Shelagh Macdonald

We played 200 or bust in teams to practice adding up to 200. Students were a tad excited! See comment for instructions…

Sound on. We went outside today to collect sensory details to write spring poems. I think I will be seeing a lot of poems about the wind! 🌬️😂 #PoetryMonth @AndreaDignam

Students were so engaged today at our session with the informative and talented @MASConline First Nations artist Amanda Fox. @KanataHighlands

Forget worksheets! Create a template that allows students choice and room to show their thinking, and lets them work without pressure to “finish the sheet.”

I love when you see an instructional strategy really work. Daily number talks have led 2C to having such great flexible thinking about numbers!

An open task that engages students by allowing choice and creativity, and provides an opportunity to bridge concepts of skip-counting, repeated addition, and multiplication in Gr. 2/3.

How many different ways can you arrive at an answer of 24 is a great open question for Gr 3. One student told me “One of the things I admire about you is how you ask a question, smile, and then walk away!”😂

That magical moment in the Spring of Grade 2 when your daily structured phonics and syntax lessons leads to students researching, jot-noting and writing paragraphs about the solar eclipse independently!

2C and 2/3A had busy minds as they worked on representing and solving some fraction problems together. #thinkingclassroom @Wipebook

While Gr 2s were having a science workshop, Gr 3s dove into altering some Scratch code to show a table of values. I ❤️ learning alongside my students!

When you teach phonics explicitly, students understand phonics. #UFLI #activelearning

Learning about the MEAN in Gr 3 means thinking about equalizing groups using a hands-on activity (with some fun dice, and a little competitive point-keeping)😁

These wonderful students created, practiced and presented an interesting and informative presentation on Lunar New Year to 2C. Bravo!! @AndreaDignam

Student-made purposeful practice! Students made 4different representations of the same multiplication fact and then we used the cards for a memory/concentration game. Fun!

I created a balancing equation game for 2/3A today. Students set up their board with 3 different equations and then took turns turning over dominoes and placing numbers on their board. Quite a lot of thinking involved as some numbers are impossible!

2C worked on some domino challenges to practice balancing equations. Can you find 2 dominoes that are equal to 1 domino? Three dominoes equal to 3 dominoes?

Yesterday, 2/3A were tasked with writing 2 expressions with the same value. I put one of them up around the classroom, and typed the other one into a doc. Self-differentiated purposeful practice. Great focus and perseverance!

2C is using “piles of tiles” to show how to balance an equation with addition on one side (2 small piles) and subtraction (1 big pile) on the other. How many did you have to take away from the big pile to balance your equation?

Some #openmiddle equation fun in 2/3A this afternoon. What are the highest and lowest possible values for the equations? #thinkingclassrooms