Kid World Citizen

Every year our students do interviews of teachers in the EL Dept. They practice writing the questions with present, last, and present perfect, they practice speaking, listening, and then writing, and they work on introductions and flow in the paragraphs. It always turns out to be such a nice display!

I just read this quote from an excellent journal article by Dr DeCapua (2016) about how developing an understanding of the beliefs, blend, and ways of thinking and learning is our students who are SLIFE is CRUCIAL To effective instruction.
1) cultural competence
2) refining the culturally responsive curriculum to be more meaningful to students
3) CARE for your students where SLIFE feel safe, respected, supported

Caring must be combined with deep cultural understanding 💗

Back from spring break, visiting my daughter in North Carolina! We came back to rain and even a snow flurry😬🥶 April in Chicago is funny like that!

Important lessons to teach our kids.

As schools have shifted from deficit-based to assets-based pedagogy, educators work to create a culture that acknowledges and celebrates our ML students' strengths.

I just read a fascinating article by Acevedo and Solorzano (2023) about Community Capital Wealth: the variety of knowledge, skills, abilities, and networks the our students of color posses and use to survive and resist racism and other forms of oppression. How can we

Happy Valentine's Day! 💗 I love that in Spanish, it is the Day of Love and Friendship- we all need more of that! Thankful for my sweet students and generous co-workers, and excited to make a special dinner with my husband tonight. 💕

When I was in charge of International Week at my kids' elementary school, we had everyone in the school ask friends around the world to send postcards in to show off their cities and countries. We were pleasantly overwhelmed with hundreds (literally) of postcards and filled up a whole hallway with the colorful snapshots! It was such a beautiful display😊🌎

Aw, I love these little unexpected nuggets of sweetness! This was from practicing similes and metaphors with newcomers in a creative writing class from this past summer.

I am always trying to make connections between the curriculum and my students' stories and lived experiences. Our kids and their families are rich with funds of knowledge: "the historically accumulated and culturally developed bodies of knowledge and skills essential for household or individual functioning and well-being."

🌎 How do you tap into and connect their background knowledge to the curriculum in your classroom?

Groundhog day is coming up this February 2nd!

This festival has its roots in ancient traditions celebrating the midpoint between the winter solstice and spring equinox!

Among the Celts, it was the time of Imbolc, a celebration where folk lit candles in anticipation of farm animals' birth and crops' planting. It dates back as far as the 10th Century A.D.

In the Middle Ages, the belief emerged that animals like bears and badgers would come out of hibernation on this day. Upon arriving in Pennsylvania, German immigrants chose the groundhog since badgers were not native to the area.

As is often the case, Christianity adopted Pagan celebratory dates and created the festival of Candlemas to commemorate when the Virgin Mary went to the temple to purify herself and present her son to God.

And if you can't remember if the groundhog's shadow foretells 6 more weeks of winter or early spring, here's an old English folksong merging the pagan and the Christian holidays.

"If Candlemas be fair and bright / Come, Winter, have another flight; If Candlemas brings clouds and rain / Go Winter, and come not again."

images.squarespace-cdn.com

This Friday is World Wetlands Day. This site has loads of beautiful images and resources under the Materials tab.

Educational activity ideas: Find out where are the closest wetlands to where you live.
Discover what animals live there. (print out colouring pages, or sketch them depending on age of kids)
Print out pictures of different habitats and have the kids identify which ones are wetlands. Piggy back learning about other habitats.
Research together if wetlands are common around the world.

For older kids: Assign them to research and present why wetlands are important.

Official website of World Wetlands Day by Ramsar - 2 February - World Wetlands Day