The Week of March 2 - 6, 2015

Creating Self Advocacy Pamphlets

To say that there is a lot going on in a student's life in grade eight would be an understatement. There are the challenges of being a teenager, harnessing the feelings of being the biggest fish in the pond, and of course the transition to high school - just to name a few. I want to be sure that my students have a smooth transition to high school so I have asked them to create a pamphlet to describe their strengths and needs as learners.The pamphlets the students created surprised me!  It wasn't how good they looked that surprised me, I knew they would create greatness, it was the students' mindfulness of how they learn that I found to be most amazing! My students all live with a learning disability and they are challenged by their LD day in and day out as students. I am a big proponent of mindfulness in the classroom. We are all very open and inclusive in the classroom.  The fact that every student in my room is full of grit and resiliency has made them so successful in working to overcome their LDs.

Here is an explanation of the activity we did written by the students for the LD@School website.

"We started by going over York Region’s Understanding Learning Disabilities - How Processing Affects Learning chart, WE call it “The Waterfall Chart” [http://ldatschool.ca/classroom/executive- function/york-waterfall-chart/].  We went through the waterfall chart with our teacher and jotted down our strengths and needs into an app called Popplet [http://popplet.com/].  Some of you may have already seen Denver’s Popplet presentation [https://twitter.com/Mr_DzzzClass?lang=en]!"


After finishing the activity, I found this assignment to be extremely empowering for students. They are better at explaining exactly what they need in order to overcome their LD, which makes them better self-advocates. I am excited to learn about these students' successes in high school.

Below is a sample of what the students have created. You can see why I am so proud!

A Week In Review

We have even more good news.  The people at LD@School have asked us to write an summary for their website.  All of my students will be published writers! We write the summary today and I will create a blog post all about it in the very near future. The kids and I are very excited, we get to help other kids, teachers, parents... who may be, or may work with students with a learning disability.

The Week of February 17 - 20 in Mr. Di Donato's Class!

My teacher asked me the question, How does the blog support my learning?

Here is what I think...

I think the blog helps my learning in the following ways;

1. lets me be more independent
2. my writing skills
3. helps me get feed back  
4. lets me showcase my work
5. it creates a digital folder

Using the blog is like game tape in football, it lets you see your mistakes and fix them.

Sketches Read Aloud

Here I am reading a few lines from Eric Walters "Sketches". we are reading Sketches as a class read aloud. we are reading aloud to improve our reading fluency. I think that my reading was good, to make it better, next time, I need to slow my reading down.

By watching this I learned more about the reading skills.  

This Week in Grade 8...

Check out the hilarious Perry from the water treatment plant!