In the month of January, students from all over North America, who are part of the international program, Classroom Champions took a deeper look at goal setting and how important it is to work through the challenges or roadblocks we face when trying to reach a goal. Our mentor for this year, Scott Tupper, did an excellent job at helping my kids to realize that we all have obstacles, but we become a better person when we persevere through these challenging moments.
Scott Tupper: Perseverance from Classroom Champions on Vimeo.
To help reinforce this topic, as well as to help develop a more positive outlook on facing challenges, we dove deeper into Growth Mindset. Using a video from Mindset Kit, we took the information shared in the video and applied it to a few practice situations.
Once we completed the above document, the students then had to create a reflection on Let's Recap, either as a oral response or written. In order to mark these responses, the following rubric was used: Perseverance Reflection.
Although I deleted their responses from the queue (I really should not have done this), you will have to trust me that some of the responses received were very perceptive and let me know they really understood how this reflection process assisted them in realizing their goals OR continuing to push through to achieve them.
Wednesday, 14 March 2018
Monday, 29 January 2018
Family Literacy Week
Every year, ABC Life Literacy Canada hosts a Family Literacy Day to help recognize the importance literacy has on everyone. As teachers, we feel strongly about supporting such activities in order to show our students, through example, how literacy can impact our lives.
Using our Panther Groups, the students went to their leaders classroom and went through the presentation and read a story called "Zak the Yak With Books on His Back". There is a page in the presentation with links to purchase the book.
After completing the presentation, students were paired off and worked in their group to play a game of Kahoots. This exciting game asked questions about the story we read and on information learned about literacy.
Two students working as a team to answer the questions in Kahoots.
Pete the Cat came for a visit in the grade 3 classroom.
My grade 5 students donning their costumes of their favourite storybook characters.
To help the students at Provost Public School celebrate this annual event, the kids and some teachers dressed up like their favourite storybook characters. to continue the literacy activities, I created an Emaze presentation using some of the statistics of literacy rates around the world, specifically providing information on women illiteracy rates around the globe. We sometimes take this information for granted, however when you take a moment to read them, you might be astounded by the staggering numbers. North America and Europe has worked very hard to teach literacy to all socio-economic groups, however there are still 750 million adults worldwide who remain illiterate. 1
Using our Panther Groups, the students went to their leaders classroom and went through the presentation and read a story called "Zak the Yak With Books on His Back". There is a page in the presentation with links to purchase the book.
After completing the presentation, students were paired off and worked in their group to play a game of Kahoots. This exciting game asked questions about the story we read and on information learned about literacy.
Two students working as a team to answer the questions in Kahoots.
Pete the Cat came for a visit in the grade 3 classroom.
My grade 5 students donning their costumes of their favourite storybook characters.
Friday, 12 January 2018
Helping in Our Community
Each year, +Classroom Champions have their Olympic Athlete Mentors create a video on the topic of Community. This is one of my favourite topics of all. The old adage "it takes a village to raise a child", is so true, especially in this day and age with technology and the ability to connect with others around the world. In our global community, our youth need to learn the skills to work in this environment and as Scott Tupper says in his video found below, "we are part of multiple communities...their are multiple ways to play a positive role in your community."
Scott Tupper: Community from Classroom Champions on Vimeo.
For the second year, the grade 2 Southoff, 4 Clarke-Rennie and my grade 8 Health students, we worked on making No-Sew Blankets that would be donated to the Linus Project Alberta and Victim Services in the Provost area. These blankets will then be given to people who have recently gone through a traumatic experience.
The process started with a wonderful shopping spree at one of my favourite kinds of stores; a fabric store.
After purchasing 28 pieces of fabric that were 1.5 yards long (bolt width), we matched the front and backs together with the coordinating fabric. We even had four ladies from our community come in and help us with the cutting and squaring off.
Next we layered the pieces and cut of any edges
that were not square.
Once the edges were square the grade 8 students were able to cut 4" squares out of each corner and then add 1" x 4" fringes along the side. These fringes had to go through both layers at the same time to prevent the sizes of the fringes from being different when you tied each set of fringe together. This is something we learned from our experience last year.
When we finally finished the cutting, we put the blankets away until it was time to tie the fringes together.
With grade 2S, 4CR and my Health students, we spent a couple of classes tying the blankets together. This gave the grade 8 students the chance to be positive roll models for the younger students as they taught everyone how to tie the blankets.
To showcase our talets, I have created a Prezi of the finished product. You may recognize the rhyming pattern as 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. The kids seemed to get a great kick out of watching seeing their task put to a rhyme....I think they felt quite pleased they had accomplished so much to help so many people, even if they would never meet the people who would receive these gifts.
