Thanks for your thoughtful comments. I have seen a lot of movement over the years since the advent of the smart phones. Like you, I have found the students to be using their phones very effectively – whether it be to record their science observations using slow motion settings or to keep track of their homework assignments…Read more

Four years ago almost to the day, I wrote an article for our school’s weekly newsletter. It was about travelling with students. It was inspired by the negative reaction of a person to the fact that students […]

Thanks for your message. I always appreciate your ideas and suggestions about how to keep moving the work forward. I like the idea about generating questions in the energy unit by bringing in some interesting things. I am going to think about how to do that in upcoming units. The more curiosity there is, the more engagement…Read more

Thanks for your note and encouragement. I appreciated your description of the trial and error nature of this work. I think each group is going to need slightly different approaches – I hope that we can figure it out during the scaffolding stages!

It has been great to get to know you and share ideas!

Thanks so much for your message. I have really appreciated the opportunity to work with you and all of the help and encouragement you have given to me. I also appreciated your work as the moderator on the fall Twitter gathering and the February Hangout. You are patient and encouraging – your students are so lucky!

Take care,
Dan B.

Thanks for the heads up about the slide deck – I thought it was working. I will…Read more

This image […]

In response to some of your questions, I have a great group of colleagues to work with. We plan together and teach quite a bit together. We are trying to push inquiry as much as we can and…Read more

Thanks for sharing this post about your work. It was very interesting to read about how a concern from parents caused you to pivot and spring ahead with your action plan. It sounds as if this allowed you to focus your plan more sharply. I really appreciated the list of steps you have set out for your students. As someone who…Read more

For now, we see through a glass, darkly… – from an old letter

While trying to address my “How might […]

What an energetic and energizing post to read. I think it is just great that your varied “How might we…” questions have coalesced around this book. I am going to add this title to my ever-expanding reading list. I will be interested to know how the first session with the students goes this week.

Thanks for your message. I agree with you about the “unit test” and share your questions about its usefulness. Is it about the students’ accountability or the teacher’s? We use short quizzes in our science and social studies classes to find out what we don’t know about what our students know or don’t know in a “taking the temperature”…Read more

Thanks for this – your comments always give me lots to think about! I like the idea of having them try to envision an alternate history. This presents the neat challenge of figuring how much they need to know and understand in order to make an educated guess about what could be different i.e. how much do we need to know about what is to…Read more

Thanks for your message and ideas! I am increasingly trying to share the load with the students. I am very excited about working with them on this as I interview them for the action plan. I think this is a great place to start. If we know more about their hopes and fears, we can dial in the scaffolding a bit better. The problem with…Read more

Thanks for your message and ideas! I often think about the talk that you gave about “taming” and try to keep it in mind when our reach does not make contact. I am going to follow up on that article to read it more closely too. I think back on my Grade 6 homeroom days when I taught Language Arts, Math, Socials Studies, and Gym and…Read more

Thanks for your post! I am regularly thinking about this mix. I do think you are right in your view that you have to have some basic knowledge. I am going to look into reading “Curiosity” as it might help me feel better! I do take some consolation in a conversation I had in a former work life. A well-known jazz drummer had passed away,…Read more

Thanks for your note. I did a 3-day Grade 8 history lesson plan for my Special Education AQ relating to the treaty process, the Indian Act, and the residential schools. The first lesson/discussion/reflection was on the nature of the early relationship between Indigenous peoples and Europeans with a focus on the Columbian transfer. The…Read more

@sregli

Thanks for your response. I agree with you about doing what we can. One of the things I like to do is to try to express my love for what I teach and honesty when I know we are in a bit that might be a slog. We know that there is a fair amount of valley between the mountaintops. Or, as someone once put it in a talk I heard, there is a…Read more

I appreciate your ideas on this and think that conferencing is a great way to go. Like so many things with teaching, this is a process for me and, perhaps, for all of us. One of the things I am working on is trying to couple growth thinking with meaningful feedback. I think conferencing is a great way to do this, but I…Read more

I will check this site out!

That is great advice – I have come into this learning opportunity looking at how to increase student engagement through inquiry-based learning in science and social studies. My classes, like yours perhaps, have a wide range of learners and learning styles, so I think inquiry is…Read more

I am all about the learning journey, and I have started on a big one today at Cohort21. I learned a lot, mostly about how far behind I feel with […]

As I consider the year ahead, I am looking forward to thinking about and getting advice on how best  to introduce inquiry-based le […]