Pause Day
Once a semester our school has Pause Day, a day where we hit 'pause' on usual classes, and allowed students the opportunity to catch up, relax, learn something new, and meet new people. As teachers, during our regular periods we would offer to run an academic support room, where students could catch up on work we could facilitate a workshop for students to try something new. It was fantastic as there were classrooms where students could play board games, knit, debate current events, sing karaoke, or play musical instruments. Some students took full advantage of the day by participating in these activities as well as getting some support with their academics. For my two morning blocks I offered an introduction to Scratch programming workshop. I started with a quick tour of Scratch and then showed them some tutorials they could work through and I offered support where needed. A number of students from my grade 9 math classes came to the workshops, which I was quite pleased a...