Interpreting the Secondary School Provincial Report Card: Part 1

This fall you can expect a newly revised report card from your child’s school. The Ontario Ministry of Education is using new Elementary Progress Report Cards and Elementary and Secondary Provincial Report Cards in all of its public schools. One provincial report card for Grades 9 to 12 will be used for both Catholic and public schools. For semestered schools, the report card will include the first and final reports for a semester. For non-semestered schools, it will include the report for each of the first and second terms, as well as a final report for the year.

 

On the first two pages of the Secondary Provincial Report Card (http://bit.ly/dsx9mG) the student’s courses are listed with the corresponding percentage marks for each course. The course median, (the percentage mark at which 50% of students in the course have a higher percentage mark and 50% of students have a lower percentage mark), is also recorded here. Beside this, the student’s learning skills and work habits are recorded – these include: responsibility, organization, independent work, collaboration, initiative, and self- regulation. The student’s development of the six learning skills is represented by the following letter symbols: E – Excellent; G – Good; S – Satisfactory; N – Needs Improvement. A detailed descriptor for each learning skill is outlined on page 3 of the report card.

 

Next to the learning skills chart, under the heading ‘Comments’, there is space for teachers to provide observations and/or anecdotes regarding the student’s achievement of curriculum expectations. The comments should encompass the student’s learning, strengths and next steps for improvement. Rather than selecting from a prepared set of standard comments, the Ministry is encouraging school boards and teachers to provide opportunities to create personalized comments for report cards.

 

New to the provincial report cards this year is a tear-off section for students to include comments about their own progress. Students are encouraged to reflect on “[their] best work” and “[their] goal for improvement”. Students are expected to sign the document, have a parent/guardian acknowledge receipt of the report card (along with a request for dialogue with the teacher if necessary), and return it to school administrators.

 

Stay tuned for a follow-up blog with more details about report cards and the reporting schedule for public schools in Ontario.

So You’re Sick. Now What?

Today, we are going to continue discussing our topic from last week about staying healthy during the winter season. Last week, we talked about some great preventive measures to help protect yourself against viruses and other illnesses. But even if you take all those precautions, it is never a guarantee that a bug won’t get into your system. Here are some effective and simple ways to take care of yourself and your loved ones if you get sick.

1. Rest up. We mentioned this in our previous blog, but it is definitely worth mentioning again. Sleep is a restorative remedy and it helps boost your immune system when it’s fighting off infections. Give your body enough time to fight off the virus so you can get better and you’ll be up and about in no time!
2. Gargle salt water. This is a home-style remedy that has proven very effective in soothing sore throats and getting rid of mucous. The salt water draws out excess fluid from inflamed tissues in the throat, and it will sooth some of the pain. Make sure that the water is warm and dissolve the salt well before you gargle. For best results, use this remedy three times a day. Read more about this treatment here: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/28/health/28real.html?_r=1
3. Pass the honey, honey.  Honey has been used for thousands of years to help treat illnesses due to its anti-microbial properties. If you or your child has a cough, ingesting honey is a great way to sooth the throat. In fact, one study has shown that honey is actually more effective at stopping nocturnal coughs than cough medicine! You can access the study here: http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/161/12/1140
4. Relax. Are you still worrying about getting the laundry done or finishing up that big paper? When stress levels are high, hormones in your body are released and cause a suppression of the immune system. Try to figure out a schedule that lets you get the most important tasks done while still getting enough rest. If you have concerns about minor chores, put them to rest until you feel better.

These recommendations are proven home remedies for an easy recovery from a mild illness. If you or your child is exhibiting more serious symptoms, such as vomiting or high fever, go see a doctor for a diagnosis or prescription. Also, if you or your child has a contagious illness, stay home if you can in order to avoid passing it on to others. Remember to cough and sneeze into your elbow or shirt, and to wash your hands often. Take care and stay healthy!

Stay Healthy and Stay in School!

Parents, prepare yourselves! Sniffle season is already upon us, causing millions of Canadians to miss work and school. According to Statistics Canada, the average Canadian took 8 sick days in 2008. In 2005, over 22 million school days were lost nationwide due to the common cold. While we don’t recommend that you or your child go in to work or school when you are sick, there are some preventative measures that can help squash those nasty germs before they take effect.

