Note-taking is an important learning strategy that can help prepare students to participate in a discussion or begin a writing activity. Notes can be used to recognize students’ misconceptions and questions, and to evaluate students’ understanding of material.
As educators, we all too often do not teach our students effective note-taking strategies, assuming instead that this skill is something that they will learn to do intuitively.
Topics: History, Innovative Classrooms, Technology, Metacognitive startegies, Strategies, Lesson Ideas, English Classroom
I started journaling when I was a boy canoeing the waters surrounding my family cottage in Muskoka. My journals were filled with maps of all the places I “discov
ered” during my summers up north. As the years went by and I entered high school, the journal’s pages of maps became dotted with anecdotes from my life beyond that lake. It was around this time that I found a copy of The Journey is the Destination: The Journals of Dan Eldon at a local bookstore.
Topics: Identity, History, Memorial, We and They, Strategies, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanities Course, Lesson Ideas, English Classroom, CHG, Personal history, reflection
Topics: Choosing to Participate, Facing History Resources, Identity, History, Memorial, current events, Middle School, Lesson Ideas, In the news, Holocaust and Human Behaviour, English Classroom, Social Justice, LGBTQ, Personal history
Facing History Toronto is delighted to introduce five Class Sets now available for our qualified* teachers to borrow and share with their students.
Topics: Facing History Resources, Genocide and Crimes Against Humanities Course, English Classroom, Literature
In “Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Ingredients for Critical Teacher Reflection,” Tyronne Howard notes the importance of finding ways to address the growing heterogeneity of our students cultural needs to “construct pedagogical practices that have meaning to students’ social and cultural realities,” (195-6). Literature Circles are a model that I used, which I have found to be an effective tool for engaging students using differentiation. The diverse nature of my classroom, which is common for an urban school, makes it is difficult to find a single text that will engage each student in the classroom. Since those students who do not engage and read their texts are traditionally the least successful, it is important to try and find materials they will.
Topics: Urban Education, Night, Literature Circles, Lesson Ideas, English Classroom, Red Scarf Girl, Literature, English
One of the challenges many teachers experience is trying to meet the needs of their diverse student population in their respective classes. Differentiated instructions strategies (D.I.) enables teachers to better meet these varied needs and in turn enables students to be successful because their needs are met at their level of readiness, interests and learning styles.
Topics: History, Middle School, Strategies, Lesson Ideas, English Classroom, Literature
In this interview, we asked Rob Simon, Assistant Professor of Multiliteracies in Education at OISE/University of Toronto (Dept of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning), to tell us more about the Teaching to Learn Project so we could better understand how and why collaborative (teacher-adolescent) curriculum planning worked, why he chose Elie Wiesel's Night as the study text, and where he got the idea to ask project participants to paint on the pages of the text as a form of reading response.
The images below are the culmination of those responses, which were mounted in an exhibition titled After Night.
Topics: Facing History Resources, Innovative Classrooms, Holocaust Education, Lesson Ideas, English Classroom
Michael Grover
Teacher
Scarborough Centre for Alternative Studies
Scarborough, ON
Topics: History, Strategies, Lesson Ideas, English Classroom
I’m not sure if it’s fate, or the fact that I’m a news junkie, but it seems as though I can always find a connection between what I’m studying in my classes and the news. This past term was no different.
Topics: Books, Facing History Resources, videos, Lesson Ideas, English Classroom, Literature, English
When I landed my first job as an English teacher at an inner-city high school, I knew I wanted to use the power of stories to allow my students to explore the problems that face our world. Working with students who were at-risk academically, socially, and emotionally, I had my work cut out for me. But I really was not prepared for the preconceptions that my students held, and how difficult it would be to work through them.
Topics: Books, English Classroom, Literature