Canada Beats: Learning about Canada through music

For the last little while, my class has been learning about Canada, but we haven't been doing all of our learning about our Country in traditional ways.  I wanted my Students to be thinking beyond those facts that they can Google about Capital Cities, population and geographic landmarks.  And I wanted them to look a bit at history, but not by using a textbook or a timeline. They are also music lovers and will ask to turn the radio on, or be allowed to use their headsets to listen to music on their iPads every day.  I wanted to leverage some of that interest.  So, we've been using Canadian song writers and performers to look at our Country.

I had been talking to Noa Daniel about her BOB (Building Outside the Blocks) activity called Harmony Through History Beats, where she has students taking a song and deconstructing it to find the history within it.  I wondered if it was something I could use as part of our unit on Canada and give it a Canadian theme.  Noa was very supportive of my amending her idea, and even helped me find some songs and songwriters to add to a shared Google Doc to give my students a place to start.  And so, Canada Beats was born.

I work with students with some fairly high needs, so I knew I would need to help scaffold this project for them.  The shared Google Doc was a place they could find a list of songs that had a Canadian theme or historical background.  They didn't have to pick one of these songs - I was very open to a song or performer they might choose, as long as it had some ties to Canadian history, identity or geography.

Next we decided as a class what our Google Slide Shows needed to have in them and created a template to help everyone understand what information we would need to research.  They were welcome to include more than this, but these were sort of the starting points.  I told them I would create one as well and share it with them and be our first presenter.  Mine was a Stompin' Tom classic.  I gave them some class time to work on it, but many of them used time at home to work on it as well.  One of my students liked the activity so much, she finished hers in record time and decided to do a second one as well.

The hardest part for them was deciding on a song.  Many of the songs they had never heard before because they were released before they were born (some of them even before I was born).  Some of them wanted a more modern song, and spent a good deal of time looking for one.  YouTube got a bit of a workout those first few days.  Some had to do additional research to find out more about a specific historical event, or places mentioned in a song.  With a bit of help from each other, the E.A.s and myself, this was accomplished.

While apps like Vokki and Tellagami, or iMovie were options for presenting, they all decided they wanted to present in a more traditional fashion - just them and their slide show.  All good.  With just one presentation left this week, I have to say, it was a successful activity for them.  The slide shows were good (link to them here), but their presentations really blew me away.  Normally very shy, they really came out of their shells and shared why they picked a song, what they learned from it and even gave additional details about the historical event, place or the band that they learned as part of the research process.

Can they instantly tell me what the capital of New Brunswick is?  Probably not.  Luckily, we have Google for that. (By the way, it's Fredericton - a gorgeous city on the St. John river.)



As always, I welcome your questions or comments below.  Do you think I should be drilling and grilling the provincial capitals?  Is a deeper understanding of some historical events better than a general understanding of a longer historical timeline? Is using music this way problematic?

Crowd Sourcing Math Problems through the 12 Days of Tweetmas

The 12 Days of Tweetmas: 

Connecting through Math on Twitter

This year our class joined the #TVDSBmath initiative to complete 12 math tasks in the12 Days before Christmas Holidays by Tweeting our results and questions daily with other classrooms in our Board who were participating.  I wish I knew who created the initiative so I could give credit where it is due, but I can only tell you that it came from our Math Co-ordinators and I became aware of it through my Twitter/TVDSB PLN.

Here are the Daily tasks with some of the solutions the class came up with that I put into a video so you can see what we were working on (sorry - I tried a slide show, but I could not get Blogger to embed it.  If you prefer, here is a link to a copy of the document that was originally shared with us: 12 Days of Tweetmas )

As you can see from the video, the tasks were varied in their type, level of difficulty and math thinking required to solve them.

A few things I should tell you.  I have a Secondary Special Education Classroom.  The ten students in our classroom are all of High School age, but all have a Developmental Disability, so their math, language and reading levels range from non verbal with no number awareness to about the Junior level.  I have many gifts, but being a skilled mathematician or math teacher, are not among them...(Growth Mindset here...) at least not yet.  But I am working on improving my limited skills through courses, PD opportunities, my PLN and activities like these.