1. Wash your hands. Germs can survive on hard surfaces and then transfer onto your hands. Make sure you wash your hands frequently and thoroughly, getting your thumbs, pinkies and the backs of your hands. Also, regularly wipe down common surfaces, such as computer keyboards, TV remotes, telephones, tables and doorknobs to keep viruses at bay. Washing your hands is one of the most effective and easy ways to keep yourself and others healthy.
2. Keep moving. Just by exercising for 20 to 30 minutes a day, you can increase blood flow and decrease stress hormones. Exercise boosts your immune system and will help keep you running smoothly throughout the winter.
3. Rest up. Try to get at least seven hours of sleep a night in order to keep your immune system in tip-top shape. Even just one night of less sleep can negatively affect your immune system – a continual lack of sleep will compromise your body’s ability to create T-cells (disease-fighting cells) and you will have a harder time fighting off illnesses.
4. Eat well. The foods that we put in our body can help keep viruses and illnesses at bay. Eat plenty of fruits, vegetables and grains to get the nutrients your immune system needs. Foods such as oranges, garlic, carrots, almonds, broccoli and yogurt are great immune system boosters. Try to include these foods in your diet for an extra virus-fighting kick.

Try to follow these guidelines to build your immune system to its fullest potential. However, we know that it’s not always easy to get more than seven hours of sleep or get your children to eat broccoli. In our next blog, we’re going to talk about what actions you can take if you or your child already caught a bug.  Stay tuned!

Portfolios for Your Children

Ever wonder what to do with the collection of work your children accumulate throughout the year? It may seem like an endless amount of work comes home from daycare, lunchtime programs, weekend activities, camp and school. Kids cart home art work, crafts, dioramas and an endless list of school assignments. The question is: What should you do with all of this stuff? How do you best honour your child’s work without leaving it destined for the recycling bin? There must be a meaningful way to collect and store these items for our children, so that they can reminisce in the distant future.

It may not be realistic to keep decades’ worth of banker boxes to archive your child’s artefacts. Instead, consider creating a portfolio of key pieces each year. In the professional world, we understand the portfolio as a growing collection of artefacts to represent a person’s growth, skills and competencies. Why not apply this mentality to the growth of your toddler, your child or your young teen? Here are some questions to consider as you set up portfolios for your children.

• How should I organize a portfolio?
  Decide how you want to chronicle your child’s work. Do you want to have annual, semi-annual, or quarterly collections? If you decide to make annual portfolios, decide if you want to mark the year by school year, calendar year or by birthday.

• What should I keep?
  Develop criteria for what to keep in the portfolio. Perhaps you want to set a number of items to store, and within it you can set a quota for different categories of artefacts. Some potential categories include: arts and crafts, creative writing, math accomplishments, etc. You can involve your kids in this decision making process. Help them value their work too.

• How many items should I hold onto?
  Decide on a reasonable number of artefacts for you to hold onto. Try to collect a diverse sample to showcase a variety of artefacts and a wide range of abilities.

• How should I store these portfolio artefacts?
  You can make use of a variety of storage boxes. Think about what works best in your home. Some options include: bankers boxes with folders, large Ziploc bags and large plastic portfolio envelopes. Something else to consider is to build a digital portfolio with pictures of work samples. Take this one step further by making a photo book or scrap book with the pictures to really celebrate you children’s accomplishments.

Remember to communicate to your children that their work is precious and worth keeping. Find meaningful ways to document their growth and achievement.

For more information regarding academic and organizational support, contact Ruth Rumack’s Learning Space 416.925.1225 or visit www.ruthrumack.com.

Academic New Year’s Resolutions

 

                2012 has arrived! Happy New Year to you and yours! This is the time of year for new beginnings and fresh starts. What New Year’s resolutions have you made for yourself? Most common resolutions reflect commitments to fitness or commitments for self improvement. Why not include your schooling in your resolution efforts? How can you resolve yourself to be a more dedicated learner? What can you do to better organize yourself? What are the areas for growth that you can work on this year?

 

                Here are some examples of New Year’s resolutions that you can try on for size. Maybe one of them will inspire you as we move into the New Year.

• I will not procrastinate this year.
  This is a great time management resolution. A tangible way to achieve this goal is to use your agenda and set milestones, working backwards from a deadline. Look at your calendar and set objectives for yourself like, “I will start researching on this date”, “I will have a first draft completed by this date”, and “I will give my assignment to my mom to proof read by this date”. With this series of milestones in place, you’ll avoid the stress of starting and completing an assignment the night before it’s due.
• I will spend more time studying this year.
  This resolution is a fantastic academic goal. Make reasonable commitments to review your notes daily and schedule time for yourself to review before quizzes, tests and exams. With a greater investment in study time, you will reap the benefits of time well spent.
• I will work on staying organized this year.
  It is a good idea to make a commitment to personal organization. If you struggle with keeping your room, your desk, your backpack or your binders organized, set a weekly time to sort through your belongings and put everything back in its place.

