Community Project

The theme of community came at a perfect time for Room 122. My students have huge hearts and when they heard that their former P.E. teacher’s new school lacked basic equipment they wanted to help. I worked with their Library teacher to come up with a Design Thinking project that would allow the students to collaboratively think of creative solutions to help their former teacher. Many of them had come up with crowdfunding as a way to help during the ideation process.

When they found out that Classroom Champions had donated money they were ecstatic. Then they spent some time on the computers and Baks searching for the best way they could spend the money. During this time I interviewed the students to give testimonials about this project and what community means to them. We couldn’t have done this without all the help and support from Classroom Champions, our mentor Tyler Carter and Bak.

Testimonial Video: Password - CC16

Thank you!!

I wanted to surprise the students with their shirts (after lunch and recess of course)! When they saw the gifts on their desks they were incredibly happy and thankful. They had seen the students who had Tyler last year wear their shirts and they were so excited to have theirs. I think the shirts give them a sense of greater belonging to the Classroom Champions organization and our mentor Tyler Carter.

A Lesson in Giving- Mrs. Phillips Class

Kindness. Giving. Joy. These are the key points that we keep coming back to in our classroom as we work on our Community Theme this month. It all started with letter writing. Akeem challenged each of us to write two letters; one to a classmate and one to a member of our community. The letters should make the person feel good and let them know that you appreciate them and the work that they do. The children were very excited to do this. Many of them wanted to write more than two letters so we have left extra paper out all month. Everyone enjoyed handing out the letters to classmates, and giving their letters to other people in the community. Some were for students in other classes, other teachers in the school or for moms and dads, brothers and sisters. The crossing guard got one. Someone wrote a letter to their neighbour. A few people wanted to write letters to an extended community, like Vancouver Canucks players and Prime Minister Trudeau. Even Justin Bieber got a letter thanking him for his music. Akeem Haynes got a letter too! 

Together with Ms. Griffin's class, we decided to facilitate an opportunity for our students to connect with residents of a local seniors home. We wrote another letter inviting the residents to our school for a visit. Meanwhile, we got to work making gifts for them. We have been very busy working on these snuggly, fleece blankets! It was interesting when we started because some of the children thought that they should be getting paid for all of this work. It was a perfect opportunity for a lesson in giving. We talked about different kinds of giving, like buying presents for people or giving letters like we had before. We also talked about giving time, and giving a piece of our hearts. It was a wonderful discussion about how good you feel when you do something nice for someone else. It is a lesson that I think they will understand even more when they actually give these blankets, give their time and share a special moment with someone new. When our visitors come to our school on Dec.7, we will give them a tour, read stories, sing a "Happy Holidays" song and give them the blankets we have made. We can't wait! We will update you all again after that, with pictures and videos from the big day! 

Community

This first month of community we spent a lot of time generating ideas of what our community is.  It was interesting noticing how kids didn't realize that we have a lot of different communities that we belong to (and how in each of those we have different responsibilities).  We noticed in Nate's video that he stressed the importance of a strong community is how they help each other.  We focused on that theme and accepted Nate's challenge.  He challenged us to think of ways that we can help the different communities that we belong to.  We created a classroom version together to generate ideas and the kids continued on their own by creating slideshows (in the Keynote app) to demonstrate and challenge themselves to help out in their communities.  As students complete a challenge they can take their picture and attach it to their Keynote slide.  I think this is a perfect way to lead into the second month of Community which I hope to broaden their understanding of community to a larger scale of our city and even a global approach.

As a side note I am always a firm believer that kids can do anything if they have the right motivation.  I had a naysayer tell me that my students were too young to use the Keynote app and that they wouldn't use it appropriately.  They loved the app and have found so many cool features to make it engaging for others to see.  I have attached some screenshots of their Keynotes (which really doesn't do them justice).  I definitely need to record them because they made them so interactive and what a fun way to learn about all the ways that we can help our community!!  We will for sure be sharing these with (anyone that we can!!).

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.2.7
Participate in shared research and writing projects (e.g., read a number of books on a single topic to produce a report; record science observations).

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.2.8

Recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question.

Presentation of Knowledge and Ideas:

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.3.4
Report on a topic or text, tell a story, or recount an experience with appropriate facts and relevant, descriptive details, speaking clearly at an understandable pace.

Fair Play

Fair Play is a great theme because it is a perfect opportunity for the kids to reflect on their own actions.  It is a theme that all students are familiar with and can "see" when someone is playing fair and not playing fair.  We discuss all the different places of our lives where fair play comes into light (in the classroom, cafeteria, at home, playground).  I like to frequently bring up the point that kids practice fair play the most when an adult is not watching them.  I repeat that a lot hoping the kids realize that it really up to them how they choose to act towards others.

To take a math approach we decided to attend a kindergarten/first grade recess and tally all the times that we saw students playing unfair and the next day we tallied all the times were observed them playing fair.  The kids loved being scientists and later in the week we shared the results with the k/1 classroom and offered advice on how to play fair.  It was so much fun!

Nate challenged us to think of way we showed fair play in the last week.  To share that challenge we used a drawing app to draw those situations.  Kids love an opportunity to draw on the ipad and a few came up with a great idea to put those together to create a Fair Play ebook.  We are still currently working on the final drawing to get closer to publishing it!  Some of the current drafts are attached.

Common Core Standards:

  CCSS.MATH.CONTENT.2.MD.D.10
Draw a picture graph and a bar graph (with single-unit scale) to represent a data set with up to four categories. Solve simple put-together, take-apart, and compare problems1using information presented in a bar graph.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.2.7
Participate in shared research and writing projects (e.g., read a number of books on a single topic to produce a report; record science observations).

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.2.8
Recall information from experiences or gather information from provided sources to answer a question.

