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.
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 Lifestyles
Instructions: Overview of project and required information
Resources: Useful sites for finding cultural information
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
We have all heard the quotes about pushing through the tough times because those are what make us stronger. Sometimes we begin to doubt our ability at these times, but Tristan and Justin reminded us that we cannot give up,
While watching @TristanLuge and @Justinsnith in their video Keep Going Through Any Setback, my grade 8 students recorded the definition to perseverance and added 3 comments that were made during the video, that help them to better understand what perseverance is. As a final reflection on the video, the students had to then come up with what perseverance then meant to them personally.
Back in September, our students set annual goals for their school year. Since we have not started story writing yet, many of my students still need to begin working on their goal. However for those that were able to work on their math skills, many realized they were actually beginning to hit their goals. For those that had not quite reached their goal, they began to analyze what was stopping them from achieving their goal. Most of them were able to state that they had stopped trying or that they were not taking the small steps they had set out to do.
Once we finish our current ELA unit and begin story writing, I hope to be able to provide more feedback on on how well my grade 8 students are doing at achieving their goal. For now, take a peak at those who have achieved their goal. As the year progresses and more students begin to reach the mountain top, more images will be shared.
It has been a few months since we began our journey into the topic of Community. During this process, I really wanted to help my students understand not only how they are involved in their community amongst those they know, but how much they can impact those we may call acquaintances, and people we may even never meet. Sometimes we never realize just how far our reach is!
GOALS
To help develop a deeper connection to ones community, my class began working on a Hapara Workspace project titled "Giving Back to Your Community", with the following goals in mind:
What is a community - Students will be able to explain what a community is and provide examples of communities they are involved in.
Expectations within a community - Students will understand each community will have differing expectations, depending on the purpose of the community.
Positive and negative impact - Students can identify and analyze both their positive and negative impact on communities they are in.
Desire to care - our ability to impact their community depending on how much they care about that community
Intrinsic Motivation - Students will recognize their intrinsic motivation for being part of a community.
Before jumping into our ELA project, we dug a little deeper int what volunteering means. Using the handout, Volunteering VS Voluntold, we looked at the moral obligations of volunteering, and then analyzed how enthusiastic we were to help out depending on the situation and if we were "voluntold" to do it. We also critically looked at how relevancy of the group was depending on if we were interested in the group activities, common goals and the skillsets that we need/have.
As a final wrap up to this portion of the project, students were required to write a reflection on what they have learned or realized by the topics that we had discussed.
Film Study
Who doesn't like to watch a movie in class!?! To help the students gain a deeper understanding of their impact on any community, the class completed a film study based on the movie Home Alone 2.
The purpose for selecting this film versus the first Home Alone was because of the situation that the main character, Kevin McCallister was placed in. During the first film, he was left alone in his own town. Although he was scared and alone, he was more comfortable in his surroundings. While in the second film, he was left "defenseless" in a strange city. This forced Kevin to develop communities with which he would normally not be part of.
My hopes for this film were to help students realize that they are part of a global community that each one of them can have a dramatic impact on; sometimes by the smaller actions they take. To help them understand this impact, we analyzed the film through various lenses. For each community which Kevin became part of, we responded to:
Plot - What events took place while Kevin was part of this community?
Questions
Who is part of this community?
Was Kevin forced into this community? Explain
What is the purpose of this community?
How did Kevin respond to this community?
Did Kevin act/react appropriately in this community? Explain.
Conflicts/Problems - What conflicts or problems arose within this group?
How and why did Kevin choose to deal with the conflict or solve the problem?
Short Story
Due to extenuating circumstances, I have had to postpone this activity until later, but I am anticipating to work on this in next month.
As I am part of a team of teachers in our school who are involved in +Classroom Champions, we decided as a group that we were going to make no-sew fleece blankets for #ProjectLinusCanada. To help reinforce the idea of giving to a community that students may not be part of, my class will be writing stories, based on the theme of community and these lovely blankets, that each student had their hands in, helping to make. Often times, the blankets that are given to community groups, such as Project Linus or Blankets for Canada, the recipients never meet those who spent countless hours making them, but they truly appreciate the time and effort that was taken and are touched by the generosity of those they have never met.
