The importance of financial literacy in primary classrooms.

Financial literacy is far too often over looking in the primary grades. We tend to push it off until students are older and have more control over their money. However financially literacy is valuable in Primary grades for a few main reasons.

#1. Start young to build into real world problems with more complexity!
When you start young, students can build on their knowledge and we can scaffold them into more complex thinking earlier. The lessons can fit with the math curriculum expectations and incorporate data gathering skills! If we start these young, by the time students are of age to get a job, they will have a much better idea about money management.

#2. This is the kind of learning that engages kids
This is real world learning!!! Students can use knowledge from all around them, from how much their favourite food at the grocery store costs, to learnings transferable skills like making change. This connects to their present and their future!

#3. Family involvement!
Some lessons could be take home! Get some bonding time with someone who does the grocery shopping. Facilitate simple discussions about money management between parents and students. This is a positive way to open up communication with out turning it into financial stress for the parents and students.

Sample Lesson:

GROCERY SHOP TILL YOU DROP!

This can be done in an actual grocery store or in a virtual manner.

1. Each student gets a budget of $10 to spend.
2. They must get something from each food group with their $10
3. The goal is to spend as close to the $10 as possible without going over, while still fulfilling the requirements.

This is just a fun little exercise for students to practice their money management skills!

Pinterest... a Teacher's Secret Weapon

Digital literacy is becoming increasingly importance as electronics and technology stake their claims in our classrooms. Teachers have to constantly adapt and come up with new lessons and new ways to keep their students engaged. One of the best tools a teacher can learn to use for their planning and instruction is Pinterest!

Pinterest is a website that you can create an account and essentially collect or “pin” links and ideas on just about anything and everything. This makes it an elementary school teacher’s secret weapon. Pinterest is a fantastic resource for  teachers for so many reasons…

1. SHARING IS CARING

There is no copy right on pinterest you can re-pin photos and links from other people’s boards as freely as you wish. In fact, this type of sharing and re-posting is actively encouraged. Teachers can collect and share ideas for lessons that other can see, use and add to. Finding inspiration can be difficult half way through the year, or when you have some particularly unengaged students, but with pinterest, you have a plethora of tips, tricks and fun activities right at your finger tips.

2. NETWORKING

Not only can you borrow ideas from other teachers, it is an excellent way to network and collaborate with people you may not have otherwise met. As much as technology has taken over a large chunk of our social realm, our social skills are still as important as ever. Although we may practice them through social media or technological means, the concept is the same. Networking opens up opportunities, for just for career advancement, but for personal growth in your teaching. Could you imagine what a couple teachers from different school boards, provinces or even countries could come up with in an open, fun online setting?

3. IT’S VISUAL

            We learn a lot about Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences, and how our students have different learning styles. As teachers we strive to reach each student on their terms because we want to see them succeed, but sometimes we forget, teachers have learning styles too! Just because the majority of your students are auditory learners, doesn't mean you are! Pinterest is developed on a visual platform that is appealing to look at and work with. If you like to see your ideas develop on a screen in front of you, Pinterest is for you.

4. ORGANIZATION IS KEY

            Our lives are busy, we can’t deny it. How many times have you seen something online, loved the idea and book marked it, and then it was never seen again. It's hard to keep track of all the articles, and posts we come across on a daily basis. Enter, Pinterest. The functionality of a board is to collect “pins” that you now have access to again later. You can have as many boards as you want, dividing them up by subject, grade, or anything else, and then pin each thing in the appropriate board. This is an organized teacher’s  dream.

5. THERES MORE…..?

Not only can you find some awesome lesson ideas… I’ll link a couple below:

The Lorax Lesson

Adios Textbooks!

Root Beer Floats Matter!

You can find ideas for so much more. Classroom atmosphere, desk set up, decorations and classroom management, the list goes on. You can find all of it on a variety of Pinterest boards. So maybe you're not using a Christmas décor for your room in Decemeber, Pinterest has you covered with other culturally pluralistic ideas. Are your classroom management techniques losing their effectiveness? Take a look on Pinterest for some new techniques to keep your students on task and engaged.

There are so many resources out there for teachers, professional and otherwise. Pinterest is a fun, casual way to enhance your teaching, your classroom, and youre student’s learning!

The Journey Continues...

