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Anti-Racist Art Teachers
More/Less & Before/After Questions
More / Less List
Originally published in the New York Times, a More / Less List is a great illustrated way to look back at the previous year and look forward to the new year. What would you like to see more of in 2022? What needs to drop away? There could be some great discussions around the idea of resolutions, but also the imperfect idea of perfection.
Before / After Questions
What comes after a funny joke? What comes before you say, “I’m sorry.” What comes before the Nobel Prize? What comes after the new year? What comes before the feeling of pride? Before / After questions not only elicit some interesting and creative answers but often interesting depth of thought. Have students come up with their own questions to keep the “ball” rolling.
List of Before / After Questions
Put your answer after each question.
What comes after a funny joke?
What comes before you say, “I’m sorry”?
What comes after the telephone rings?
What comes before the victory parade?
What comes after the electricity goes off?
What comes before pay day?
What comes after the explosion?
What comes before the marathon race?
What comes after you hear “Look out!”
What comes before you sign the contract?
What comes after you lose your car keys?
What comes before the cure for the disease?
What comes after the broken window?
What comes before the Nobel Prize?
What comes after the blender stops?
What comes before the opening curtain on stage?
What comes after a rainstorm?
What comes before the crowd gets angry?
What comes after a squeaking door?
What comes before the concert?
What comes before the hard feelings?
What comes after the invitations are sent?
What comes before the trophy is presented?
What comes after you sign your name on the line?
What comes before a book becomes a bestseller?
Create some of your own for us to try………
There: A Philosophy and Ethics Discussion Guide
There: A Philosophy and Ethics Discussion Guide
A little girl pictures the future as a different place—a place called “There”. Her questions echo many of the worries that all children have.
This discussion guide is one of more than 200 offered by the Prindle Institute to introduce philosophy and ethics using popular children’s books.
Dealing with Perfectionism in Students
A Japanese tale tells of a young man who was asked to tend a garden. He cleaned and raked, removing every fallen leaf and twig. Then, when the ground was completely clear, he shook one of the cherry trees. He wanted the few flowers that fell randomly to demonstrate wabi-sabi, or the beauty in imperfection.
Wabi-Sabi: The Art Of Imperfection, Utne Reader, October, 2007
Beyond the comfort offered to avid gardeners in the depths of winter, we think that this story is most vital as a counterpoint to the tradition of the New Year’s Resolution, which encourages us all to think like perfectionists. Beauty is achieved through balance, which is usually better than perfection.
Perfectionism
Perfectionism is the combination of excessively high standards and all-or-nothing thinking, and it is almost always compounded by a poor self-concept. It is particularly likely to manifest in highly gifted students. (Alodat, A., et al, 2020)
Some of the unhealthy signs of perfectionism are:
- high levels of anxiety and feelings of inadequacy
- tendency to magnify imperfections and to blow things out of proportion
- self-criticism and criticism of others
Supporting the social-emotional needs of high-ability students,Victoria State Government, August 2021
Perfectionism can cause students both to engage relentlessly and to actively avoid:
| Active Behaviours | Avoidance Behaviours |
| Double- and Triple-checking | Procrastinating |
| Excessive organizing | Giving up too soon |
| List making | Being indecisive |
| Correcting Others and difficulty sharing responsibility | Reluctance to try new things to avoid possible ‘failure’ |
| Academic Overachievement | Disengagement |
| Desire for control and putting high demands on others |
Information Sheet 3: Perfectionism Behaviours,
Government of Western Australia, Centre for Clinical Interventions
Academic work often comes more easily to gifted and highly able students, so they might not develop the necessary skills for managing challenges in their early school years. Teacher, parent and peer expectations can compound the problem, and such students may begin to define themselves in terms of their academic success. Difficulties later in their school career may cause them to question their intelligence or their abilities, rather than understanding that challenges are a normal part of life. Thus, highly able students should be challenged in their learning when they are young so they can develop the necessary skills.
Strategies
Here are some strategies that you might use to help students who struggle with perfectionism:
- Build relationships so that students feel able to share their areas of struggle rather than trying to hide them;
- Avoid defining them by their intelligence! Don’t ever say, “You’re smart, so you should understand…”;
- Be an example of someone who’s not perfect! Model growth mindset;
- Teach students to use the Stepladder: choose a specific and appropriately challenging goal; break the goal down into small steps; do a step repeatedly, to make sure you are comfortable with it before you move on;
- Acknowledge and recognize the process rather than the product;
- Identify some tasks that do not have do be done to a high standard and teach students to evaluate tasks;
- Be supportive. Ask your students what they need to achieve what they want;
- Put ‘failure’ in context by using the ‘possibilities’ model to : questioning such as ‘what is the worst thing that could happen?’
Tiered Assignments
Why Differentiate?
A differentiated classroom provides various avenues to acquiring content, to processing or making sense of ideas, and to developing products. It means tailoring instruction to meet individual needs. Whether teachers differentiate content, process, format/products, or the learning environment, the use of ongoing assessment and flexible grouping makes this a successful approach to instruction.
Differentiation for the Highly Able
Who is the student in your class that will progress the least this year?… It may actually be your enrichment student. For them, differentiation means:
- experiencing challenge, working hard and building grit
- increased engagement and motivation to learn
- strengthened well-being, self-esteem and sense of accomplishment
Tiered Assignments
Tiered assignments provide differentiation by allowing students to work on the same content but at different levels of complexity and challenge. Content standards are met by all, but each individual student is challenged at the appropriate level – including the enrichment student! This helps to ensure optimal learning and engagement for all. Students get “just right” work, being pushed beyond what is easy or comfortable. The number of tiers can vary, but three is a good place to start.