Scott Tupper: Community from Classroom Champions on Vimeo.
For the second year, the grade 2 Southoff, 4 Clarke-Rennie and my grade 8 Health students, we worked on making No-Sew Blankets that would be donated to the Linus Project Alberta and Victim Services in the Provost area. These blankets will then be given to people who have recently gone through a traumatic experience.
The process started with a wonderful shopping spree at one of my favourite kinds of stores; a fabric store.After purchasing 28 pieces of fabric that were 1.5 yards long (bolt width), we matched the front and backs together with the coordinating fabric. We even had four ladies from our community come in and help us with the cutting and squaring off.
Next we layered the pieces and cut of any edges
Once the edges were square the grade 8 students were able to cut 4" squares out of each corner and then add 1" x 4" fringes along the side. These fringes had to go through both layers at the same time to prevent the sizes of the fringes from being different when you tied each set of fringe together. This is something we learned from our experience last year.
When we finally finished the cutting, we put the blankets away until it was time to tie the fringes together.
With grade 2S, 4CR and my Health students, we spent a couple of classes tying the blankets together. This gave the grade 8 students the chance to be positive roll models for the younger students as they taught everyone how to tie the blankets.
To showcase our talets, I have created a Prezi of the finished product. You may recognize the rhyming pattern as 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. The kids seemed to get a great kick out of watching seeing their task put to a rhyme....I think they felt quite pleased they had accomplished so much to help so many people, even if they would never meet the people who would receive these gifts.
Tuesday, 7 November 2017
DIVERSITY: Every Voice Matters in Our Community
Diversity has a number of different meanings. For some it means we are different and unique, others understand we have an respect for all individuals no matter how different or similar we are. In the end, it means we are all equal.
In Scott Tuppers video on diversity, he hit the nail on the head with his statement "everyone in a community has a voice and that voice matters". Using this statement, my grade 8 students had a great discussion around how diversity is apparent and not so strongly visible in our class, school and within our community of Provost. Realizing that we all have inhibitions helps us understand that it is ok to be different and that our uniqueness is what gives us our personality, drive for success, passions and who we are inside and out.
Scott Tupper: Diversity from Classroom Champions on Vimeo.
Instructions: Overview of project and required information
Resources: Useful sites for finding cultural information
In Scott Tuppers video on diversity, he hit the nail on the head with his statement "everyone in a community has a voice and that voice matters". Using this statement, my grade 8 students had a great discussion around how diversity is apparent and not so strongly visible in our class, school and within our community of Provost. Realizing that we all have inhibitions helps us understand that it is ok to be different and that our uniqueness is what gives us our personality, drive for success, passions and who we are inside and out.
Scott Tupper: Diversity from Classroom Champions on Vimeo.
Monthly Challenge
For this months challenge does, Scott shared that he has been fortunate enough to travel to many countries. We were research each one of these countries and prepare a project that we could share with Scott outlining some of the facts about these places. To help reinforce the topic of health, I added a bit of a twist. Since these are grade 8 class, their challenge was to also find out how each country compared to Canada in encouraging a healthy lifestyle. For those that use Hapara Workspace, you can find a copy of this lesson here: Cultural Diversity and How Countries Support Healthy LifestylesInstructions: Overview of project and required information
Resources: Useful sites for finding cultural information
Referencing Your Material
Finished Products!
Although not all groups have finished their project, the Padlet will be updated as they are handed in for marking.
Thursday, 19 October 2017
Setting Goals is a System!
It is hard to believe we have already finished one month of school. Growing up, I remember Mrs. Dodds always saying, "Time flies when you get older; be sure to take the time to enjoy it". This is how this month has felt. It has flown by and I had to remind myself to slow down and enjoy the process.
This past month, my grade 8 students learned who their athlete mentor was and heard a bit about his journey as a field hockey player. During our first lesson, these students learned the value of goal setting and discussed the importance of establishing realistic, small steps to reach their goal.
Scott Tupper: Goal Setting from Classroom Champions on Vimeo.
After watching Scotts video our discussion took us to a new form of goal setting, that I had never used with my students before. Still incorporating the SMART goals, we used the BSQ Method. This form of goal setting involves 3 steps:
The following is a sample of some of the students work which includes a short video with some students talking about the steps they wish to take to achieve their goal.
This past month, my grade 8 students learned who their athlete mentor was and heard a bit about his journey as a field hockey player. During our first lesson, these students learned the value of goal setting and discussed the importance of establishing realistic, small steps to reach their goal.
Scott Tupper: Goal Setting from Classroom Champions on Vimeo.