As a Con-Ed P/J student, we're all in the same boat. This is the final semester of our undergrad before we embark on the year where we are supposed to gain all the practical skills to run a classroom, Teachers College. One of the benefits of the Concurrent program is we have the opportunity to learn select skills before we enter our 5th year through compulsory education courses. One of the most important and foundational skills we have been learning is lesson planning. I am luck enough to have been lesson planning in some capacity for years, but the skill is ever developing. Every lesson is different, every student is different and no two experiences will ever be the same. From teaching a simple camp game, to teaching long division, lesson plans are essential in the effectiveness of your teaching.

Here are some of the key tips I have gathered through out the years:

1. KNOW YOUR STUFF!
The better you understand what you are teaching the better able you are to impart that knowledge on your students. Be able to answer the questions that students more than likely will have. Be prepared with alternative ways to explain concepts. The means understanding the curriculum documents and all of the essential understandings.

2. BE CLEAR
The best advice I ever got on lesson planning came from my boss a couple years ago. He told me to "write the lesson plan, like the person reading it has never played soccer before". I was writing out plan for a drill I intended to run. With out thinking, I made the instructions quite vague, writing under the assumption that whoever read it would know what I was talking about. After a discussion with him, I went back to the drawing board, re-wrote clear instructions on how to carry out each step and included what equipment would be needed as well as diagrams to further show what I had envisioned. Turns out, I was sick the day the lesson needed to be done, and someone else had to work off my lesson plan! The drill may have been a disaster if I had failed to go back and put the time and work into making it user friendly.

3. BE PREPARED
The world isn't perfect. You could have the best math lesson lined up, where you planned to use lego to teach addition. It was going to be fun, hands on and effective. The day comes... and you realize you don't have enough lego for everyone, or the teacher down the hall needs it at the same time. This is when my nature as a planner gets tested. There are two options here:
Option 1. Go back in time and ensure you have all the lego you need, and you have made sure it's all yours for the period OR
Option 2: IMPROVISE. Work in partners, combine classes, move the lesson! The possibilities are endless for you to be flexible and prepared to change your plan and adapt to the curve balls life in the classroom is sure to throw at you.

4. ADAPTATIONS 
Wouldn't it be nice if every single student learned exactly the same way as you. They had the same strengths, understood things in the same ways? I think we all know this is unrealistic, and to be quite frank, boring. Every person you encounter has a different set of strengths, understandings and weaknesses. In your classroom you are sure to encounter some exceptionalities that may make it difficult for that student to complete your lesson in the way you had hoped. These could range from a learning disability to a language barrier to a physical limitation and beyond. Be aware of these exceptionalities and be ready to adapt your lesson plan.


5. BE EXCITED 
The more excited you are about the lesson, the more the students will buy into it!

Cell Phones in the Classroom

Cell phones, specifically smart phones have become a permanent appendage to students hands. This issue has gone through stages that many people in my age group have experienced. At first cell phones had basic features, and weren't a major problem in class, considering many students even up to grade 9 did not have them. Then we saw them explode in high school. Classes were riddled with disruptions and unengaged students on their phones. We are now moving into a time where classrooms are starting to embrace technology. We have everything we could possibly need to know at the tips of our fingers with a smart phone, and if used appropriately it can help transform our lessons.

Ben Johnson, a long time teacher wrote a blog on edutopia about how he manages cell phones in the classroom. When he asked students why they insisted on having their cellphones with them at all times, and they cant just disconnect for class, the invariable answer he got was something along the line of "it's my life". Some of the major issuse he addresses is the disengagement in class material because of the full engagement in whatever is on their phones, the texting language creeping into school work, and the inability for students to have downtime without going straight to their phones. You can read more about Ben Johnson's experience here http://www.edutopia.org/blog/how-manage-cell-phones-classroom-ben-johnson

I personally feel like this is the age of technology and fighting against it in classroom has and will prove futile. The "you take it out, I take it" approach hasn't really gotten us anywhere because student will be right back on their phones when they get them back, and this really hasn't motivated them to engage in material, it's instead causing them anxiety about who could be texting them or a number of other things. The curriculum in place as of 2007 addresses media within language arts, and this is a step in the right direction towards a technologically engage classroom. If we could include a lesson on how to use technology appropriately in a classroom setting, apply strict ground rules, and supervision the possibilities of taking our curriculum far beyond pen and paper are endless. 

