Category: Classroom Practice
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Noticing with Intention
Noticing. We do it endlessly, as we move around our daily lives we observe, we notice, we cast a fleeting thought towards something, and then, generally, we move on. These are small, fleeting, moments. More often than not we think we will remember what we noticed. We have the intention to hold onto our noticing…
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Adopting an Inquiry Stance in Honouring All Languages
Photo credit: danielle-macinnes-iulgi9pwetu-unsplash How can I get started? I had a lovely conversation with a fellow teacher recently. Someone who is passionate about honouring all languages in classrooms and communities. A teacher who works tirelessly to gather resources to be able to meet multilingual learners where they are, so they can best access all learning…
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Elevating Portfolio Practices to Honour Multilingual Learner Identities
Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash I recently wrote about shifting our mindsets towards ‘honouring all languages’ in our learning spaces and communities. As with much that is connected to mindset this can be viewed on a continuum. Sometimes it requires small tweaks and finding ways to elevate current practices, other times it can result…
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Nurturing a Sustainable Culture of Active Thinking
As the school year launches, teachers prepare for their new and returning students, school leaders to welcome new and returning staff and the focus turns to designing ways in which learning communities can come together, develop and thrive. In my experience this often means that team building activities are dusted off and there is a…
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What’s in a name?
I miss the puzzle of learning names. As a School Principal I used to love greeting families, learning student names and being part of the early morning routine welcoming everyone into school. I struggled, I got names wrong, I mixed up pronunciation, put the accent in the wrong place and from time to time muddled…
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Goals, Habits & Growth
Pick a goal, write it down and commit to it. Having a goal is part of the learning process, right? It is embedded in our idea of supporting growth, evaluating achievement and encouraging reflection. We need to articulate where we are headed, develop SMART goals and then work towards these with criteria to assess how,…
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A ‘learning buzz’ in the virtual learning world
I recently wrote about missing the sense of, ‘a learning buzz‘, during these times where many of us have moved to virtual learning spaces. It made me wonder, how can you generate a ‘learning buzz’ in this virtual space? It of course would be fruitless and frustrating to try to copy and paste the same…
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Love for the Learning Buzz!
What have I missed most over the past months of school life? We have been roller-coasting through school closure – distance learning – hybrid learning – back to school – quarantining – distance learning. There are many things – but my first reaction was ‘There’s a learning buzz’. If I asked you to describe what…
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‘Small Moments’
As we approach the beginning of the new school year it got me thinking about ‘small moments’. Our Writer’s Workshop training has focused us all at BMS on how a story can be created from just a simple ‘small moment’. So much of preparing for the welcoming back to school of our students, teachers and…
Jenny O'Fee 