Some really great resoucres were shared with me in my ECS 101 class this week that I want to familarize myself with and I think will be very helpful in the future!
All of these documents are hyperlinked in the title or you can find them on Saskatchewan’s page with many other resources as well.
This document was created by the Saskatchewan ministry of education in 2017 and outlines the benefits, practices, and importance of inclusive education.
Sneak Peak:
Cover page by Saskatchewan Ministry of Education
– “An inclusive attitude, belief and approach are embedded in the document, Actualizing a
Needs-based Model (2015), which outlines the following inclusionary philosophy and
beliefs:
Focusing on the strengths, needs and interests of the student;
Emphasizing the supports that the student requires and the elimination of
barriers;
Nurturing independence and interdependence by providing opportunities
that promote the development of personal empowerment and selfdetermination;
Maintaining a view that the student is an active participant within the
immediate community and wider society;
Embracing the belief that students are parts of an evolving society that
believes all individuals belong in and are valued members of a diverse
society; and,
Fostering an attitude of respect, appreciation and acceptance of diversity.”
I look forward to using this in my future classroom.
This document is about awareness of terms, guidelines, and gives “instead of” suggestions. I think this is important for everyone to see in all career paths.
This document tells you how to support all learners, delivery models, and actualizing a needs-based model.
Sneak Peak:
“The year has not been without its difficulties but the staff always met with us and rather than focusing on the issues and deficits, we focused on solutions and unlearned skills/unmet needs. My husband and I have learned a lot and while we considered ourselves fairly well versed in inclusion before we started this journey, the school has shown us what inclusion really means. The fact that our child has real friends and has learned many academic skills…”
– Parent of a student with intensive needs
This quote by a satisfied parent makes me excited to read this and share it with you guys too!
In my EDTC 300 class we were tasked with an assignment to pick a skill to learn all term and blog about our progress! You may have been following along and know how it went or you might be new and therefore I will recap it.
So when I needed to pick a skill I was trying to come up with something with meaning and that interested me. I landed on learning Ukrainian. This was important to me because my family is ukrainian but almost none of us know any ukrainian words. My grandma can understand some words but not speak it. I felt like I wanted something to be more connected to my grandma and the culture.
In week one I outlined my plan for the term and decided on some resources I wanted to use. I explained why my project was important to me and why I chose this skill to learn.
I started the learning process with the basics of the alphabet. I learned 17 out of 33 letters this week and focused on learning the order and look of the letters. I printed a sheet and followed a video on YouTube to learn. I tried to practice each night to try remember but the memorization part came later in the term.
We were challenged this week to use a new medium to share our progress. I learned the entire alphabet this week, how to write the letters, the order, and the pronunciation. This was the first time I was ready to share my progress in a video. The medium I chose was iMovie and YouTube. I have used iMovie before but I tried some really cool editing features. I have never posted on YouTube before so that was also new.
I was humbled by Duolingo this week. I learned an assortment of new words with not much of a category to them. I came out of this week knowing random words like cat, home, and mother in Ukrainian. I was humbled because you need “hearts” to keep learning and I was quickly running out of them.
For my learning this week I dug out a Ukrainian/English/French childrens picture book dictionary. It was the week after thanksgiving and the only thing on my mind was the food I ate. Truly though, I really struggled this week with sickness and felt like I took a step back in my learning after the long weekend. I used this book to learn some common Ukrainian foods.
I found my new favourite medium this week to learn with! It was a total twist from the week before and I learned some helpful phrases/words if I ever travelled to Ukraine. I put all my work together from the week in a video using the skills I learned in week three.
I utilized my time well this week by listening to a podcast on Spotify during my commute to and from school on the bus. I tried and kind of succeeded at learning the numbers. This podcast was not ideal for learning but I still learned numbers one through nine and could use that to learn the rest just like english.
This week was inspired by other classmates blogs and I am glad I tried it. I found a creator that I loved to learn from because she had so many videos. The learning this week of specific words was limited but I feel like I learned about the possibilities on TikTok as well as some random information that the creator was sharing.