I was a little worried about some of these problems - they were going to require a lot of Grit and would push most of my students beyond the type of math thinking they do regularly.  Some of them were going to be challenging for me to find a solution as well.  However, as Churchill said, "the only thing to fear, is fear itself."  As I debated with myself and fought my own doubts about my abilities to teach math, I remembered that quote and decided to forget my fears and join in the activity.  After all, I want them to push themselves and to work beyond their comfort level.   That goes for me too... I want to work beyond my comfort level - and push myself and my math instructional skills.

Some of the problems were easier and called on them to do some code-breaking or geometric design.  Probably their favorite activity was Day 11 where they had to measure and estimate objects using candy canes as their tool.  It may have had something to do with giving them a full sized candy cane to measure with and that they got to eat when the activity was completed.

Some hilarity ensued as well.  On Day 3, we were required to decide which object didn't belong and they came up with some great answers to do with colors, shapes, patterns, themes etc.  Then when we checked in with other classes using the hashtag, one class stated that the top right square didn't belong because it was of someone throwing an object in the toilet.  When we looked back at the graphic...yes...we could see that it looked like something was being thrown in the toilet.  Hilarious!  There is no laughter like the laughs that come from bathroom humor.  Except maybe farts.  Those seem to result in the loudest, most infectious and delightful laughter.

Some of the problems were tough.  Day 6 really pushed them. They were tasked to find 12 keys with 5 colored squares.  They worked independently, with a partner and then as a class and the best we could come up with was 10.  That's the day the crowd sourcing element really came alive for us.  We had been following what other classes were doing through the hashtag...but now we NEEDED them to help us come up with a solution.  The kids were pleased to see that other classes were struggling as much as we were to find 12 possible keys - and that the keys they had found were shared by others.  When we found a class that had found the solution - they still got their Aha! Moment.  We'd been thinking about the keys as a line...and they didn't have to be.  One of them, when they saw the pictures the other class had posted to help with the solution, actually said, "Oh, of course.  Why didn't I think of it that way."  They then worked feverishly to come up with more than 12 ways to arrange the tiles into different keys.

After a week to reflect on the 12 Days of Tweetmas I would have to say it was really successful in our classroom.  We were all pushed to think outside the box to come up with solutions.  We also had a lot of fun doing math in a less traditional way.  Would I do this again next year?  Absolutely!  It would be neat to maybe try connecting with other classes through Google Hangouts to talk about how to solve the problems, or work in real time together on the answers.  I'd like to take it beyond just a pre-holiday activity too.  If you are reading this blog and you have a source for problems like these that I could do on a weekly or daily basis...please share them in the comments section below!  As always, I welcome your comments!


Blogger's Addendum:
This post was featured on VoicEdRadio's This Week in Ontario Edublogs on Jan 3, 2018  Click on this link if you would like to hear the discussion between Doug Peterson and Stephen Hurley

Everyday Superheroes Unit

A Unit using Educational Technology to promote the UN's Sustainability Goals and focusing on small changes students can make to meet these goals.

Image from:

Nino, Florencia Soto. Sustainable Development Goals - United Nations. United Nations Sustainable Development, 17 Aug. 2016, http://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/. Accessed 23 Jan. 2017.)

Here is a link to the Unit I created for my Developmental Special Education Class where they created videos, posters and their own Everyday Superhero based on the UN goals.  Please use it, and change it to suit your own classroom needs.  Everyday Superhero Unit.

Here are a few examples of videos my students created for this unit.

Here's a simple one created with TellagamiEdu and iMovie on the importance of the Food Bank:

This first one is on Littering and the second one is on Healthy living, both were created using iMovie:

This one is about donating clothing to Goodwill Industries using TellagamiEDu and iMovie:

Looking for a Unit that gets your students working on creating their own future classroom?  Feel free to use the one I have created and linked here:  Creating an Accessible Classroom at Arthur Voaden SS

This unit talks about Universal Design and uses lots of Educational Technology to get students thinking about their ideal learning environment in a Project-Based Learning Unit.  They create their own blueprint online and use their new found experience with Universal Design and using floor planning technology to create a multi media presentation.

I shared this video in a November posting - but wanted to also include it here with the project it was designed to go with.  Please use all or any of the resources I've shared regarding this project-based learning assignment.

This is an exemplar for a Multimedia design task I created for Part II of Integration of Information and Computer Technology in Instruction.  The Unit asks students to create their ultimate classroom using the principles of Universal Design.