Steps in Developing Tiered Assignments
Carol Ann Tomlinson suggests ‘teaching up’, which she describes as “a practice of first planning a lesson that’s challenging for high-end learners and then differentiating for other learners by providing supports that enable them to access that more sophisticated learning opportunity.” This approach, Tomlinson says, challenges advanced learners more than trying to pump up a “middling” idea—and serves other students better as well.
- Identify what all students must learn.
- Reflect upon assessments of students’ readiness levels, profiles, and interests.
- Create a task that challenges most students, is engaging, and promotes understanding of key concepts / skills.
- Vary task appropriately for students with fewer skills..
- Create additional activities that are more complex, require more abstract thinking, and possibly use advanced resources and technology. Determine complexity of each activity to ensure tasks will challenge students needing enrichment.
- Ensure each student participates in a variation of the activity that corresponds to that student’s needs and readiness.
( from Differentiation: Simplified, Realistic and Effective by Bertie Kingore, 2004 )
‘TIERING UP’ AND THE HIGHLY ABLE STUDENT:
- Allows highly able students to skip “kill and drill” and lowers frustration with “doing school”
- Can involve students in co-designing of tasks
- Allows a faster pace for work, or perhaps a slower pace to allow for more depth and complexity (fewer, but more complex tasks)
- Focuses on abstract concepts as much as possible and uses open-ended questions
CFEE Money Management Competition
Money Management Competition
This competition is an opportunity for Canadian middle and high school students to become more confident about money management and budgeting while having fun competing for their school. This competition will be based on the new bilingual Money Management and Budgeting Module by the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada (FCAC). Use this form to download the info pack.
- Who: All middle school and high school students nationwide (both languages)
- Dates: Feb. 9-16
- Prizes: A total of 22 top ranking schools on our four leaderboards will receive a piece of the $10,000 prize pot. Each student will also receive a Certificate of Achievement upon completion of the module.
- How it works: Students will create or log into their free accounts on chatterhigh.com and complete the Money Management module between Feb. 9th and 16th. Points earned will go toward their school’s total. The module (and certificates) will remain available for you to use after the competition is over!
Lateral Thinking Puzzles
Lateral Thinking Puzzles 
Thinking outside of the box takes practice. You’ll find students get better at creative problem solving after practicing their lateral thinking skills. Here are some good riddles to start with. Try them in small groups so students can share their thoughts.
Twosday Math Challenge
Twosday Math Challenge
Twosday is the name being given to Tuesday, February 22, 2022 since the date will be written as 2/22/22 in the US and 22/2/22 in much of the rest of the world. On top of the date being composed of all 2’s, the day of the week (Tuesday) sounds like the name of the holiday (Twosday).
Canadian Financial Literacy (FINLIT101)
“FinLit 101” is a unique interactive, online, self-instruction financial literacy learning program. It is also designed to be used by teachers as a complement to their in-class instruction. The program is available free in English and French. https://finlit101.ca/en
The content is delivered by recorded videos and animations and this instruction is complemented by “Additional Learning” content, quizzes, “SideTrips” to other sources and resources, “Assignments,” and “Discussion” opportunities for classes to engage in the exchange of opinions on various topics.
Teachers can register their class or classes enabling students to participate in the program as their own on-line community. Teachers can monitor the discussions and the progress of their students and can mark work that is submitted by them online.
There is a gamification feature providing incentive for users to work through the program and teachers can assign additional points to recognize exceptional work.
There are ten initial Modules in FinLit 101, and 50 financial Topics covered. The number of Modules and Topics will increase over time.
The program is available free in English and French.
We invite you to visit the FinLit 101 site and hope that you will find it useful – for your own learning or for instruction of others. Here is the link: https://finlit101.ca/en
We also welcome your feedback. Here is a Survey Monkey link for you to provide your comments and suggestions: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/6HKNMCX. To encourage feedback, the name of everyone who completes the form by Monday, February 7, 2022 at 11:59 p.m. EST will be entered into a draw for $300.
In addition, please join us to celebrate the Formal Launch of the program on our virtual event on Tuesday, February 8, at 3:00 p.m. EST which will be hosted by the Honourable Marc Garneau and will focus on the important link between financial health and mental health. A representative of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health will join us as will Dr. Moira Somers – a leading researcher into the link between financial health and mental health. You can register for the event at FinLit 101 Launch | Canadian Foundation for Economic Education (cfee.org) for more details.
CFEE extends our sincere thanks to National Bank for enabling us to make the unique and important program available free to all users.
It would be great to have you join us at the virtual event on Tuesday, February 8, 2022 at 3:00 EST!
And we hope you enjoy “FinLit 101”! Gary Rabbior, President
Philosophy for Kids2: Effort, Fun, Technology
Here are three questions from Philosophy for Kids. Philosophy is the love of wisdom, and really, what is knowledge without wisdom?
Start asking students questions with no right answer (or many right answers).
Have them come up with their own questions to pose to the class.
You’ll find the students will really struggle with the first question (I sometimes get students asking me, “What do you think?” lol), but they will get better with each one. And in the process, you’ll be developing their critical thinking skills and establishing their own moral compass through which to view the world.
Ontario Teachers' Blog 