Pro-D Day

For my Pro-D day I was able to attend the BCAMT in Whistler, BC. As informative as it was, I definitely could have allocated my time in a wiser way; I was choosing events moments before they were beginning and I feel I could have had a richer and more fulfilling experience had I done thorough research before hand. I also noticed that I as not reading the descriptions well or understanding them accurately - many a times I would sit in on an event and it would be different than what I thought it would be. 

That being said, I did take a lot away from a few events. Peter Liljedahl delivered a very informative session on the importance of closing a lesson. He provided three ways on driving home student understanding through the methods of teacher scribe, note-making and mild/medium/spicy questions. A lot of what Peter said was making sense and I thought his connection between the chaos on vertical workspaces and as a result the chaos in students' minds was astute. Closing the lesson effectively consolidates that chaos into learned knowledge. All of my lesson plans for the long practicum, and the one I delivered in the second week of my short practicum had some form of what Peter explained in his talk. 

Although I can't remember the name of the talk anymore, it was delivered by Christopher Danielson (I'm glad I took notes all three days) on the last day. He spoke about the importance of definitions in mathematics. The example he used was about quadrilaterals. When we think about quadrilaterals, often we think about four-sided figures that all have angles less than 180 degrees. However, he interestingly brought up that four-sided polygons with reflex angles are also quadrilaterals. I actually ended up using a game of his in a modified versions for the grade 8 students I taught during the second week of my short practicum. 

I hadn't seen my colleagues in six days up til that point and I didn't realize how fond I had become of them until I saw Josh very early on the Friday morning. I literally wanted to run and hug him I was so happy to see him. Out of all the wonderful talks and events I attended that weekend, I would be lying if I didn't acknowledge that my favourite moment was opening the doors to the ballroom where Peter's talk was being held, seeing Josh about 20 rows down and both of us putting our arms in the air when we saw each other. It got that much better when we were able to meet up with Manveen, Saiya, Teij and Leon.