However, like with any new system, there will be some foreseeable issues. 

What subjects can we allow technology in?

What if a student does not have or cannot afford the technology their peers have?
How will the teacher monitor up to 35 devices to make sure the students are being appropriate and productive.

There is not easy answer for any of these questions, but they are something we can work on to work towards a technological inclusive classroom, and yes, that means BYOSM (Bring Your Own Smart Phone)

Drake S. M., Reid, J. L., & Kolohon, W. (2014). Interweaving curriculum and classroom assessment: Engaging the 21st century learner. 

          
Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press.

Hodas, Steven. 1993. “Technology Refusal and the Organizational Culture of Schools.” Educational Policy Analysis Archives:1(10).

Teaching with Current Events

What student has time to read the paper? Really, what student has time to go looking for current news? One of the most valuable pieces of advice I have received from a Prof came from an off the record comment telling us to make our internet browser's home page a news site. I personally have CTV News as the site that comes up every time I open my browser.
http://www.ctvnews.ca/

We tend not to think about the connection the News has to our life, to our education, but everything that happens in the world creates a chain of events. Education as a whole is a part of a dynamic social and political system that is changing every day, so why wouldn't it be important for us to keep up to date on our world? This issue was brought to my attention when following a blog found through one of the sakai  links. It was a New York Times article 50 Best ways to Teach with Current Events . 

The first idea I want to talk about is "News you can Use". Ask any 3rd grader, the news is boring, it's a man or woman on the TV talking about something they don't understand or don't care about. This right there is the fundamental thing we can change. Start by having students list some of their interests, then the fun part comes. In a controlled internet environment we can let their tech savvy little brains find a piece of news that speaks to one of those interests. This is where media and current event literacy comes in. Much of our "current news" comes from a twitter or facebook news feed. While this is great for social upkeep, we can help student learn early where they can find information about current events that are outside of their direct environment. 

There are endless ways we can use current events. Writing activities like critically analyzing the story being presented, identifying the POV or comparing and contrasting the same or similar stories from different News outlets. It doesn't just stop at writing, there is the potential for lively debates to enhance critical thinking and public speaking skills. You could do a scavenger hunt, teaching them to navigate all the different news outlets from internet to newspaper to the evening news. The possibilities and modes of delivery in the classroom really are endless. 

 Burns, M. (2013, May 17). Free iPad Apps to Teach Current Events. Retrieved October 5, 2015. 

Gonchar, M. (2014, October 7) 50 Ways to Teach With Current Events. Retrieved October 7, 2015. 

Hopkins, G. (2013, October 3). Twenty-Five Great Ideas for Teaching Current Events. Retrieved October 5, 2015. 

The "Be" Controversy

To make meaning of Canadian curricular outcomes, we use the "Know", "Do", "Be" framework, or KDB. Let's break this down, the "Know" and the "Do" are more objective concepts, easily testable, objective, and can be turned into something tangible. We all like tangible things. We feel at ease with tangible things. It's when we get into the disputed, subjective, "Be" part of the frame work, thats when we start to see people struggle.

The story goes that there was a boy who preformed up to standard academically, achieving the "Know" and the "Do", but failing to hit par on the "Be". The school felt the boy did not reflect good values or character, and therefore failed to pass him. Now, you can imagine how angry his parents would be, suing the school claiming the wrongful failure of their son on the grounds of the values the school came up with.

The "Be" is a value base concept that exists not only in school but in all aspects of society. To fulfill and exceed the "Be" we are supposed to meet the values set out for us, by showing good character, having good work ethic, and overall being a pleasant, societally accepted person. In schools, these values are implicitly interwoven in the curriculum. They have their shining moments in character awards and social justice education, but who decides what values are important, and how they are assessed? This is where the problem comes in. There is no standardized test for being a good classmate, yet teachers feel increasingly like character in the classroom matters. The school boards addressed the issue of assessment of the "Be" by reflecting them in the learning skill and work habits portion of the report card. However, the problem here, is there is very limited space for explanation and we'd be lying to ourselves if we thought this assessment wasn't entirely subjective.

So I'll just leave these questions here...
Does it really matter if you're character is on point if your are excelling in academia?
Is the "Be" really necessary in the framework? and if it's not, what can we expect from society in the future as we move towards a more competitive nature, leaving character and values in the background.