The week entitled, “Unity through Diversity” at our school was filled with activities and events for both students and teachers alike. One of the contributions was the delivery of a professional development presentation on critical thinking skills. More specifically, a PD on Thinking Routines was delivered on their use both in and out of the classroom to develop good reasoning habits which boost lifelong learning.

     Though teachers who attended the “Critical Thinking” PD had backgrounds in diverse subject areas, they each profited as the techniques discussed are useful in many areas of student life. Critical thinking skills are essential on an everyday basis in the approaches we adopt towards decis ... Read more »

Having been an English teacher for 25 years, I believed I had done and seen it all. How wrong I was! Although I knew that I would be team teaching at NIS, as I had been asked about my  previous experience during my skype interview, I really didn’t know what or how much of it to expect. My feelings when I learned that I was going to be co-teaching each and every lesson with a local teacher varied from apprehension to a stoic optimism that I could handle it, since I’ve handled so many other difficult situations in my career.

There are many forms of what is termed team teaching. The two that I was familiar with from the US involved a special education teacher sitting beside a student or students in the classroom while the lesson is in progr ... Read more »

Shouting and being rude can be educational and fun.

Shakespeare, is in my opinion, one of the greatest, if not THE greatest English playwright and poet. He has enriched the English language beyond measure. He has an amazing understanding of the human spirit and creates characters who seem so realistic and believable whatever the time and place. His works have been translated into countless languages and his plays are regularly performed all over the world more than 400 years after his death. If you have never seen one then I urge you to do so as soon as possible.

I have taught Shakespeare’s plays for the last sixteen years and each time I find something new about them or better still, one of my students makes an observation during a lesson or in an essay which stops me in my tracks a ... Read more »

The primary goal of our lesson was to teach grade 9 (G9) the basics of conservation of energy in a memorable way.  Energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but it can change forms; and some energy is wasted when changed from one form to another.  For example, friction changes some kinetic energy into heat, motors produce noise, and some machines even produce light.  Heat, sound, and light are common ways that energy is wasted as a machine operates.

In the case of a pendulum, there's also air resistance: some of the initial potential energy is lost as the pendulum bob (i.e. the pan hung from a thin rope in the video) collides with air molecules, transferring kinetic energy to them.  As a result, when the ... Read more »