After watching Scotts video our discussion took us to a new form of goal setting, that I had never used with my students before. Still incorporating the SMART goals, we used the BSQ Method. This form of goal setting involves 3 steps:
Thing BIG
Act SMALL
Move QUICK
Each student then recorded their goals and steps on the following document.
The following is a sample of some of the students work which includes a short video with some students talking about the steps they wish to take to achieve their goal.
Monday, 29 May 2017
What's My Paw Print?
We have had a great time working through the topic of Friendship, in my grade 8 class. Justin and Tristan brought this topic home with my class, as these trialsome teen years can be quite challenging for most kids in the age group.
In their video Treat Others the Way You Want to be Treated, our Olympic mentors reminded us of how important it is to choose friends with common interests, be open to other peoples opinions and always have good manners. This can be a tricky one for youth that are beginning to develop their own opinions and feel they need to share them. We took it a step further and said that you need to be aware of who the people are that you are with and that just because you have an expected behaviour around your friends, you do not have to be that person when in a large group. Manners do count!
Justin and Tristan continued with how to deal with disagreements and that it is important that you take time too cool off before you express how you feel, but that it is equally important to listen to how the other person feels.
Our monthly challenge on friendship was to find people in our school that we do not know very well and to come up with 3 things that you have in common, as well as traits/interests or activities that make you unique. To help do this amongst our classmates, we borrowed the idea from +Christine Thiessen of doing a round of "Speed Friendship". What a great opportunity this was to really get to know our classmates. Here is a list of questions that we used: Speed Friendship Questions.
While searching for ideas to bring my students closer together, I found a really neat video which one high school student prepared, showing the results of an experiment she had conducted. This helped to bring some connection to why jr high and high school students feel judgemental about others.
After discussing with the class their thoughts on this video, they became increasingly aware that sometimes we have a difficult time being friends with people because we fear what they will think of us. We also fear that we are not the image that we need to be in order to have friends from various backgrounds, or who have different images. It was exciting to see a few of the students even begin to realize that they are not less than or better than anyone else, because even they feel conscious about their appearance and feel they are not "beautiful". In reality, we are harder on ourselves and think less of ourselves because of this superficial idea of beauty.
To help bring this whole idea of friendship and recognizing that everyone has positive points to be celebrated--beauty, brains, fun nature, etc.,--the students were introduced to the 22 Days of Being in the Hot Seat. In this project, Jennifer Gonzalez: Cult of Pedagogy shows students just how much they are valued and appreciated by spending 22 days doing the Compliments Project. In this activity, every student in the class has a turn in the "hot seat". The seat is placed at the front of the class, with the persons back to the board. While here, the remainder of the students take time to record positive comments about this person. The exciting part of this activity was the response that people have when they realized they were important and that others like them, "just the way they are".
This activity was a bit risky with my class, as some of them really enjoy being the center of attention, especially if they can make others laugh. There have been many hurt feelings in this class in the past, but I knew that if I was going to break this cycle of criticism, I had to provide a safe setting for these students to take the risk. Setting up very specific criteria of acceptable comments, we determined as a class that comments had to be:
In their video Treat Others the Way You Want to be Treated, our Olympic mentors reminded us of how important it is to choose friends with common interests, be open to other peoples opinions and always have good manners. This can be a tricky one for youth that are beginning to develop their own opinions and feel they need to share them. We took it a step further and said that you need to be aware of who the people are that you are with and that just because you have an expected behaviour around your friends, you do not have to be that person when in a large group. Manners do count!
Justin and Tristan continued with how to deal with disagreements and that it is important that you take time too cool off before you express how you feel, but that it is equally important to listen to how the other person feels.
Our monthly challenge on friendship was to find people in our school that we do not know very well and to come up with 3 things that you have in common, as well as traits/interests or activities that make you unique. To help do this amongst our classmates, we borrowed the idea from +Christine Thiessen of doing a round of "Speed Friendship". What a great opportunity this was to really get to know our classmates. Here is a list of questions that we used: Speed Friendship Questions.
While searching for ideas to bring my students closer together, I found a really neat video which one high school student prepared, showing the results of an experiment she had conducted. This helped to bring some connection to why jr high and high school students feel judgemental about others.
After discussing with the class their thoughts on this video, they became increasingly aware that sometimes we have a difficult time being friends with people because we fear what they will think of us. We also fear that we are not the image that we need to be in order to have friends from various backgrounds, or who have different images. It was exciting to see a few of the students even begin to realize that they are not less than or better than anyone else, because even they feel conscious about their appearance and feel they are not "beautiful". In reality, we are harder on ourselves and think less of ourselves because of this superficial idea of beauty.
