Learn Create Inspire

Sharing successes and challenges through teaching while becoming a (hopefully) published author.

Social Justice Symposium: The Stations and Logistics (Ideas to share your own learning!)

Social Justice Symposium: The Stations and Logistics (Ideas to share your own learning!)

The Social Justice Symposium is done and I am exhausted! In this post I run down some of the logistics running a day of sharing learning with the school community. The learning was deep and it represented many different learning opportunities. I am so grateful for my class and all of the people who helped us succeed.

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Exploring and Responding the Hard Things: Talking About Ukraine

Exploring and Responding the Hard Things: Talking About Ukraine

This post explores how I used loose parts, an interactive lecture, and art to help my students start to understand the invasion of Ukraine. It is filled with examples of what I did and provides a few other activities that could be done to support your teaching. My little students with big hearts want everyone to know that they will welcome any Ukrainian people who come to our school and hope the conflict ends peacefully. This is cross-curricular and hands-on.

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Picture Book Study: Exploring the Alternate Experiences of War

Picture Book Study: Exploring the Alternate Experiences of War

As we approach Remembrance Day and Veterans Day, explore the alternate experiences of war through five powerful pictures books. Help teach reading comprehension skills, compassion, and history in a powerful way that every child can participate in. This activity has built in structures to support all students.

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Reader Request: Exploring the First Peoples Principles of Learning

Reader Request: Exploring the First Peoples Principles of Learning

This is a lesson that helped my kids unpack the First Peoples Principles of Learning. We unpacked the language and then used these as a lens through which to view literature. This could also be done at a staff meeting or pro-D to help adults unpack the principles as well. I did make a mistake and have corrected it within this blog post. We are all still learning and when we know better…we do better!

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Picture Books Part 7: Activities Inspired by Anchor Texts

Picture Books Part 7: Activities Inspired by Anchor Texts

Do you like to use picture books to explore identity/core Competencies? This post will give you two activities you can use after reading Count of Me by Migeul Tanco or I Am Every Good Thing by Derrick Barnes. Both activities are hands-on and one involves loose parts/creating a class book using Book Creator.

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Reader Request: Class Survey + Graphing =  Understanding Built With Your Class (Cross Curricular Activity)

Reader Request: Class Survey + Graphing = Understanding Built With Your Class (Cross Curricular Activity)

Turning a class survey into deep understanding. This hands-on cross-curricular activity can help you learn about your class and make powerful class goals.

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Refugee Crisis + Math Lesson = Compassion and Understanding

Refugee Crisis + Math Lesson = Compassion and Understanding

This outlines a cross curricular refugee crisis math/social studies lesson I did today. It includes graphing, counting collections, and the refugee crisis. It is hands-on and each class I worked with loved it. It is our job to help kids unpack and make sense of hard topics.

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