In the feeder this morning........

Cardinal, Hairy Woodpecker, Female Purple Finch, Tree Sparrow, White Breasted Nuthatch, Red Breasted Nuthatch, Downy Woodpecker, several Juncos, up to 6 Goldfinch and a never ending supply of Chickadees......

Female Purple finch, Tree Sparrow and Goldfinches vie for a place in our window feeder 

Yes, window needs cleaning!

UPDATE

We were pleased to see our Red Bellied Woodpecker return  on Thursday, we are on the northern edge of his range which is gradually expanding and we think he raised a young one here last year'

Teaching the Teachers

It appears that Elementary School Teachers in Ontario, who have graduated High School and gone on to further education and obtained their Teaching Certificate, need further education in order to teach BASIC math to elementary age kids. It also seems that schools need to be forced to teach this basic skill with any consistency with many schools spending less that an hour covering math skills.


Concerned about a troubling slip in elementary math scores, the Ontario government will require all students from Grades 1 to 8 to have at least 60 minutes of math instruction a day starting in September.
In a $60 million “renewed math strategy” unveiled Monday by Education Minister Liz Sandals, Ontario also will require each school to have at least one “math lead teacher” — in larger schools,

Are we saying that a teacher who has their certificate does NOT have the skills and knowledge necessary to teach basic math and we need more 'specialist' teachers? That we need to give said teachers up to five additional days of math professional development a year at a cost of $60 million in order that they can do so?


Some teachers questioned which subjects they will have to cut to find 60 minutes for math, but many already spend that much time on math, suggested Poleen Grewal, superintendent of curriculum and instruction for the Peel District School Board, which is in the second year of a big push on math improvement. “You’d actually have to spend that much time if you’re engaging in problem-solving; a lot of schools actually spend two 40- to 50-minute periods on math, so I don’t think 60 minutes is a stretch.”

The president of the Elementary Teachers’ Federation of Ontario questioned the ongoing focus on literacy and numeracy......... whilst other subjects are no doubt also important perhaps he can explain how you can write reports or indeed understand other subjects like science or geography without these basic skills.

Let us ensure that our kids AND the teachers have a good grasp of the basic skills of Math and English before proceeding to other areas of interest.

Daughters Scrapbooking Place

My Daughter writes........
“After years of scrapping out of bins on my kitchen table, I asked my dad an amateur woodworker to create a workplace for all my goodies. I clipped pictures of all the little storage ideas I had seen over the years and along with a pamplet for the Scrapbox left him to it.”
Apparently I did OK as she thinks it good enough to submit an article about it to https://creativescrapbooker.ca/blogs/where-you-create-with-mary-jane-rawls/


Sorry its no use asking me for plans as all the drawings were stored in my head and those files are mostly lost to time!


Still a guy can be proud of his past achievements cant he?