Healthy Living Month in Akulivik

I can not believe April is over! It was such a short month for us. We had barely finished Leadership when our Spring Break started, and I was gone for two weeks (one for break and one to attend the CC conference!). Getting out of Akulivik takes so much work and planning, and there were some weather troubles, so we started Healthy living month last Wednesday! Now all the kids are gone for Culture Week, so our Healthy Living and We are Champions months will be very combined. We have only 4 weeks left of class!!!!!

Following up on Leadership month we finally completed our challenge! The kids worked hard to think of things they could improve to be better leaders. They also drew themselves as the type of leader they want to be (many want to be team captains!), and Malisa wants to help feed people so that they won't be hungry. I'm honoured to share my time with such great thinkers and leaders, and I love it when they surprise me like that!

Then we started healthy living month. We watched our new video with two amazing mentors and started a conversation about healthy living. I was so proud when the kids made connections to something we did months ago, but stays on our wall!

We explored some games from Ask.Listen.Learn. and started our first lesson from the site! The kids learned about the brain, and how alcohol affects both adults and kids brains.

Next up I am sending home the challenge that our mentors gave us. Parents will receive a letter explaining the challenge and asking them to send in photos of them and their kids accomplishing it! The challenge was for the students to find a healthy recipe and cook it with their family, or to get outside and get active with their family. I cannot wait to see them accomplish this challenge and get their family involved!

We will also be tracking our healthy activities for a whole week. 

I am excited to finish off the year with a bang, and am looking forward to our next video chat!

All the best from Akulivik!

Friendship With +Arianne Jones

Friendship - It Means So Much

February was fabulously fun!.  We watched Arianne’s message about friendship and unpacked the monthly challenge. We also celebrated Valentine’s Day wearing our pajamas, playing board games and exchanging Valentines. Pink shirt day gave us the opportunity to talk about bullying and it’s impact on relationships between classmates.

Arianne encouraged students to be friendly and make the effort to include new people in activities. She challenged us to spend time learning two new things about students in our class.  The students were given a large grid with their classmates names on it.  They used the grid to record the new facts they learned about each classmates.  We modelled how to ask questions that dig deeper once a surface question has been asked.  For example: What is your favorite sport? (hockey)  Do you play hockey or watch?  What position do you play? How often do you practice?

 

 

Students were given several twenty minute sessions to spend time in conversation with their friends.  It was fun.  There was a lot of chatter but it was productive chatter and it forged links that will last forever.  

We celebrated Valentine’s by reading, “Somebody Loves You, Mr Hatch”.  This is one of my favorite Valentine’s Stories.  The student loved to see Mr. Hatch transformed from his crusty, bachelor, hermit lifestyle into a kind, caring, generous friend.   We had a wonderful discussion regarding the importance of “belonging” and how simple acts of kindness can transform and enrich lives.

On Pink shirt day we read one of my most favorite Valentine stories, “Hooway for Wodney Wat!” by Helen Lester.  We discussed the bullying behavior of Camilla Capybara and marveled at the way Wodney saved the day, just by being himself.

During February, Ms. Mayer, started her nine week student teacher practicum.  The class loved her so much.  It was so much fun getting to know her and watching her get to know the students.

Curriculum Links

Language Arts

• ask questions to clarify information and ensure understanding

• discuss, represent or write about ideas in oral, print and other media texts, and relate them to own ideas and experiences and to other texts

• experiment with ways of generating and organizing ideas  

Health

W-3.7 identify strategies to avoid being bullied in different case scenarios; e.g., communicate whereabouts, get away, say no firmly, avoid dares

R-3.5 develop strategies to build and enhance friendships

R-3.6 demonstrate inclusive behaviours regardless of individual differences or circumstances; e.g., physical, emotional, cultural, economic

Becoming Leaders

This was a great topic for my first graders to talk and think about. I am pretty sure that most of them did not consider themselves to be leaders before our lessons on leadership but were starting to consider the possibility by the end. We started by watching Lex's video which the children always enjoy. They really think of him as a friend as well as a mentor and he always has great advice for them. This sparked their thinking about who they think of as leaders in their lives and what characteristics leaders have. We brainstormed all of the people in their lives who are leaders, they wrote about family members and staff members at school as well as other students in our class. Then we talked about the qualities of leadership. They mentioned things like: being strong, working hard, caring about others, being helpful and being nice. I challenged them to think of themselves as leaders and to think about what they could do to be even stronger leaders. 

The Future is Now: Leaders in Nunavik

The Future is Now

This month went by so fast! Wow! We started out the month going over vocab that we would need for Jesse's video. We watched it, and talked about what he meant, and how it related to us. We also made some posters to cheer Jesse on in his race!

Then we started working on our challenge. This was a big one because we really needed to understand what qualities we thought a leader should have before we tried to figure out how we could be better leaders (disclaimer: we are not finished yet!!) 

We started out by watching some videos (Go Kid President!) about the qualities other people thought leaders should have. We also looked at some quotes from everyday leaders about what a leader is. 