I felt the pressure of the end of the term this week and wanted to make sure I learned the colours and some history. I regret not learning the history earlier but better late than never. I went back to the website that I used previously in week six since I liked it so much. The video linked in the blog is really awesome to give some history to the country.
When I review what I learned all term I am really proud of myself! I struggled some weeks more than others but still learned so much. I can now say I know the Ukrainian alphabet, colours, common phrases, and so much more! I can’t wait to share the videos I made with my grandma!
My Top Three Resources
YouTube:
My number one online resource to learn from is YouTube. There is millions of creators to learn from and endless things to learn. I learned from How To Read The Ukrainian Alphabet by Speak Ukrainian. I loved this resource becasue there is a visual and audio aspect. I struggled when I didn’t have both of these things to learn from. There is never a lack of content and if you don’t like one creator there will be another one.
TikTok:
I enjoyed learning from TikTok for three reasons.
The convenience of it being on my phone and being able to learn anywhere.
So many creators and lots of content.
Audio and visual aspects.
TikTok is a great place to learn for the reasons listed above. I learned information I didn’t even know I was wondering because I found @Ukrainian.with.ira TikTok page. I would just keep scrolling and scrolling until I learned so much information that I never would have thought to Google.
iMovie:
I am not a tech savy person and have never done video editing before but iMovie was so easy to use and has cool features. I used YouTube to learn how to use it and made a video showing how to add images on top of the video in week two. I’m not sure about the compatability on andorids or other devices but it works great on apple products.
I really enjoyed this project because I learned so much about time management, technology, and ukrainian!
I thought I was pretty savy when it comes to cybersleuthing people so I was excited for the task this week to cybersleuth a partner. However, Taylor Derbowka is sneaky on the internet.
Typically when I am searching for people online I do the following:
Search name on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Google, etc.
Check for mutual friends with the person to find info on friends accounts.
Read comments and captions on some of the simplest photos.
Search through accounts I think they might follow to locate socials.
I tried all of these things but didn’t come out with much information. I found Taylor’s current and old blog from a google search. Plus some photos that had been on the blog under google images. I could not find a facebook or Instagram by searching “Taylor Derbowka” but I did find a facebook page and TikTok account when I searched for the discord username that was available to me. The pages are kept private very well with selective information shared.
After searching and searching for information and didn’t find much I thought I would reflect on what Taylor has done well to have a professional online identity.
Uses different last name for social platforms.
Private accounts.
Appropriate profile pictures that are public.
Building a professional online blog.
I’m going to adopt some of these things to create a better digital identity for myself.
Core Questions: You will focus on the diversity, difference & inclusiveness in the school and classrooms.In what ways do the teachers and educational assistants honour inclusive education practices? How are the needs of EAL learners being met in the classroom? In what ways do teachers, administrators and students honour diversity, equity, and human rights for gender and sexual diverse students in their classrooms and within their schools and communities?
This week at McVeety school I gave attention to the inclusivity of the school. This school is very diverse, and they seem to have a great EAL program. Nearly every week when I am in a classroom, I have noticed groups of students being pulled out of class for EAL. This school gets new students every week like crazy. They had 11 new students last week and many don’t speak English when they arrive. The teachers work really closely with the students to teach them and help them learn English.
The classrooms all have diverse seating options and I noticed that there are accommodations made for any students that need. There is flexible seating and quiet places. I was surprised that they had a quiet space to be used as a prayer room because often schools are scratching for space but it is nice that they set a space aside completely for the students. I think this is awesome and that all schools should do it. They have a teacher supervisor everyday just like recess and lunch time. I saw so many kids ask to use it to pray during lunch and I think this is great to have a safe space like this. McVeety school has lots of reminders that it is an inclusive school and welcoming to everyone. I am not sure if they have a gay-straight alliance club, but it really feels like a welcoming school. All the teachers took it upon themselves to have pride decorations and make it comfortable for students.
