How Do I Learn?

Have you ever asked your students to answer this question?  You might want to give it a try, I think you would be pleasantly surprised by the answer. I know I sure was.  A couple of weeks ago, I asked my grade twos this question (It comes from the Inspiring Education document from the Alberta Government) and I wanted them to video tape each other and post it to their blogs (Yes.. you read that correctly, I have my students video tape themselves all the time). If you are interested in going to take a look here are the videos on How Do I Learn. 

After reviewing the video, I picked those I felt the students needed to hear because of what was said. Here is what the students said: 

We then talked about, what evidence shows your learning? I was blown out of the water by what these little people came up with.  Yes... all my reinforcing of vocabulary has paid off.

You might want to try asking your students, how they learn and have a conversation about it one class.  It think it would make for an interesting discussion.

Reducing our global footprint

Earth Day was this past Tuesday and our class decided to collect our garbage and recycling to see how we can reduce our global footprint. The students discovered they throw away a lot of plastic bags as well as wrappers from processed food (shocking I know).

When discussing what they could do differently, they decided to reuse the plastic bags by taking them home and asking parents to reuse them as well as washing out the plastic containers yogurt, apple sauces and fruit cups go into and recycling them instead of throwing them in the garbage. 

They made some reasonable decisions I know they can follow through with. It would be great for you to have a conversation with them about how else you can reduce the amount of garbage thrown away.

Happy Earth Day 365 Days of the Year!