Spring is in the Air!

Sunny and warmer days are finally here, and I’m sure many of us have a little more spring in our step!

If you haven’t done so lately, take a moment to give yourself a pat on the back for teaching online for over a year! If we reflect on the late nights trying to figure out how to deliver a lesson on this thing called Zoom, searching for good online teaching resources, and learning how to engage our not-so-tech-savvy students, we’ll realize just how far we’ve come in our teaching with tech journey. We made it through yet another month, and now we can look forward to a well-deserved “March Break” in April! 

This month has lots of fun and maybe not so fun (it’s tax time – yuck) topics to discuss with our students. A few topics you could teach in April are April Fools’ Day, Easter, Ramadan, spring cleaning, the environment, Earth day, banking/financial literacy, and taxes in Canada. To get into the spirit of spring try teaching your students “Spring Idioms” with this worksheet good for intermediate or higher level students:

Spring Idioms

Thank you to our amazing team for sharing resources with each other!

Here is a great video resource that is useful for many levels and covers a range of topics shared by Marcella: https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCWjV1ynd_zqWlXZA5dfJ4Wg/playlists

For those of you who teach the lower to intermediate levels and are tackling the topic of teaching taxes, here are some helpful resources:

http://en.copian.ca/library/learning/incomtax/incomtax.pdf

41760_Volume02.indd (settlementatwork.org)

Also, don’t hesitate to get in touch with our SIS team Maria and Wendy who created an excellent presentation on taxes in Canada. Here is a Listening/Reading Skill-Using Activity you can use to go along with their PowerPoint: 

Taxes - Listening and Reading Skill Using Activity

At our last meeting Cathy shared a great idea to have a set of instructions for the students, just in case there are any problems with Wi Fi or other tech issues. Check out her handout here:

Internet Issues and Zoom

Marina shared a useful link to find out more information on the Covid 19 vaccines in Halton: Halton - COVID-19 Vaccine Resources

Also, be sure to check out our Google Classroom which is always being updated by Danielle.

As Carolyn mentioned, please share the registration link for the Halton Newcomers Day (hosted by Centre for Skills - April 9th) with your students: Webinar Registration - Zoom

Finally, for our new teachers (and anyone who wants a refresher) Marina and I will be hosting a PBLA Bootcamp. Save the date: 11:00 am on April 20, 2021.  Zoom link will be sent out closer to the date.

Have a wonderful month,

Haleema and Marina

Welcome to March!

It’s hard to believe it’s been a year (almost) that we’ve been in some variation of lockdown. When I reflect back on the year, I am amazed at all that we have accomplished especially with all the changes, challenges and permutations to online teaching we’ve been through. As a team of incredible instructors, and of course amazing leadership, we should be proud of all we have accomplished. Not only have we all survived but we have thrived through a very unpredictable year. To say it’s been a challenging year would be a huge understatement but we made it!

As I tell my students at this time of the year, we made it through the worst of winter and we can now look forward to brighter and warmer days. So, let’s get through March and make it to our well deserved April Break this year. 

Stay tuned because Haleema and I will be holding a PBLA boot camp for the new teachers!

As always, it’s so helpful to receive links and resources. Thank you to all the teachers who have shared these resources with us. 

Don’t forget to take a look at the Google classroom where Danielle has been posting resources. There are lots of goodies to explore!

This is from Valerie https://continuingstudies.uvic.ca/elc/studyzone. This site offers activities at different levels.

Here is an older PDF version of Oxford Picture Dictionary: http://homepage.ntu.edu.tw/~karchung/OxfordPictureDictionary.pdf

With Women’s Day, the start of Spring and Daylight Savings, St. Patrick’s day, National Potato Chips Day (yes this is a real thing) all in March there are a lot of fun and interesting topics to cover with your students. 

Stay safe and healthy.

Marina and Haleema