One Teacher's Adventures

Earth Day is celebrated on April 22 every year. As Earth Day approaches, middle school teachers have a golden opportunity to infuse their curriculum with meaningful activities that honour our planet while meeting educational standards. From math, English, and French to social studies, science, and art, here are some creative ways to incorporate Earth Day into every subject: Math: Environmental Data Analysis Project : Engage students in a real-world math project by providing them with environmental data sets related to topics such as air quality, water pollution, or climate change. Students can use mathematical concepts such as statistics, graphs, and proportions to analyze the data, identify trends, and draw conclusions about environmental trends and patterns. Encourage students to present their findings in a report or presentation, highlighting the mathematical techniques used and their implications for environmental stewardship. This project not only reinforces mathematical skills bu

April is not just the month of blooming flowers and warmer weather; it's also National Poetry Month—a time to celebrate the beauty and significance of poetry in our lives. For middle school teachers, this presents a golden opportunity to dive into the world of verse with your students. While some may view poetry as an intimidating or irrelevant subject, the truth is that teaching poetry in middle school can offer numerous benefits that extend far beyond the classroom. Let's explore the top ten reasons why incorporating poetry into your curriculum is a must: 1. Cultivating Creativity: Poetry is the ultimate playground for creativity. By exploring different poetic forms, structures, and styles, students are encouraged to think outside the box and express themselves in unique ways. Whether it's crafting haikus, sonnets, or free verse, poetry allows students to unleash their imagination and discover their own voice. 2. Enhancing Language Skills: Analyzing poetry helps student

Dividing fractions can be a difficult concept for students to understand, but using models such as diagrams or number lines can help to visualize the process and make it more concrete. Here is an explanation of how to divide fractions using fraction strips: Use fraction strips to solve 1/2 ÷ 3/4. 1.      Think through the problem as "How many groups of 3/4 are needed to cover the area of 1/2?" 2.      Draw fraction strips to represent each fraction. Make sure they are both the same size. 3.    Using the diagram, we can see that we would need two out of three of the green boxes to cover the blue area, so we would need 2/3 of a group of 3/4. So, we can solve the question. 1/2 ÷ 3/4 = 2/3. Here is another example:  Use fraction strips to solve 2/3 ÷ 5/12. 1.      Think through the problem as "How many groups of 5/12 are needed to cover the area of 2/3?" 2.      Draw fraction strips to represent each fraction. Make sure they are both the same size. 3.     Using the di

  Teaching vocabulary can be a boring task. Here's a fun, interactive activity that will get your students thinking, talking, and engaging with their vocabulary words, whether they are in English, science, math, social studies, or any subject! Vocabulary Scaling is an activity in which the target vocabulary word is placed at the top of a whiteboard or piece of paper, with its opposite word on the bottom.  Students then have to generate other words and scale them in between the target word and its opposite. Students need to justify why they put each new word at that particular place on the scale, and they can move a word someone else placed if they can justify it.   This is a great activity that can bring literacy into your science, math, or social studies classrooms, as it helps to develop listening, speaking, thinking, and comprehension skills.  So, what do you think? Do you already use this in your classroom? Is this something you'd like to bring into your class? Let me know

  What is Assessment? Assessment is an integral part of a teacher's job. Assessment is a systematic measure of how students are learning in order to improve their learning. Effective assessment practices should direct the next steps of the teacher. Both formative and summative assessment practices should be used in every classroom.  What is Formative Assessment? Formative assessment is a part of the learning process. It provides teachers with a snapshot of teaching and learning while it is still happening. Formative assessment allows for guided practice for students so that the teacher can check the understanding of their students. Formative assessment allows for the teacher to make adjustments as needed and guides future teaching. What are Some Formative Assessment Practices? While this list is far from complete, here are some formative assessment practices that I use in my middle school classroom. 1. Exit/Entrance Slips Exit slips are a quick, written response to a question that

Have you heard about Autocrat? Autocrat is an add-on for Google that allows you to merge information from a Google Sheet into a Google Doc using a template. I learned about this add-on a couple years ago, and now I use it to create report cards, rubrics, student self-assessments, and anything else I can use it for.  Autocrat makes creating report cards super fast and easy because it can be used to automate the creation of the reports. Click on the video below for a demonstration, or read the step-by-step instructions further below to see how it works. 1. Start With a Template Create a template for your report in Google Docs. You can create tags in your template that will be populated by autocrat if they are set up in double brackets, like this: <<tag>> See an example template below: 2. Create a Google Form The Google Form allows you to easily fill in the information you want auto-populated into your tags. This can include student name, strengths, stretches, or any other inf

Teachers are always asking me how to include more speaking and listening activities into their Core French classrooms. For Core French teachers who may not be fluent in French themselves, it is often daunting to speak French with their students. Here is one activity that I like to do to start off my French class everyday:  Question du Jour (Question of the Day). Why try it?  This is my assurance that every student is speaking French at least once in the block.  How do I implement it? I create a question, usually something that fits in to the theme or unit we are studying. I usually have the question written on the board as they come into class. A question during a family unit could be “As-tu des cousins ou des cousins?” A question during a sports unit could be “Aimes-tu jouer au football?” We discuss the question and I ask the student what they think it means. I also use this time to point out grammatical elements/pronunciation of the words so they can make the connection to how the Fr