Nation Builder News
Treaty 4 Education Alliance - January 2019
In This Issue
- Setting New Goals for a New Year!
- Focus on Literacy
- Nation Builder Engagement
- Focus on Numeracy
- Engaging Families, Parents, Caregivers, and Community
- Spread the Love!
Hello 2019! What goals have you set for the new year?
What is a goal? Why is it important to set goals?
"A goal is an outcome, something that will make a difference as a result of achieving it. It can’t be too ambitious to be out of reach, but also not so simple that it does not challenge. A goal has to be realistic with a stretch, requiring effort and focus to achieve it. That’s why goals need timeframes and measurable action steps along the way so that we can keep track of progress and make adjustments as necessary." (www.mrswintersbliss.com)
Christina Winter's blog will help you and your colleagues and students get focused on goal setting - don't forget to take time to celebrate accomplishments along the way!
Focus on Literacy
Confident Learners
The link to log into the web app is: https://app.confidentlearners.com/#/login. If you are unable to log in, check your junk mail or "other" folder in your educationalliance email. If you cannot find your login information, please let me know asap by emailing me at sballard@educationalliance.ca.
The beautiful thing about the Confident Learners program is that it pinpoints the strengths and weaknesses of your students and then it provides the lessons that you need to work on these weaknesses. It also allows you to focus on the needs of your students and monitor their progress.
Once you become familiar with the lessons, the next step it to monitor the progress of your students. You can do this by using the "record" tab and scoring the students on the specific skills. Once a student has been flagged for assessment, you complete a step-by-step assessment. These assessments should be done approximately every 6 to 8 weeks. The goal is to have the students consistently moving along the pathway in order to fill any gaps and keep the students challenged.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact either Rhonda (rkayseas@educationalliance.ca) or myself (sballard@educationalliance.ca) and we will be happy to answer any questions & support you where necessary.
EYE- TA
Welcome back to the second half of the 2018-2019 School Year. We wanted to share background information on the Early Years Evaluation Teacher Assessment for your use. The reports generated by the EYE-TA can be used by both teachers and caregivers to inform decisions made for each child's developmental growth.
The EYE-TA provides information about:
- Awareness of Self and Environment - A child’s understanding of the world and his or her ability to make connections with home and community experiences.
- Social Skills and Approaches to Learning - A child’s attentiveness during classroom activities and his or her ability to interact with peers while respecting the classroom rules.
- Cognitive Skills - A child’s basic math and pre-reading skills and his or her ability to solve problems.
- Language and Communication - A child’s understanding of spoken language and his or her ability to express thoughts and feelings
- Physical Development - Fine motor: A child’s ability to perform small movements that require hand-eye coordination. Gross motor: A child’s ability to perform large movements that involve arms, legs, and body.
Now What?
Information from the EYE-TA is used to identify children who may be having difficulty and who may need further support or evaluation. EYE-TA results, along with other assessments, help teachers determine the type and amount of support required for each child to succeed in the classroom. This assessment provides the information to directly work with each child in an area such as recognizing colours, helping to clean up at home or in the classroom, sorting items (colour, shape, size), sharing with others, climbing on playground equipment, or working on puzzles, just to name a few.
Features and Benefits of the EYE-TA
The main role of the EYE-TA is to help inform teaching decisions. Teachers have said:
- The EYE-TA provides a framework for assessing the developmental strengths and areas for growth of children at the start of school.
- The skills assessed by the EYE-TA inform teaching in the classroom.
- The EYE-TA assesses five domains of early learning closely associated with children’s readiness to learn at school.
- Online data entry gives teachers and schools immediate, multi-level reporting.
Treaty 4 Education Alliance offers our Community Learning Advocacy Network (CLAN) as a support network for family, caregivers, and community in meaningful and relevant ways in the formal learning program. These supports are for families who have children between the ages of 0-7 years of age. T4EA supports the development of community-based projects to support the success of children and youth, through our goal to support each child's development as young Treaty 4 Nation Builders.
Please visit our website at https://educationalliance.ca/our-family/ and contact anyone on the School Success Planning Team for further support.
Improving Comprehension: Questioning
"Questions lead readers deeper into a piece, setting up a dialogue with the author, sparking in readers' minds what it is they care about. If you ask questions as you read, you are awake. You are thinking. You are interacting with the words."
"You want to encourage children to ask the real questions, those questions that really puzzle them, even if you can't answer them."
Encouraging Your Child to Ask Questions:
Start with a book, any old book. Look at the cover. Carefully. What questions come to mind?
