My Manifesto: The Culmination of a Year of Learning

 This is an updated version of the project described here. We (me and Tara) have been working on iterating this project over several years and have gotten it to a pretty cool place this year.Photo by Krists Luhaers on UnsplashThe Manifesto Project is the final project our students do in grade 8. It is the culmination of year's worth of work, and combines everything students have learned about...

Jam or Not a Jam

When our students enter our classrooms at the beginning of Humanities class, we do a routine we call Jam or Not a Jam (Tara loves a good acronym and calls it JONAJ). Jam or Not a Jam was inspired by a segment CBC Music did a while back where they played a song for some celebrity and the celebrity would decide if it was a Jam - a good tune - or Not a Jam - not such a great song. It works the same way...

Redesigned Bocca al Lupo: A Game to Learn about the European Renaissance

Updated Summer of 2022As a part of our regular practice, my teaching partner Tara and I systematically reflect on our practice. This reflection practice holds us accountable: to our students, to best practices in task design and assessment, and to ourselves.We designed Bocca al Lupo in 2019 (click here to view a previous post about this game). Bocca al Lupo is a card game that we co-design with our...