At present, this page includes supporting documents for my teaching portfolio, specifically sample teaching materials in a variety of formats. It is sorted according to format, and then subject area.

I have chosen these materials to represent the variety of formats I have used to teach many different subject areas during my teaching career.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me!

Slides from Workshops & Lectures

Slides made to accompany teaching lectures and workshops. In some cases, the slides in these files acted as a back-up for a live demonstration of a website (in case of on-the-day internet connectivity issues). The slides posted here do not include speaker notes.

Study Skills, Research Skills, and Information Literacy

Study Skills for High School Students (September 2024 version)

• Subject area(s): Study skills, with a tiny bit of information literacy.
• Intended student audience: Grade 9-12 students. This version was designed to work with a group of up to 40 students, ~90minutes in length.
• Delivery method(s): Interactive lecture.
  • To encourage active participation, the lecture is broken up with verbal brainstorming sessions.
  • There are two “long answer show your work” examples. Based on who attends, I will pick one of the two. I only use the chemistry based “show your work” example if all the students have completed science 10.
• Development: After every study skills workshop or lecture, I have collected feedback. The biggest changes came about after the invited guest lectures I gave at Oilfields High School, which included a significant amount of overlap with this lecture.
  • Based on student questions and written feedback, the next version may include a “fidget toys and ADHD” slide, a more formal introduction to computer file organization, and a reduction in the time spent on “how to show your work.”
• Other comments: This workshop is currently supplemented with a “note-taking” and “show your work” handout. I also provide students with piece of paper with a link to where they can download the slides.

I Swear, It’s Just Research! Hiding Bodies, launching things into space, forging swords, et cetera. (August 2024)

NOTE: Slide 61 (“Questions”) was the actual end of the presentation. See “Other comments” below for details.

• Subject Area(s): Research skills and information literacy.
• Intended student audience: adult fiction writers (though some of those writers may be writing for non-adult audiences). 50 minutes with questions.
• Delivery method(s): In-person.
• Development: The section on assessing information resources (using CRAAP) was about 50% recycled material from other lectures that had received feedback. The remainder of the lecture was created entirely for this specific conference. Based on information I learned at another talk at the conference the day before I was due to give the talk, I realized I needed to make changes to the information assessment portion of the lecture. While the changes to the slides were minor, the verbal component of the lecture was longer. One section was cut and moved to after the final “Questions” slide, in case an audience member asked a question relevant to my removed material.
  • The version as it stood the night before the lecture is available on the blog post for this event. The version above is in all critical details the version that I presented at the conference.
  • Other major change that needs to be made: including on both the opening and closing slides a link and QR code to where the slides can be downloaded. With the other activities going on at this conference, and the sheer amount of distance needed to be covered between talks at the venue, many early departures and late arrivals would still be interested in downloading the slides!
• Other comments
  • The screen shots for Hathi Trust and OER Commons were placeholders for live-action interactive demos of those information sources, in case of on-the-day internet connectivity issues.
  • All slides after number 61 (“Questions”) were included in case an audience member asked relevant questions.
  • I need to determine a method of obtaining feedback from the audience members beyond “another conference attendee recognized me later, and asked me questions.”

Chemistry

Chem 20 – Acids & Bases Review

• Intended student audience: Chemistry 20 private tutoring client.
• Delivery method(s): Interactive one-on-one online tutoring through zoom.
• Development: Towards the end of the high school academic year, I asked my tutoring client what topic(s) she most wanted me to review before her final, and this was part of the result.
  • In response to some of her questions during the interactive lecture, I added a few more slides at the very end to the version I emailed her the day following our tutoring session.
• Other comments: Slides do not include any of the zoom whiteboards, which included sample questions I worked through with the student. Most of the worked samples were from other units than the acid-base one, in any case.

Handouts and worksheets

• Some are meant to allow the student to learn and/or use the content completely independently & asynchronously.
• Some are intended to assess student strengths and weaknesses – the student completes the worksheet independently & asynchronously, and I go over the results at the next tutoring session. While the worksheets could be converted to a graded version, they are not currently used that way.
• In-class (synchronous) worksheets. The link provided will take you to the slides and the synchronous worksheet(s) for the workshop.

Information Literacy and Study Skills

APA Style 7th Edition: Citing and Creating Reference Lists

• Intended student audience: Post-secondary students, faculty, staff, etc.
• Delivery method(s): Intended as either an independent & asynchronous handout, or to supplement a class lecture including a brief introduction to citation using APA style.
• Development: This handout is updated from the APA 6th Edition handout I created while working at the UTSC Library. The previous version was reviewed by a few other UTSC Library staff members, and appropriate changes made.
• Other comments: Library staff or other teaching professionals who would like to make use of this document (with the placeholder text filled in with institution-specific information) in their library, please contact me.

Notes on Note-Taking

• Intended student audience: grade 9-12 students who can read printed text at at least the grade 9 level.
• Delivery method(s): Intended to supplement one-on-one tutoring and workshops or lectures including a section on note-taking.
• Development: Initially created as a science-specific guide to note-taking, I expanded from the science-specific content, and changed it to this more generic version after a chemistry tutoring client asked about note-taking in other subjects. Now, I generally use this version rather than the chemistry related one when I am asked to teach note-taking.
• Other comments: On occasion, I have included the mind-map note-taking activity (slide 32 in the Study Skills for High School Study workshop above) as part of this handout.

Chemistry and Other Sciences

Significant Figures/Significant Digits for High School Chemistry and Physics Students

• Intended student audience: Grade 12 physics and chemistry students.
• Delivery method(s): Asynchronous. The student is expected to complete the sample questions, and use the provided answers to decide if they need one-on-one help to improve their understanding.
• Development: This handout was requested by a tutoring client. Drafts 1 and 2 were updated based on feed back from trusted non-students. At present, no actionable feedback has been received from the students who were given this worksheet.
• Other comments: This worksheet is also intended as a stealthy method to determine if the student is correctly entering things into their calculator.

Audio

Chemistry and Other Sciences

Chemistry 20 acid-base vocabulary review recording

• Intended student audience: Chemistry 20 student(s)
• Delivery method(s): Online asynchronous
• Development: This audio file was created to help a student I had realized had some sort of undiagnosed reading and writing disabilities that were interfering with their study of chemistry. The script I used for the audio file was developed after I talked with the student to determine what content would help them study for their test. They decided that learning the vocabulary would be most useful.
  • If I am asked to create similar recordings in the future, I would insert a few seconds pause between the word I am defining and the actual definition to give the student-listener time to pause the recording and verbally repeat what they think the answer is. I could also break the individual word/definition pairs into separate files so the student could include them in a random-shuffle playlist.
• Other comments: I ensured that the quality of the audio I recorded was high enough to meet the standards set out by several audiobook publishing companies.