This week I wanted to learn the colours but while I was searching for a video to learn from I came across a video by Olly Richards titled “The Ukrainian Language: The Heroic Story of a Language That Just Won’t Quit. The video did a deep dive about the Ukrainian language and also talked about some basic facts. I wish I watched this video at the beginning to have had a better understanding of the language but now is better than never. It is a long video but worth the watch.
Photo by Ukrainian Lessons
After the video I found what I was originally looking for. Names of Colours in Ukrainian by Ukrainian Lessons. I have used this site before but I really like it because there is pictures, pronunciations, the option to be read slower, and overall just super great for learning.
Screenshot from UkrainianLessons
I really struggled this week with my learning. I have been beyond sick for two weeks now. I’m not sure if my brain is cloudy from the sickness or if this is a sign I should be practicing more. I am going to review all the old stuff I learned and go over the alphabet again to help spark my thinking for next week.
Digital Literacy is becoming more and more important every day. As technology and widgets get fancier so do fake news and bot accounts. Digital Literacy is the understanding of digital technology. In order to keep up with fake news we need to constantly be teaching about the internet to stay on top of it.
In the future I hope to teach high school students and I think this is a critical age to teach about digital literacy. Teenagers can be influenced by people while they are looking for answers to questions they have.
Specifically, during covid there was a rise in talk about statistics and the word statistics is associated with numbers, facts, and hard truths. This video is a great resource to debunk this and give a proper way to look at statistics to ensure you are getting the whole truth. I think this would be a great resource to add into a statistics curriculum especially since I want to teach math in high school.
A resource released by TRU Libraries seems to be extremely helpful. It has resources about bias, fake news, how to spot fake news, etc. I like that there are fun memes, videos, and honest information. I think this would be great for teaching youth.
In our EDTC 300 class on Wednesday night last week we did a quiz to spot fake news. I was bad at this even though I thought I was doing well. I was looking for the obvious signs of fake news like no followers, date the account was created, and scam links everywhere. But, on Wednesday I quickly realized that bot accounts can be way fancier and sneakier. I think this quiz is a great resource for teens to show them how sneaky accounts can be.
Core Questions: Think about what you learned in your K-12 education about Indigenous history in Canada. What have you learned as an adult through media, family, friends and other learning experiences? As you read through the TRC booklet-Truth & Reconciliation: What is it about? What messages resonate with you? What do you need and want to learn more about? What would you do for a call to action? In your field placement, describe how teachers and the school community integrated and honoured Indigenous knowledges in the learning environment.
From kindergarten to grade 12 I feel like Indigenous History became increasingly more common. From grades K-5 I don’t remember learning about Indigenous History. From grade 6 – 9 I felt often the information was repetitive. I think many of my teachers were googling Indigenous History and teaching us the first thing that came up. I believe many of my teachers got their degrees while residential schools were still open, so they were never taught about it, or taught how to teach it. Once I got to high school, I had the option every year to take Indigenous Studies or Social Studies and I chose to take Indigenous Studies every year. These classes were much better than elementary school was, and we learned so much more. My teacher had planned field trips and guest speakers however Covid cancelled most of this. In university I took INDG 100 however I went to school in BC last year, so I got a totally different view on it since history with Indigenous Peoples is very different in BC than it was in Saskatchewan. In my adult life I feel like I have learned from hearing about big events like the one that was on September 29 at mosaic this year and from social media.
The TRC document is about the journey that needs to be taken towards reconciliation. A quote that resonates with me is this, “In my opinion, Canada wanted its peaceful, developed, safe reputation to be upheld. Canada is known as the country that helps those in need and provides a high quality of life. The Indian Residential School System turned that belief on its back. Canada’s credibility has been lost.” My call to action in my future class will be land acknowledgements, flying the flag of the respective treaty land, and acknowledging the truth.
In my field placement this week I noticed lots of recognition of Indigenous History. I was in a grade 4 classroom and there were buckets for reading labeled “Indigenous History” as well as other buckets of books of other cultures. This teacher also had the respective flags hanging in her room.