 

As the year wears on and you polish these skills, find ways to progressively improve them. Try to perfect your agenda use, increase the time you spend reviewing or find ways to stay organized without a weekly set time.

 

For more information regarding academic support and organizational support, contact Ruth Rumack’s Learning Space 416.925.1225 or visit www.ruthrumack.com.

How to Model Reading Comprehension Strategies

In our previous blog, we discussed the importance of working on reading comprehension with your child at home. To read last week’s blog, click here http://wp.me/pT6KW-7d

                In brief, it is important to remember that we learn to make meaning of the text that we read. Comprehension is not a natural process. The best way we can help our children develop reading comprehension skills is by modeling our own comprehension skills at home. The reading comprehension strategies that we exercise include making predictions, visualizing, questioning, drawing inferences, identifying main ideas, and summarizing text.

Here are some examples of what you can say when modelling reading comprehension strategies. Focus on a few at a time. Don’t try to demonstrate all of these skills in one sitting.

• Making Predictions: This is something we do intuitively when we read with young children, but as our children grow up, we may forget to keep asking questions like “What do you think will happen next?”. Asking these types of questions prompt children to engage with the text they’ve read. To model this, simply pause and say, “I think I know what will come next…” Show your child how you connect with different details in the text to make your prediction.
• Visualizing: Pause periodically to describe the scene that you see in your mind. Help your child understand that words can paint a picture in your mind. Be as descriptive and vivid as possible.
• Questioning: Take a break from your reading to ask questions like, “I wonder why she said that?” or “If I were in this character’s position, how would I have responded?” etc.  
• Drawing Inferences: Show your child how you can draw conclusions by reading between the lines. Show your child how you can infer meaning based on the characters’ dialogue and interactions.
• Identifying Main Ideas & Summarizing: After you read together, take time to identify the main ideas for your child.  Then, re-read and make references to the text as you do. Similarly, pause to summarize what you have read, using your own words.

 

Once your child is familiar with the reading comprehension skills you demonstrate, begin to ask him or her to exercise some of these skills autonomously. Pause as you read together and prompt your child to summarize the text, predict what will happen, or describe what they see in their minds as you read together. In time, your child will be able to demonstrate these skills without your prompting – leading to more independent reading comprehension skills.
For more information regarding literacy support, contact Ruth Rumack’s Learning Space 416.925.1225 or visit www.ruthrumack.com.

Reading Comprehension at Home

                Reading comprehension refers to the process of making meaning of the text we read. Reading is much more than merely deciphering the words written on a page. Reading is a process that forces us to actively engage in making sense of the words we read. When we read, the words should paint a picture in our minds and invite us into an imaginative world. Be aware that this is not a natural process. Reading comprehension is a skill we acquire with practice, and parents can help their children develop these abilities by modeling these cognitive skills.

                To model reading comprehension is to demonstrate how you make sense of the words you read. To model is to make visible the invisible process that occurs in your mind. The reading comprehension strategies that we use daily include making predictions, visualizing, questioning, drawing inferences, identifying main ideas, and summarizing text. When we teach our children how to do each of these things, we equip them with the skills to exercise critical and creative thinking skills to achieve a deeper understanding of the material they read.

Here are some suggestions to help you model reading comprehension strategies at home:

• First of all, make sure that you read with your child on a regular basis. You may consider making reading a part of the bed time routine, or pick another time of day to sit down and read together.
• When you read together, take turns reading out loud. It’s important to demonstrate your reading and provide opportunities for your child to practice reading aloud.
• When you read, be sure to pause periodically and model reading comprehension strategies like summarizing the story you’ve read in your own words or explaining the picture you are visualizing in your mind as you read.

 

Stay tuned for our next blog to read specific examples of how you can model reading comprehension at home.

For more information regarding literacy support, contact Ruth Rumack’s Learning Space 416.925.1225 or visit www.ruthrumack.com.

Homework That Helps: Review for Math

As mentioned in the previous blog, there are a variety of review strategies that can be applied to different school subjects and tasks. Whether you’re reviewing for the sake of review, completing assigned homework, preparing for future lessons, or studying for a test or exam, there are different ways to review the material. Similarly, there are different approaches to tackling certain subject areas – you won’t necessarily review or study for an English exam in the same way that you would a math exam. Given that the previous blog provided some strategies for review of social studies and English coursework, the following will discuss some effective tactics for reviewing and studying mathematics.

