CERN HST2019 - Day 9

Today we had Dave Fish and Laura Pankratz from the Perimeter Institute that came all the way from Waterloo, Ontario to give us an awesome presentation!!  This presentation has made me completely rethink how I'm going to run my Grade 11 and 12 Physics courses in the fall!  Their ideas really focused on the "Predict - Observe - Explain" model and gives students the opportunity to learn by doing.  This is something that is right up my alley and that I've been looking at more and more as I was teaching Physics this past year.  I wanted to bring in more of those ideas that promote critical thinking and that give students the opportunity to "discover" what they need to know.  I was fortunate to be able to sit beside one of my American colleagues that uses the Modeling Instruction approach in her classroom and she was able to give me a bit of insight of how the approaches presented by Dave and Laura would be tweaked a little for her classroom.  I think that so many of the ideas presented today will be a tremendous benefit to my classroom and I hope that I can share them with my colleagues in the fall when I present in Winnipeg at the Manitoba Teacher's Society PD Day.

We finished the day with the international gift exchange!  This was a lot of fun and a great bonding experience!  A couple of the teachers were so kind as to share their musical talents with us and it was a great way to wind down a busy day and stay up a little later to enjoy the partial lunar eclipse!.

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