Teaching Geography 12 A new school year has started! This year I have moved out of English Language teaching to focus on English and Social Studies subjects. This has also put me in the position of teaching Geography for the first time. Geography can be a dry subject. It also involves
Debating the Pipeline: On the west coast, the Kinder Morgan – Trans Mountain pipeline project has been a growing controversy for several years. Yesterday, the Canadian government announced its intention to buy the troubled project, and start construction this summer. Personally,
Indigenous Perspectives Over the past two years the Province of British Columbia has started to implement a new curriculum for students in Kindergarten to Grade 9. Over the next two years the new curriculum will be implemented for students in high school. This overhaul represents chan
Orcas imitate human speech Researchers from institutions in Germany, UK, Spain and Chile published a paper last month on their experiences with an orca whale named Wilkie. Wilkie has been trained to mimic human sounds. Wilkie was exposed to six human sounds including “hello̶
Innovations in Lesson Planning Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a way for teachers to design lessons that encourage critical thinking and support a diverse classroom environment. The New BC Curriculum In the province of British Columbia, the curriculum is changing. The “ne
Throwback Post Three years ago I was living on the Gold Coast of Australia and reflecting on the differences between life in Canada and life there. Despite Canada and Australia sharing similarities, the differences in language were an area that I noticed the most. Using Australian sla
Learning a New Language… Again When I was in high school and university, I studied Spanish. During my second year, I mixed up courses and didn’t have the right credits to continue with Spanish, and didn’t need more language credits to graduate, so I stopped. One of m
Teaching Idioms, Learning Slang Teaching idioms (a group of words established by usage as having a meaning not deducible from those of the individual words (e.g., raining cats and dogs, see the light ) (from Google) is one of the more difficult lessons to teach in English language tea
If your student is struggling with language learning, how do you know if they have a learning disability? This has been one of my challenges teaching high school EAL. It can be very difficult to determine where a language barrier might actually be a learning disability. I have recentl
Language Learning at the Mosque The Ajyal Center in downtown Vancouver is an Islamic center and mosque. This past fall, I provided child care for children at the Ajyal Center during a Arabic / English language exchange through Language Partners BC . Many of the women participating had
