Kirsten Nelson

This site collects data to investigate and analyze social justice issues.
http://www.statcan.gc.ca/edu/edu05_0022-eng.htm

I just discovered these online resources for parents/guardians and families. They cover commonly asked questions like “Why are students using calculators?” and “Why does the math that my child brings home look different from the math I remember? “

http://nctm.org/resources/families.aspx

Miquelon, Dale. New France, 1701-1744: A Supplement to Europe. Toronto: Mcclelland And Stewart, 1987.

http://www.4kids.org/games/ has a couple of ratio and proportion games (specifically Ratio Stadium and Dirt Bike Proportions). They are multi-player games that look very simple to set up for four students to play against each other. The would be good for just a ten-minute filler; the numbers are very small and meant for younger kids, but it might be a fun way to start class before diving into “If You Hopped Like a Frog”.

Collaborative Inquiry as Professional Development; from the Indiana Paraeducators Support Project.
Differentiated Instruction; an interview with Carol Ann Tomlinson.
Hippocampus Algebra; good reviews of Algebra I and II (roughly equivalent to our Grades 9 and 10).
Curriki; lots of resources to find, led me to Hippocampus.
Algebraic Problem-solving with Spreadsheets; ideas for a Grade 9 course.
Gender in the Classroom; a Google Books window.
Adding It Up; online book.
Rubric for class participation from Carmel Schettino.
Rubric for Journal Entries from Carmel Schettino.
Gapminder; fabulous data visualization tool.
Women and Math, the Gender Gap Bridged; important research on countries where girls do as well as boys in math (Iceland, Turkey).
E-Stat for Education; tons of Canadian data.
TI Tutorials; good for new students who need to learn to use the graphing calculators we use.
<a href="http://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/special_feature/brain_gains/how_exercise_promotes_learning.html"How Exercise Promotes Learning; CBC National special feature on a school in Western Canada that increased student success through exercise.

We constructed a 4′ by 4′ (sorry, 1.2m by 1.2m – old habits die hard, and gardening was always done with my parents in Imperial measurements) bottomless box today and set it on a former flowerbed, to become the first of our square foot gardens. The official square foot garden method says to fill the box with a mixture of peat moss, coarse vermiculite, and compost; since I’ve read that the current stores of peat moss in the world are holding as much carbon dioxide as the rain forests, it seems like a good idea to skip that and go for a closed-system approach in our backyard garden. We turned over the soil in the box and added the compost from the composter, and planted in that.
There’s, of course, not much that can be planted now, but we planted a square each of peas, spinach, and beets, and half a square of radishes.

Most of the point of growing vegetables is to be environmentally friendly, so we’re relying on scavenged materials.  The sides of the box are leftover siding material from the shed, and the grid strips are from old lattice I pulled apart.

You can just see the tulips coming up on the left-hand side of the picture – I hope the squirrels don’t eat them until after they bloom, this year.

Their website at www.ncgs.org/stem has information relating to STEM initiatives specifically for girls and women.  Includes things you would expect, like profiles of women scientists, and things you wouldn’t necessarily, like classroom climate tips.

I love the game called “SET” for patterning. My friend Sayaka at JUMP Math introduced it to me, and we spent a couple of happy lunch hours playing. The website for the game has a daily puzzle, plus several teacher resources including how to teach the mathematics behind the game.

Strangely, I have never played Blokus, although I suspect I soon will, since our grade 7’s are doing activities with pentominoes in the the new year! The website allows you to play online, either against the computer or against other players worldwide.

Is it too much to ask…  to have a WordPress theme that is two-column, flexible width, and has a customized header image?