mrslryan's teaching resources: November has arrived!

October seemed to have flown by with my schedule being very busy. I thought I would share with you a few of its highlights!

1. Provincial Professional Development day!
Mine turned out to be a couple of days as I attended the CCSDL conference. This stands for the "Canadian Coalition for Self-directed Learning". My school belongs to this coalition and this year we hosted the annual conference in Vancouver, BC. We lucked out with some good weather (no rain!) and a couple of evenings of clear skies which made for fun evenings with colleagues and conference delegates. The conference was open to anyone who teaches in a CCSDL school and is also open to those who are interested in what we do in our schools as our teaching model is far from "traditional". Our school (Thomas Haney Secondary) opened in 1992 and is in a building that was specifically built for teaching and learning in the 21st Century. With much unrest in BC during the preparations for our conference we were very excited that it was pulled together and definitely ran smoothly. After a day of "visitors" to our school during a day in session, the conference moved downtown to the Pan Pacific Hotel and conference centre in Vancouver. We had a beautiful view of the harbour and got to meet people from all over Canada and some additional visitors from Vermont this year. This is a picture of the Pan Pacific where the conference took place. Since I have been teaching at THSS since its opening I always enjoy being able to meet with others who are stepping outside of the box and trying new teaching methods.

2. Halloween!
The staff and students get really excited about Halloween at our school and our student council puts on activities during the lunch hour for the entire week. Along with this our languages department hosted a multi-cultural seminar. This seminar began with a video of "Voici L'Halloween" from YouTube (great version in French) and it was followed by a celebration of "Day of the Dead". We combined a celebration to include students studying both French and/or Spanish. Here is the activity our students did while in the seminar. Great decorations around our classes and hallways. :)

3. Le festival de fromage!
We are studying "la Suisse" in French class for our unit and wanted to bring a bit of Switzerland into the classroom. So, we had a cheese festival. The students signed up for a type of cheese or baguettes and I brought in the Swiss chocolate. What a feast! Each student had an oral activity to do which included describing and comparing the different types of cheese. Goat cheese is particularly popular (along with Swiss cheese) for those students who are lactose intolerant! Everyone can enjoy!