It is OK if you do not know the answers to all of the questions. Tell the students what you know. Start a discussion before you even open the book. By doing this, you are teaching your students that asking questions not only helps develop a deeper understanding of what they read, but it also helps them gather information before they even read a single word.
"Questions send readers on quests. They cause readers to seek, pursue, and search for answers or deeper understanding."
Tips to Encourage Questioning:
The best way to teach your students to ask questions is to model what it means to be curious. You do this by sharing questions that you have while you read. This does not mean that you are asking the students questions, it means that you are asking questions that come to your mind. Don't rush to the answers right away, let the answers hang in the air. Ask several questions of your own and then let the children take turns asking the questions that pop into their head.
As you read a book as a class, use chart paper to record your questions. Take time to point out when the questions have been answered. Discuss the questions that might not have answers. Is there a place where you can find the answers outside of the book?
If students are reading independently, students can use a notebook or sticky notes to record their questions as they read. Give the students extended time to question what is curious to them. If they want to share what they have learned with the class or a neighbour, provide these opportunities. Allow students to to explore their interests and watch them grow!
Guidelines About Questioning:
1. There is no such thing as a dumb question.
2. Ask questions that really matter to you.
3. Ask questions when reading doesn't make sense.
Language to Use with Questioning
"I wonder..."
"Why?"
"What does this mean?"
"That was a great question. Do you have any more?"
"Your questions made me think of another question."
"How come...?"
"What happened when...?"
Questions to Reveal Thinking:
Here are some questions to help uncover how questioning is working with your students:
- Did you have a question even before you started to read this book?
- How is asking questions working for you? How do you plan to keep track of your questions? How does that question affect your understanding of this story?
- Do you have a question following you through the book?
- What questions do you have now that you have reread this poem?
- Do you notice yourself asking questions when your reading doesn't make sense?
- Do you have any questions that you expect the author to answer? Which one is the most important for you as a reader?
Book Of The Month
If you are wanting to use a book that we have not yet featured, you can visit the Willow Awards website at https://willowawards.ca/previous-years/2016/ and click on the book. A window will pop up with some information about the author, the illustrator and some suggested activities.
The Gospel Truth
"It's 1858, and Phoebe is a 16-year-old slave girl living on a Virginia tobacco plantation. She is a keen observer of the brutality that comes from being owned. While she understands she's in a cage without freedom, her best friend, Shad, deceives himself that life on the plantation is good; he's happy in his ignorance. Meanwhile Phoebe has taught herself to read, at once an advantage and a danger: slaves are not permitted such knowledge. When a Canadian doctor visits the plantation for bird watching, Shad and Pheobe soon realize it's more that the birds that he is after."
Written by Caroline Pignat, this book is told in free verse by six narrators. It is suited best for grades 7-12.
The study guide is attached in PDF form, but can also be located at https://www.reddeerpress.com/usercontent/Fitzhenry/Marketing_imagery/Teachers-Guides/PDFs/GospelTruth-StudyGuide.pdf.
B.E.A.D.S. Activity - Word Construction
Start by drawing a road across the piece of cardboard. Then choose some words that you want your students to work on and write them on the cardboard. The next step is for you to break the words into different pieces, or sounds, and write the pieces on the rocks with the permanent markers. The dump truck is to hold all of the rocks while not in use.
When it is time to learn, the child(ren) match rocks together to form the words you wrote on the cardboard.
Extensions:
- Students can make a list of words that they create.
- Students can use the words in stories or sentences.
- Students can create their own word construction site and these can become centers in the classroom.
- Family Days Tried and Tested
AKEC Dance Residency
Parents and Kawacatoose First Nation community members enjoyed the performance as part of the Christmas concert held on December 20, 2018 in the AKEC gymnasium. Students in grades 7-12 participated in both school day and after school workshops.
Students head into the Digital Video and Photography Residency next which runs from January 15, 2019 to February 15, 2019. Grade 12 students currently enrolled in all five residencies of the Integrative Arts Program are earning a high school credit.
Many thanks to the principal, Brenda Favel, and program coordinators, Nathan Nashacappo and Dakota Whiteman, for all their wonderful facilitation of this unique pilot program.
Cote N'we Jinan Music Video Released
These students will join students from dozens of other First Nation communities across Canada at the N'we Jinan National Conference in April 2019 for workshops and public performances at the Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Many thanks to principal, Jonas Cote, teachers Janet Love Morrison and Bryan Dumais and the rest of the amazing CGCEC team for your wonderful facilitation of this important undertaking.
