PD presentation

This morning my colleague and I presented some of our OAME presentation to our staff at our PA Day.

We were tasked with having an ice breaker, and then sharing some of our work on mindset and creating brave spaces for our students.

We started the day with random groups done by team shake, to have everyone mixed up with people they don’t always socialize with.

We had a Cheerio stacking competition, which was pretty fun, and allowed for everyone to do some work.

Here’s the document if you want to run the task. I’ve tried it with grade 9 and 10 (both academic and applied)

Everyone needed to be timed for a minute of cheerio stacking. Then they predicted how many Cheerios they’d stack for 2 minutes and 3 minutes. Next they graphed the slowest and fastest stackers data.

Finally we looked at how to make a photo finish with a full skewer. We looked at how many Cheerios of a head start would be needed to balance the competition, and then we tried to see the photo finish occur.

We had a few epic photo finishes!

Later we spoke to our work to create brave spaces in our classrooms. We gave examples of what we do to create a comfortable space for students to try new things. We showed an example of a dot talk, and had lots of great interaction and participation from our staff.

we talked about our first week in grade 9, and how we introduce thinking routines, and communication structures, and explicit discussion of mindset which will continue through the year.

Here’s the slide deck if you are interested.