Westcoast Teaching

"How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard." - Winnie the Pooh Today was the last day of school. Half of my class has now had me as their grade six and seven teacher and we have built solid relationships and had a lot of fun. I thought saying goodbye to students after one year of teaching them was hard. Hah! Saying goodbye to them after two years is much worse! Alas, they are not my kids and need to be returned to their parents.  To help brighten what I thought might be a less than joyful morning for some, I planned a bunch of fun activities to keep them busy and excited! The distraction worked really well until it was time to leave. Read on to see what we did.  How to Survive a Year in Mrs. Fully's Class Students worked in partners to design an 11 by 17 inch page of life tips for my future students. I gave them a large blank space so that they were not restricted by lines. Enjoy the entertaining samples below.  ...

"If you can dream it, you can do it. Always remember that this whole thing was started by a mouse." - Walt Disney During our vacation to Disneyland last summer I was riding through Alice in Wonderland and thinking about how much I loved seeing stories brought to life. As I enjoyed watching the created scenes and listening to the familiar songs I had an idea. Why not see if my students could create their own smaller version of a Disney ride with a novel we read as a class? Surely it could be done. If Disney could do it, why not us? Good news! We built a ride, shared it with about 280 guests and it was AMAZING! Not only did the young ones learn a ton about communication, creative and critical thinking, and personal and social responsibility, but they also loved every moment of it! If you are interested in seeing how we pulled this off, the rest of this post is for you.  The Launch There is a bit of prep that went into this. Since we were going to be ...

"Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?"  - Henry David Thoreau Recently, I re-read a book called Unselfie - Why Empathetic Kids Succeed in Our All-About-Me World  by Michele Borba . As a teacher, it is my personal mission to prepare students to be successful in life. I use the academic curriculum as a vehicle to teach students even greater lessons of how to be compassionate, empathetic, and reflective members of our class community. My students are challenged in their academic learning and in their character development.  What do kids need to be happy and successful? According to Michele Borba, the answer is empathy. The quotation below gives a quick overview of how empathy prepares a child to be happy and successful in life.  "For starters, the ability to empathize affects our kids' future health, wealth, authentic happiness, relationship satisfaction, and ability to bounce back fr...

"To appreciate the beauty of a snowflake it is necessary to stand out in the cold." - Aristotle Living in Vancouver is amazing! It makes sense that the cost of living here is crazy, we have mountains and ocean and plenty of adventuring opportunities. Our winters usually include a lot of rain and a few weeks of cold air. For those of us who love snow, it is a close drive to the North Shore mountains or Whistler.  The past week has been a bit different. The temperature has been below zero and we have had a few fantastic snowstorms that have caused two snow days IN A ROW! What great news!! It is currently dumping snow as I gaze out the window writing this.  As I was reflecting on how wonderful it is to have a second weekday off, I wondered if all people felt the same way as I do about snow days. I also wondered how many of my students were out in the snow and how many were sitting inside playing Fortnite. The purpose of this post is to provide some creative op...