 

One of the most effective ways to review for math is to re-do questions that you’ve already worked on. Use your textbook to re-visit the questions provided and work through them again to reinforce your understanding of the steps and formulas applied to achieve the correct answer. The more practice the better, so try to find additional questions to work through – visit your local library for other grade appropriate textbooks with similar material or look online for more practice questions. By repetitively solving similar problems, you’ll come to better understand the concepts involved.

 

Math skills are like building blocks – you need to fully understand the concepts and skills before you move on to the next learning step. If you’re having difficulty with a particular concept, go back and re-learn the material. Perhaps the teacher’s notes aren’t sufficient to provide the full picture, if this is the case, work with a fellow classmate or ask a parent or guardian to re-teach the material to you. If you’re an auditory learner, you may want to record your teacher’s lectures and listen to them later as a means of review. If you find an alternative textbook, you might discover that a different approach or explanation is helpful for your understanding.

 

When reviewing for a math test or exam, it is always beneficial to complete the chapter review tests in your textbook. Approach these review tests as though you are in a testing scenario – set a timer, minimize distractions and complete the review as you would an actual test. This strategy will also help reduce test-anxiety when it comes time for the exam.

Homework That Helps: Review!

Whether you’re an elementary or secondary school student, establishing an effective homework routine will bode well for future studies. Secondary school students in particular should set aside some time each day to complete assigned homework, review coursework, organize notes and plan for upcoming tests and assignments. Although you may not have ‘homework’ every night, it is still good practice to schedule time to work in a quiet space with minimal distractions and use the time to get on top of your schoolwork.

 

Reviewing your coursework and class notes is an excellent way to garner a fuller understanding of the material that you’re studying, and it’s a study skill that will be especially valuable in college and university. Depending on the subject and the assignment that you’re working on, there are various review strategies that you can put into place. For social science and English courses for example, you might want to review the literature – re-read a chapter of the novel or textbook and make a note of important points, topics or characters. Since the task of reviewing is intended to help you develop a broader understanding of the topic, it is helpful to know the material in context and appreciate how it relates to other terms and facts.

 

One of the most effective ways of reinforcing your learning is to regurgitate your knowledge – once you’ve reviewed the material, explain it to a peer or family member. In discussing, or ‘re-teaching’ the topic to someone else, you’ll consider other opinions, develop a more sophisticated understanding of context and question what you already know. Another means of solidifying your knowledge is to write about it. When you finish reviewing a chapter or class notes, take the time to write down everything you know about it – you can do this through a point-form list of important details, or through informal or formal essay writing.

 

These review strategies help to keep you on top of your studies and also prepare you for future lessons and learning. Stay tuned for a follow up blog on review strategies for math coursework, tests and exams.

 

Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers

The following article is based on Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers, edited by Eric Gutstein and Bob Peterson

                Math matters! Many students believe that math is irrelevant and often ask their math teachers why they need to learn math. Students resistant to math have never been able to see how mathematics is relevant in their lives. We use math daily, and we need to show our students that math knowledge equips them with a toolset for functioning in day-to-day life. Two educators, Eric Gutstein and Bob Peterson, propose a new vision for math education. They suggest that math instruction is often divorced from the real world. They advocate  that the key is to “teach math in a way that helps students more clearly understand their lives in relation to their surroundings, and to see math as a tool to help make the world more equal and just.”

                These educators are dedicated to changing current modes of math instruction and invite us to shift our thinking about the math classroom to weave social justice into the math curriculum. One suggestion they make is to teach math across the curriculum. This allows students to meaningfully link math to their lives as opposed to viewing it as a subject reserved for the period from 9:00am to 10:00am. To practically achieve this, we would have to desegregate our subjects and integrate math, language and art together in meaningful ways.

                An interesting recommendation they make is to teach children to read the world with math. This requires what they call “criticalmathematical literacy.” This is a process of understanding the mathematics, understanding the mathematics of political knowledge, understanding the politics of mathematical knowledge and understanding the politics of knowledge. This process helps students develop analytical skills, which are so necessary for their academic careers and beyond. A detailed discussion of this process is beyond the scope of this article, so for more information check out the Rethinking Schools Website. 
For more information regarding math instruction and academic support, contact Ruth Rumack’s Learning Space 416.925.1225 or visit www.ruthrumack.com.