Ocean Man N'we Jinan Music Video Released
The video was released worldwide later that day on YouTube where it currently sits at 32K views. Congratulations to Angela Bigeagle, Jenna Bigeagle, Justin Ewack, Shylo Lonechild, Sage Akachuk, Tabin Bigeagle, Chris Sheepskin & Austin Sheepskin on your incredible accomplishment.
These students will join students from dozens of other First Nation communities across Canada at the N'we Jinan National Conference in April 2019 for workshops and public performances at the Museum of Human Rights in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Many thanks to principal, Murray Bird, Cindy Campbell, Patrick Wilson and the rest of the amazing OMEC team for your outstanding facilitation of this important undertaking.
Multiplication Table
A Visual Approach to Teach Math Concepts
Minds On: Multiplication: Equal Groups
Can you write __X__ to describe this picture?
Allow students to explore this question, they can work individually, pairs or small groups. This activity can be printed and allow students to move the penguins around, or it can be shown as it is to a full class on the SmartBoard. Allow for a lively conversation with the students, where the students are free to share their answers and reasoning's for them.
In the picture above, most-but not all- groups are equal. However the groups of 2 can be rearranged to form groups of 4, or the groups of 4 can be split into groups of 2.
Could the penguins be rearranged into equal groups? [We want students to see that sometimes rearranging groups can change the way we describe them.]
Is it easier to rearrange the penguins as shown here into equal groups than it would have been if there had been 5 icebergs with two penguins on them? [We want students to see that we could still have created equal groups of 2, but no longer equal groups of 4.]
Minds On: Division as Equal Groups or Sharing
What division story does the picture show? Suppose their were 4 more fish. Would it still show a division story? How?
The picture above allows for both meanings of division to emerge. Some students will see 24 ÷4 and others will think 24÷6 when looking at the picture.
Questions to Support Learning
Why is every division question also a multiplication question?
What multiplication does the picture also show? [We want students to recognize the relationship between multiplication and division.]
CLAN - Community Advocacy Learning Network
The first is Parents as First Teachers, an information guide that offers information about how children learn, strategies to teach and guide your children, how to support learning, and how you can get support when needed.
"The first few years of your children's lives are critical for their learning and development. Caring for children is a shared responsibility in Indigenous communities. Our children are our future. We must think of ourselves as their past. We want our children to look back with fond memories of feeling loved and safe. We can give our children a bright future. We can work toward healthier families in healthier communities. It is very important to expose children to their First Nations or Metis languages and cultures during their early years. This will set the foundation for who they are, where they come from, where they go in life and where they belong."
The second document we would like to share with you is called Children and Their Vision: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know. The information provided covers topics such as the importance of eye exams for children, myth and facts about vision, visual milestones, who to contact for requests under Jordan's Principle and much more.
"Vision is one of the most important senses for a child's development. The earlier a vision problem is diagnosed and treated, the less negative impact it will have a child's development."
Spread the Love!!
As a new newsletter initiative, we would like to invite you to send us an acknowledgement or shout out to somebody in your school that has made you appreciate them in a new way. Maybe they did something to help you out during a time of need, or they were in the right place at the right time to lift your spirits when you needed it most. This can be somebody who has offered you a shoulder to lean on or a step up in the right direction. Maybe this person is a good leader, or listener, or has done something that has made you just think "Wow!"
We are asking that you send your acknowledgments to me through email or text at (306) 331-7556. We would like to have them by the end of the month so that they can be put in the newsletter for December.
You can write your acknowledgment with your name attached or you can send it to me with an anonymous tag letting me know that you don't want your name posted on the newsletter.
This is something that we would like to continue on a monthly basis to raise people's spirit and let them know that we appreciate the things that they do. If you want to send in more than one, feel free to send as many as you want!
- Tasha Pelletier
"Brenda Favel endlessly dedicates herself to making the lives of students better. It is amazing what she gets accomplished, and I sometimes wonder if she ever sleeps."
- Jolissa Simon
"Tania Wanner's love for the children at White Bear Education Complex is amazing, wonderful, and so obvious in all of her efforts."
- Jolissa Simon
"Ocean Man's staff are always amazing! They are always willing to participate and help out whenever needed."
- Leslie Wilson
Treaty 4 Education Alliance
Email: sballard@educationalliance.ca
Website: educationalliance.ca
Location: Fort Qu'Appelle, SK, Canada
Phone: 306-331-7556
Facebook: facebook.com/t4educationalliance/
Twitter: @Treaty4Ed