Fostering Effective Relationships

Personal Inquiry Project

The ChrisTmaS Workshop (view PIP project booklet) was born out of a desire to use the CTS department’s time, talents, and resources in a manner that gave back to the community. I collaborated with fellow teachers to long range plan how various pathways (i.e. foods, fashion, multimedia, woodshop, etc.) could delegate a 20 hour fall module to having students make products that not only targeted learning outcomes, but when assembled formed [secular] gift bags. To further cement the workshop idea, I took it upon myself to create a gift bag using tools/materials found within our school’s CTS classrooms. The bag was delivered to a young family from my PS1 elementary school community.

Personalized Activities

This is an example of how I turned student interests into a learning based activity (Art/LA). I noted a large handful of students in my grade 4/5 class were constantly drawing. Some had gone as far to start their own comic club. Knowing this, I ran an art lesson where students folded and assembled their own pocket-sized “Cartoon Faces – Mix and Match” booklets. To demonstrate the booklets purpose, I invited students to take turns coming up to the Smartboard to add one facial feature at a time. After several quirky cartoon heads were drawn, I challenged to fill the pages of their booklets with various facial features collected from books in our class library. They could then refer to these pocketbooks during recess, lunch, and within certain language arts exercises.

Remembrance Day Video

I edited a 30 minute Remembrance Day video that we broadcasted amongst our school body, and inside of some seniors homes in the community. In respond to the unpredictable COVID context, we (interns) adjusted the formatting of the assembly to be a pre-recorded video. We invited some community members such as MLA’s, teachers, veterans, to submit video content. We received overwhelmingly positive feedback from many who were deeply moved by the video.