To help bring this whole idea of friendship and recognizing that everyone has positive points to be celebrated--beauty, brains, fun nature, etc.,--the students were introduced to the 22 Days of Being in the Hot Seat. In this project, Jennifer Gonzalez: Cult of Pedagogy shows students just how much they are valued and appreciated by spending 22 days doing the Compliments Project. In this activity, every student in the class has a turn in the "hot seat". The seat is placed at the front of the class, with the persons back to the board. While here, the remainder of the students take time to record positive comments about this person. The exciting part of this activity was the response that people have when they realized they were important and that others like them, "just the way they are".
This activity was a bit risky with my class, as some of them really enjoy being the center of attention, especially if they can make others laugh. There have been many hurt feelings in this class in the past, but I knew that if I was going to break this cycle of criticism, I had to provide a safe setting for these students to take the risk. Setting up very specific criteria of acceptable comments, we determined as a class that comments had to be:
- positive
- no inside jokes, unless the joke could be shared with the remainder of the class
- nothing that could be offensive or misleading
As in the example I found from the Cult of Pedagogy site, I decided to take pictures and video the reactions. I was completely dumbfounded and pleasantly surprised at the results. This is partially due to the makeup of my students. Unfortunately, quite a few of these students have been the brunt of jokes and many of these teens have been hurt by the comments of their classmates. While Justin and Tristan were visiting, both athletes were part of the hot seat. During this same visit, I had invited a student who had been part of our class at the beginning of the year, join our class for the day. Afterall, she had been part of our classroom for many years and Classroom Champions for the past 3 years. For her to stand up in front of the class and let the remainder of her classmate--even those who had tormented in the past-- make comments about her, I knew that this class had succeeded in overcoming their personal struggles with self-esteem and self-image. More importantly, this class has really become a caring and respectful class. These guys make me proud to be their teacher.
I have included two videos below. The first is the video of the students enjoying the Speed Friendship activity, while the second is of the project "What's My Paw Print". With the mix of emotions that we had during the paw print activity, I could tell that it was something these great, young people needed to help them build the resiliencey they need to be able to feel confident in the big world.
I have included two videos below. The first is the video of the students enjoying the Speed Friendship activity, while the second is of the project "What's My Paw Print". With the mix of emotions that we had during the paw print activity, I could tell that it was something these great, young people needed to help them build the resiliencey they need to be able to feel confident in the big world.
Video of Speed Friendship
What's My Paw Print?
Friday, 5 May 2017
Olympic Athletes Visit to Provost Public School
On Monday, April 10th, Canadian Olympic athletes Tristan Walker and Justin Snith visited Provost Public School , as part of the Classroom Champions mentorship program.
The evening began by with a barbecue dinner that was prepared by staff of Crescent Point Energy, who is also our sponsor in the program. Crescent Point Energy has supported the program in Provost and Wainwright for 4 years now. As part of the corporation's values, CP gives back to the community through education, sports, and health, safety and environment initiatives. Without their continued commitment, we would not be able to participate in Classroom Champions.
The ceremony portion of the evening was emceed by two grade 8 students, one of whom has only been part of the program for a few months, but is glad to have had the opportunity to be part of the program. Parents and students from Provost Public School and Wainwright Elementary school had the opportunity to hear selections of special music and representatives from both Crescent Point and Classroom Champions. The highlight of the celebration was listening to both Tristan and Justin share some of their experiences , as well as answer questions that were asked by the audience. Before concluding the evening,all students who were part of the Classroom Champions program were invited up to sing Dream Big.
Using Lucidpress, I created a photo album of the event. The album contains pictures of both the evenings activities, as well as athlete time with each of the classes. Feel free to take a look and leave comments for the students to read.
The evening began by with a barbecue dinner that was prepared by staff of Crescent Point Energy, who is also our sponsor in the program. Crescent Point Energy has supported the program in Provost and Wainwright for 4 years now. As part of the corporation's values, CP gives back to the community through education, sports, and health, safety and environment initiatives. Without their continued commitment, we would not be able to participate in Classroom Champions.The ceremony portion of the evening was emceed by two grade 8 students, one of whom has only been part of the program for a few months, but is glad to have had the opportunity to be part of the program. Parents and students from Provost Public School and Wainwright Elementary school had the opportunity to hear selections of special music and representatives from both Crescent Point and Classroom Champions. The highlight of the celebration was listening to both Tristan and Justin share some of their experiences , as well as answer questions that were asked by the audience. Before concluding the evening,all students who were part of the Classroom Champions program were invited up to sing Dream Big.
Using Lucidpress, I created a photo album of the event. The album contains pictures of both the evenings activities, as well as athlete time with each of the classes. Feel free to take a look and leave comments for the students to read.
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