Teaching Time in an Imaginative and Playful Way

This year I took some time to reflect as a teacher about what made my grade 4/5 students sparkle, curious, creative, and joyful as learners. I noticed that my students really enjoyed learning, and took a lot of ownership when it was playful, imaginative, when they had a voice, choice, an active role in their learning, when they were engaged and motivated about a topic. I noticed that my students strengths were being imaginative, as well as they learnt to collaborate and build on others ideas. So with some inspiration from my students to teach my next unit by incorporating imagination and play and a little help from a couple student sidekicks, I turned my classroom into a Airport for the day and then began a 2 week Mathematical Inquiry about time and travel. Please see post for pictures from my classroom, information about how this event unfolded, and the resources to help you if you are inspired to try something like this in your class.  In this post I also tried to weave in my new knowledge from my Masters course on Cultural Perspectives on Learning and Development. Enjoy! 

http://smilesandsel.blogspot.com/p/this-year-i-took-some-time-to-reflect.html

SEL Resource and Booklist added

Hi Everyone, I've taken some time during winter break to finally update my blog.

During a course for my Masters Degree in Human Development, Learning and Culture I completed a course in Social and Emotional Development in Education. I created for my final project a SEL booklist resource to demonstrate my learning. As I am a major fan of picture books and can't resist the urge to browse titles and figure out ways to incorporate books into my classroom and lessons my final project was a SEL booklist on some of the key topics for my course- Mindfulness, Resilience, Empathy, and Bullying. I've found and used some of these great titles. My project gives you a quick glimpse of the storyline an provide some lesson ideas for the classroom. You can find it all this and links on the page SEL Resources and Booklist or click here 

-> http://smilesandsel.blogspot.ca/p/sel-resources.html

Personal & Social Core Competency Picture Book List

*Positive Personal and Cultural Awareness*

*Personal Awareness and Responsibility*

*Social Responsibility*

Just posted!  I created this book list for a summer class in Human Development and Theory as part of my course work during my Master's Degree in Self-Regulated Learning at UBC. My passion and teaching philosophy is rooted in Social Emotional Learning and last year I did a lot of work with Core Competencies, teaching, and making them come alive in my classroom. This often took place through lessons involving Children's Literature. As I am a massive picture book lover, creating the Personal and Social Core Competency book list as my course project gave me the excuse to go to Kids Books in Vancouver, and add more beautiful titles to my ever growing collection and do some planning for next year. Take a look! I hope you find the book list helpful and that it might be a starting point for your own core competency journey. If you would like the PDF version feel free to comment below or direct message me on twitter @sd36msjames

http://smilesandsel.blogspot.ca/p/core-competencies.html

Core Competencies Learning

I just posted some work I've been doing with the core competencies and picture books in my classroom. See the new page Core Competencies Learning Ideas http://smilesandsel.blogspot.ca/p/core-competecies.html for some ideas and lesson I have implemented in my classroom. My hope is to update this page as I find new book titles and lesson ideas to link to the Core Competencies.

Happy Learning!

~Lyndsay

My Freshgrade Journey & Classroom Use

Freshgrade Learning 

Check out the link to my new page and the rest of the blog entry....

http://smilesandsel.blogspot.ca/p/digital-documentation-of-student.html

2015/2016 school year I used Freshgrade to document and communicate student learning in my classroom. This year 2016/2017 I am using it but have made some adjustments to how I use, assess and post information. I thought I would share as I find it interesting how others use it in their classroom. This year some of the biggest changes have been creating more time to do more authentic student reflections on the activities and learning we are doing in the classroom. I have created a a document with collaboration with some of my colleagues on some sentence starters to create dialogue between students, teachers, and parents and for students to reflect on their learning and communicate their learning. Check out my page http://smilesandsel.blogspot.ca/p/student-reflection.html I hope it is helpful to spark discussion in your classroom. I also have really taught my students this year to be reflective about themselves as learners. It has been a process to gain insightful responses, and create dialogue between students, teachers and parents. I have really invested time this year into commenting on activities, asking questions and pushing my students further to reflect upon their work, and restate the learning outcomes and process of how this learning came to be. 

Check out the link to my new page and the rest of the blog entry....

http://smilesandsel.blogspot.ca/p/digital-documentation-of-student.html

Hi Everyone! Thanks for taking a peek at my new Blog. My intention for this blog is to be a space where I share some of my SEL and Self-Regulations ideas, lessons, resources, some of the processes or activities I have implemented in my classroom, and in general just be self-reflective about my teaching and my teaching philosophy. Feel free to connect, ask questions, and share!