the simulation.

Even though the benefits of using educational games to teach and practice skills are quite popular and can be effective, I would not choose to use a game in this lesson. Since the topic of learning modifications can be a sensitive one and should be treated with complete professionalism, a simulation would provide the necessary practice and critical thinking skills without running the risk of having the lesson’s tone be misconstrued.