Neverendings

Welcome to my education portfolio. Presented on this site is a little about me and specific examples of inquiry based learning experiences I have offered students during my eleven years of teaching.

I hope the content is both informative and helpful and offers insights into my teaching process and how I engage students with exciting academic challenges, encourage connection making across subject and place the work in real world contexts and career based professions. 

Please use the menu on the top right to quickly navigate through my portfolio examples. 

A key aspect of my life journey has been travel. I was born in the United Kingdom and thanks to a steady diet of adventure films in my formative years, I’ve always found myself excited by what’s beyond the horizon. Travel actually introduced me to the possibility of teaching.

After backpacking in Europe and spending a year taking full advantage of Australia’s working holiday visa, I discovered that I could teach English as a foreign language. I chose South Korea as the country I would teach. After a successful four years teaching English in a public elementary school I moved to Calgary, Canada to complete a bachelors of education. 

Calgary has been a wonderful place for me to develop my teaching experience and start a family. My wife and I welcomed my three year old son Charlie into the world in the summer of 2018.

My passion for the arts, music and popular culture always intertwine with my interests in philosophy and sociology. I’ve found serendipitously that these pursuits have always informed and supported my teaching career in my continued effort to offer learning to students which is current, relevant and fun. 

Iroqouis Debate Assessment

Grade six curriculum asks students to look at the earliest forms of democracy including the Iroqouis Confederacy. In this assessment, while students read and research historical cultural information they are preparing for a debate which takes place in the context of a traditional held Iroqouis Confederacy meeting. Students are given specific roles in table groups and learn the importance of their matriachal decision making system.

When the debate is complete, over the subject of a new clan potentially entering the confederacy, students individually gather their research and listen back to audio recordings of the debate. They use the information gathered as a journalist who must prepare and write an article which delivers news of the debate results to other members of the confederacy not privy to these details. 

Iroqouis Confederacy Messenger Summative Assessment Organizer

Iroqouis Debate Journalism Assessment Rubric

In the grade six science curriculum, students are required to learn about a variety of trees native to Alberta. This posed an opportunity to challenge students to apply environmentally based critical thinking skills and introduce them to real world scenarios regarding human infrastructure development and environmental stewardship.

Students were asked an essential inquiry based question: 

In April of 2020 Alberta schools moved to online teaching due to the Covid-19 pandemic. We were tasked with offering a full regualry schedule via an online learning platform. During this period of time which lasted from April to the end of the school year, I dealt with the logistics of offering a full learning programme as an elementary generalist.

I’m proud of my efforts. I received positive feedback from my administrators, students and parents on the learning activities which I shared. Despite the loss of a classroom environment and it’s effect on collaboration I made the most of Google classroom and the D2L  learning management system to encourage online discussions in controlled chat rooms. We also kept up our moral by sharing our talents and by way of making the learning physically active and connected to their local neighbourhoods and communities. 

Please see below for some examples of my planning during our periods of online at home learning. 

Star Hunters

At the start of online learning I needed to begin the grade six sky science unit. I knew I needed to plan something that engaged the students and had them working together collaboratively towards a set of goals. In groups students were required to research a specific constellation and gather information as a group on a Google doc. I could then check in on their groups Google doc to offer support and check on their collaborative efforts. 

The work led to the curriculum requirement of sharing that the apparent star movement of objects in the night sky is regular and predictable, and explaining how this apparent movement is related to Earth’ s rotation.

Grade Six Learning Plan Mon May 11th – Thur May 14th

I was challenged with how to engage my grade six students in the normal ways without the use of a classroom and other school resources. I realized there was an opportunity to ask students to consider their homes as a classroom. This meant they had all types of learning resources at their disposal. Described in a learning plan above I challenged students to create a Rube Goldberg machine using household materials. The goal of the machine was that it had to solve a problem related to being isolated with their families at home. Student’s came up with machines that would help them wake up or give a family member a rousing high five. 

Rube Goldberg Assessment Rubric