Combining Classic and Modern Literature

William Blake Meets ‘Enemy Pie’ As long as the texts are relevant to our students, Pear Tree Education believes in combining classic and modern literature. This week, we looked at William Blake’s poem ‘A Poison Tree’. The poem talks about the benefits of communication in dealing with anger, as well as the consequences of letting anger brew. Blake uses…

Paul Romani

Talk Back: Learning from Mistakes

Talk Back: Learning from Mistakes In Pear Tree’s ‘Talk Back’ class, we looked at the picture book ‘The Curious Garden’ by Peter Brown. The students were then given a sample speech supposedly discussing great ideas about The Curious Garden. However, the speech was intentionally bad! Using this bad speech, the students had to learn what…

Paul Romani

ESL for Kids Science

ESL for Kids Science In Pear Tree’s ESL for Kids class, we’re currently studying the science of Extreme Environments. Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve been looking at different extreme environments: the Poles, volcanoes, jungle, desert, ocean, and space. For each extreme environment, we’ve been deciding what dangers there are for human beings. …

Paul Romani

Talk Back: Presentation Design for Kids

Talk Back: Presentation Design for Kids In Wednesday’s ‘Talk Back’ class, we studied about presentation design using PowerPoint. To begin with, we looked at two examples: one good and one bad. From these examples, the students had to understand why the bad example is bad: The slides are pretty much all text The text is…

Paul Romani

Talk Back: Public Speaking for Kids course

Talk Back: Public Speaking for Kids course In yesterday’s first class of ‘Talk Back’, Pear Tree’s new public speaking course for kids, we started by studying two pictures of bullying. Students had to using observation and critical thinking skills to dissect the picture, as well as to make inferences about things you can’t see, but…

Paul Romani

Painter's Pallet at Norma Rose Point School

Painter’s Pallet at Norma Rose Point School Check out our ‘Painter’s Pallet’ course that Pear Tree is running at Norma Rose Point School (near UBC). This project was based on Rene Magritte’s ‘Son of Man’ picture (shown below). The students painted the sky background with sponge painting technique. They then painted the apples and learned…

Paul Romani

ESL Science Classes

ESL Science Classes In Pear Tree’s ESL classes, we’re studying science! Currently, we’re learning about methods of making electricity! We combine critical thinking questions with clear and easy visuals/videos that both ESL and native English speakers can understand. Our ultimate method of learning is getting the students to teach about particular science topics as a public…

Paul Romani

Presentations in Beginners ESL Classes for Kids?

Presentations in Beginners ESL Classes for Kids? Pear Tree Education demonstrates what you can achieve in beginners’ ESL classes for kids In a matter of three or four classes, how can you take a complete beginner to a point where they give their first English presentation? Pear Tree dares to achieve what others don’t! Some of the first…

Paul Romani

Artificial Intelligence Ethics and Morals

Artificial Intelligence Ethics and Morals Today’s topic in Pear Tree’s Artificial Intelligence course is ethics and morals, by far the most challenging part of the course. We started by comparing humans to androids, which is very complex once you start looking at the mind (and, let’s face it, the average robots course does nothing but…

Paul Romani

EXPLAINED: Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) Course

Explaining Pear Tree’s Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) Course Pear Tree’s ‘A.I.’ course for 10-14 year olds is a tough course to explain. This partly because it’s very holistic! It’s also because of how common robotics courses have become in Vancouver camps. Pear Tree’s Artificial Intelligence course isn’t really a robotics course and is very different the courses people are…

Paul Romani