Exit Tickets as Assessment

This year, I created a "parking lot" poster in my classroom in hopes that it will be used for quick assessment "for" and "as" learning. Students will need to answer a quick question or quick 3,2,1 (i.e3 things I learned, 2 wonderings, 1 question - many variations are possible!) on a sticky note and park it on the poster before leaving class. I hope to do this everyday, but not, definitely an end of the week as a culminating self-reflection piece on our learning. I think this will serve as a good indicator of where my learners are and serve as a touch point of how to plan for my next lessons.

What are some of your favourite self-assessment tools?

New Year... New Beginnings!

Welcome to a "revamped" Chung's Learning Space!! I am very excited to start the new school year with an updated blog look and a new promise to post/blog more in this upcoming school year (i.e busy is no excuse)!! I will be working with a wonderful group of Grade 4 learners this year. I am looking forward to learning and working with them and cannot wait to share what we are learning... stay tuned for updates :)!

Inspirational Idea: Re-imagined Guided Reading

Came across this great article that made me reflect on my own guided reading practice. There are some great points raised. My favorite idea for rethinking guided reading is to ask students to determine the most important information but also discuss where students can access tools to learn more/gather more information about the topic! Definitely worth the read!

Re-imagining guided reading in the 21st century http://zite.to/1kqJlxZ

Accountable talk

What are your strategies for accountable talk?

Making Thinking Visible

What does making thinking visible mean to you?

Inspirational Idea: Closing the achievement gap

Great article in today's Toronto Star on closing the achievement gap....  

http://www.thestar.com/bigideas/experts/2014/02/25/work_together_to_close_the_achievement_gap_chris_penroses_big_idea.html

Inspirational Find: The Importance of Fostering Curiosity

This TED talk by Ken Jennings (the infamous Jeopardy gameshow champion) was a find that caught me by surprise....

1) Who knew Ken Jennings was such a charismatic and good public speaker? 
2) His experience and insights from being a gameshow contestant speaks to 21st century learning and my passion of life-long learning 

Through a bit of humour in retelling his experience of being a champion on Jeopardy and then losing to IBM's "Watson" robot contestant, Jennings makes a compelling argument that human knowledge can not become obsolete to the world of technology and computers because we will lose the human shared connection that we foster in relationships. We cannot foster human relations by "googling" facts about each other or knowledge to have a conversation/exchange with someone. Knowledge can be found with a google search and online everywhere, but Jennings makes the argument that as teachers we should strive to do; foster curiosity in students to discover the knowledge themselves. We need to create the motivation in students to want to learn and continuously learn! Take some time to watch this talk, his experience of being defeated by a robot is a really interesting perspective and makes great points for student motivation in the classroom.