Community at Consul School

Our K-5 classes have joined together in our community project for +Michelle Salt  We watched Michelle's video, challenging us to find something in our community to support.  Our local Community Hall had to purchase a new microphone and stand, so we decided to fundraiser to cover that cost. On December 8, we will have a homemade cookie sale - each family will contribute at least one dozen cookies that we will then sell in trays of 6 assorted cookies.  The kids are excited to begin this challenge.

This is a copy of the note we sent home to our families.

The K/1/2 classes are also focusing on kindness during this theme.  We watched a youtube video version of the story "The Kindness Quilt" by Nancy Elizabeth Wallace.  Kids and parents will keep track of acts of kindness completed by students for two weeks.  They will then choose 2-3 of these acts to write and illustrate on a square of our kindness quilt.  Here are pictures of the start of the quilt and the chart they will use to record their acts of kindness.  I sent it home yesterday and already kids are talking about things they did at home.

I'll keep you posted on our progress! 

Fair Play in Consul K/1

Hi, everyone! We had a busy October learning how to read and write and get along with our peers.  This fair play theme was perfectly timed.  We watched +Michelle Salt's video in the middle of the month and started to make short videos about fair play that we witnessed.  We ended the month completing an activity sheet about what they think 'fair play' means.  These will be posted on and around our classroom door as reminders.  Here are some photos of us completing the activity.  I'll post the videos later.

 

Fair Play in Temp 3

This lesson could not have come at a more perfect time. My students have been working hard to develop our class family and team relationships. After watching Tyler's video, we worked through some lessons from one of my favorite resources, Teaching the Social Skills of Academic Interactions by Harvey Daniels and Nancy Steineke. This book provides great lessons to help develop your classroom community and related well to the Fair Play topic!

First of all, we discussed "Home Court Advantage," and how this relates to our work in the classroom. Athletes perform better at home because they are surrounded by their team and fans. Students then brainstormed what this would look like in the classroom and created posters to support their understanding.

Classroom anchor chart co-created with students

Student created classroom climate chart

After practicing "Home Court Advantage" for a few weeks, we discussed "Friendliness and Support" and how this relates to our classroom home court. We spent a lot of time brainstorming what this looks like and sounds like in order to best support each other as champions in our classroom.

Students then added to our classroom climate posters and created mini-anchor charts to remind us of what friendliness and support needs to be in our classroom.

After all of this, students brainstormed for our monthly challenge and came up with many ideas of how fair play could look in various places. 

Throughout the month, we've watched many snippet videos and discussed how they demonstrate fair play. It's been incredible to see the students dig into authentic examples of people supporting others and growing from that. Below are links to the vides we watched.


Touching Touchdown: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mich-middle-school-football-team-conspires-for-touching-touchdown/

Cross-Country Runners Help Opponent: http://ftw.usatoday.com/2016/10/boston-college-cross-country-runner-louisville-clemson-finish-line-sportsmanship-video

Rio Olympics Women's 5,000 Fall: http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/today-dagostino-hamblin-help-each-other-finish-after-fall

I cannot wait to continue this discussion in Temp 3 and watch students transform and support each other on a deeper level as they uncover the deeper meaning to fair play.


The standards addressed were:CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.5.1
Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons and information.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.5.2
Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.5.1
Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 5 topics and texts, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.5.5
Include multimedia components (e.g., graphics, sound) and visual displays in presentations when appropriate to enhance the development of main ideas or themes.

Fair Play in Temp 3

This lesson could not have come at a more perfect time. My students have been working hard to develop our class family and team relationships. After watching Tyler's video, we worked through some lessons from one of my favorite resources, Teaching the Social Skills of Academic Interactions by Harvey Daniels and Nancy Steineke. This book provides great lessons to help develop your classroom community and related well to the Fair Play topic!

First of all, we discussed "Home Court Advantage," and how this relates to our work in the classroom. Athletes perform better at home because they are surrounded by their team and fans. Students then brainstormed what this would look like in the classroom and created posters to support their understanding.

Classroom anchor chart co-created with students

Student created classroom climate chart

After practicing "Home Court Advantage" for a few weeks, we discussed "Friendliness and Support" and how this relates to our classroom home court. We spent a lot of time brainstorming what this looks like and sounds like in order to best support each other as champions in our classroom.

Students then added to our classroom climate posters and created mini-anchor charts to remind us of what friendliness and support needs to be in our classroom.

After all of this, students brainstormed for our monthly challenge and came up with many ideas of how fair play could look in various places. 

Throughout the month, we've watched many snippet videos and discussed how they demonstrate fair play. It's been incredible to see the students dig into authentic examples of people supporting others and growing from that. Below are links to the vides we watched.


Touching Touchdown: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/mich-middle-school-football-team-conspires-for-touching-touchdown/

Cross-Country Runners Help Opponent: http://ftw.usatoday.com/2016/10/boston-college-cross-country-runner-louisville-clemson-finish-line-sportsmanship-video

Rio Olympics Women's 5,000 Fall: http://www.nbcolympics.com/video/today-dagostino-hamblin-help-each-other-finish-after-fall

I cannot wait to continue this discussion in Temp 3 and watch students transform and support each other on a deeper level as they uncover the deeper meaning to fair play.


The standards addressed were:CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.5.1
Write opinion pieces on topics or texts, supporting a point of view with reasons and information.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.W.5.2
Write informative/explanatory texts to examine a topic and convey ideas and information clearly.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.5.1
Engage effectively in a range of collaborative discussions (one-on-one, in groups, and teacher-led) with diverse partners on grade 5 topics and texts, building on others' ideas and expressing their own clearly.

CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.SL.5.5
Include multimedia components (e.g., graphics, sound) and visual displays in presentations when appropriate to enhance the development of main ideas or themes.