This past months lesson was ironically very timely. Our class had just finished writing biographies on war heroes and I recognized that more students needed to take a better look at properly writing essays or research assignments.
I am actually still amazed that students are writing essays and doing as much research as they are today. Comparatively, I think I wrote my first essay in university. This is not to say that we did not do research, but with the invention of the internet, there are many authentic assignments that can be developed to assess students abilities. Along with this is an education paradigm shift that encourages teachers to create assessments that help to develop problem solving skills in a project based environment. With this increase in research comes the need to teach our students how to share their learning in an academically appropriate manner. A small portion of this is attending to the conventions of academic honour code. This important part of research and essay writing encompasses properly citing references, understanding what copyright means, and how to paraphrase information so that it contains the important information that must be shared in an assignment. Understanding this is very important, however students must also realize the value that academic honour code has in helping to maintain ethics and code of conduct in educational settings.
Part of a teachers job is helping students to understand the ramifications of not following laws, rules or suggested guidelines. Academic honour code can be difficult for students to fully comprehend the impact their choice may have had on someone. This is very similar to fair play.
This months topic of Fair Play, with Classroom Champions, was not a new one for my students. Having taught them Phys Ed. from grade 4 - 7, we were all aware of fair play and how it could impact our PE class. I wanted my students to learn more about fair play, by looking through a different lense. What does fair play look like in the classroom/academic setting? In the monthly video that Tristan Walker and Justin Snith shared with us, on the topic of fair play, our Olympic mentors taught us the following:
Fair play is all about having respect
It is important to always follow the rules
You can display fair play in how you win or lose
Make sure to show Fair Play in class as well as at home1
How much more could I ask for, from these two men; not only did they hit the nail on the head, when describing what fair play was, they also took the time to explain what students do when they are showing fair play, and it incorporated more than just during sports or play.
I am fortunate that @BTPS28 has invested in a technology and has made use of Hapara Dashboard and Workspace. Technology is not meant to be the "be all and end all" for education, but is simply a tool that can help students and teachers facilitate learning. With access to the tools within this suite, teachers are able to share Workspaces with fellow colleagues, globally. Searching to find a project that would include all that I was looking for was made easier with the search option. With in a short period of time, I found a project that was fitting to what I needed. 2 For those who have access to Hapara Dashboard here is the link to the project Digital Citizen's: Academic Honour Code. If you do not have access to the Hapara Suite, you can find the information here.
In this project students are broken into the categories Citations, plagiarism, copyright, honour code upheld, honour code violated. Each group was to then develop a Public Service Announcement that was geared towards grades 4 - 6 students. Knowing their audience, my students then became aware of the importance of speaking to the audience and at a level the younger group could understand. As part of this project, students were graded on the following criteria using this rubric:
Content - original, accurate and interesting material
Fair Use - follows copyright permissions
Collaboration - listens, shares and supports the group
Technical Production - Tone, voice, graphics and images, overall appearance
Stuudent work examples:
Julie and Adam
Erinn and Emmalee's Slides presentation
Grade 8 ELA Curricular Outcomes covered in this assignment
3.1 Plan and Focus
EXPERIMENT with several ways to focus a topic, and select a form appropriate to audience and purpose
IDENTIFY and TRACE the development of arguments, opinions or points of view in oral, print and other media texts
SELECT the most appropriate information sources for topic, audience, purpose and form
CHOOSE a plan to access, gather and record information, according to self-selected parameters
5.2 Work within a Group
PROPOSE ideas or advocate points of view that recognize the ideas of others and advance the thinking of the group
USE opportunities as a group member to CONTRIBUTE to group goals and extend own learning
CONTRIBUTE ideas, knowledge and strategies to identify group information needs and sources
ORGANIZE and COMPLETE tasks cooperatively by defining roles and responsibilities, negotiating to find the basis for agreement, setting objectives and time frames, and reviewing progress
Evaluate group process
EVALUATE the quality of own contributions to group process, and OFFER constructive feedback to others; PROPOSE suggestions for improvement
2. Unfortunately, I am unable to credit the author/creator of this project, as it was found through Hapara Public Workspaces.