Then we did a team building activity. We talked about how leaders are a part of their team, not at the top, but in the middle, and we made teams and did a building challenge. The students had to build a basketball tower out of newspaper and tape (and  few magazines when we ran out) that was at least 50 cm tall.

Then we had a hiatus from school and participated in our second Culture Week of the year. The kids learned how to skin a fox, cut snow blocks, make ice fishing rods, and sew mittens. 

This week we looked at the difference between bosses and leaders. We started off  by looking at this picture:

We talked about why the bottom picture was a leader and the top a boss, and how all the people felt with their job. 

 I printed off a number of actions that a leader or a boss would do. We worked hard to find the phrases that were opposites like show and tell (can you guess which is the leadership quality?) Then we made a chart (that was too small-my bad) that showed the differences between the two.

So the next step is to finish Jesse's challenge to write don three things that we can improve on to be better leaders. I am excited to do this with my students because I want to be a better leader too! I will post a follow up. 

The future is now, and these guys are already leaders in their community. I love to remind them that they are mentors and leaders every day, and everything they do either makes them a better leader, or not. These kids are going to go far and do great things! 

We Are Leaders

Are these people leaders?  Justify your answer.

This was an interesting task.  Because the students were not familiar with all of the people in the collage, it lead to some interesting discussions about what makes a leader.  We watched a short video clip that explained Ryan Hreljac’s story.     

Once they had a chance to discuss why they thought some of these people were leaders, while other might not be leaders, in their eyes, they were asked to share what they thought was most important about a leader.  I was blown away by the sophistication of their ideas around leadership.

We watched Jesse’s video and as always the students were excited to see what he was doing and hear about our next challenge:  To think of three ways we could be better leaders.


We are Leaders

We started our second lesson with some self-reflection on when we are leaders.   This was a bit challenging for some, as they might not see themselves as leaders, so I gave them some prompts:

·      When are you a leader at school?

·      When are you a leader on teams or in groups?

·      When are you a leader at home?

·      When are you a leader with your friends?

·      When are you a leader in sports/activities?

Our next step was to watch a video about William Kamkwamba, a 14 year old boy from Malawi who built windmills to help his family to irrigate their crops and bring electricity to their home.  They were inspired by his story and this helped them to list some great examples of leadership qualities that made William a leader in his community.  

Next they worked in groups of 5 to come up with as many different leadership qualities and characteristics as they could.  We did a whip around, where you could only share ideas that had not been said before.  Again, I was very impressed with the ideas each group came up with and that gave them a good base of ideas to choose from in order to accomplish the task that Jesse gave us.

March is a short month for us – we have a two-week Spring Break coming up at the end of this week, so this blog post is a bit early.  I think we were able to accomplish a lot with our theme this month. 

We are a K-6 and so our class is one of the leadership classes responsible for leading whole school activities such as Jump Rope for Heart and Terry Fox Run.  Our students are office monitors, peer helpers, lunch monitors, big buddies, and recycling leaders.  Leadership is a huge focus for our class all year long, so this was a great opportunity for us to take a look at what we do and think about how we can be better leaders!

 (I do have a couple more ideas to help students to develop their leadership skills by the end of the year, so I will share those on Google+ when we finish them.)

Friendship

We had a lot of fun talking about friendship this month. As always, the students enjoyed watching Lex's video and hearing his ideas about friendship. They had a lot of fun taking on his challenge and making new friends on the playground. To prepare for the challenge, we had a conversation about what kinds of questions they could ask the person they wanted to meet. They had so many good ideas! When they reported back about what it was like to introduce themselves to someone they didn't know, it turned out that they used a lot of the questions we had brainstormed together. Some favorites were: what is your favorite color? and what is your favorite thing to play? We also talked a lot about what it means to be a good friend and times when they had shown that they were a good friend. This is such a caring and friendly class and they really embraced this month's theme. The pictures are of the students practicing meeting someone new and asking them questions.

Friendship

FRIENDSHIP

Friendship - everyone needs one. But how do we make a friendship work? I must say, I am very fortunate to have a great class this year! A class who rises up to all the challenges we place upon them and who accept everyone for their differences. Because of that, talking Friendship in February was easy for us! 

Being in grade 6 and 7, friendships can sometimes be difficult to navigate. On an ongoing basis we are always working on healthy friendships and especially healthy "girl" friendships. Most of our students have been in the same class together since Junior Kindergarten. That's 1,710 days on average spent together so far! Wow, that is a lot of days. So, at this age we start to see some "frustrations" emerge. This month we focussed on branching out of our comfort zone and making deeper connections with another student whom you wouldn't typically spend as much time with. 

Our classes took the lead for Pink Shirt Day, wearing their Pink Shirts proudly and making a Pink Shirt Promise. We talked a lot about cyber bullying and healthy online relationships and how those relationships affect our everyday life. Each student made a Pink Shirt Promise of their own, dedicated to making the world a more tolerant place. In order to educate our school community, as a class we decided to make Anti-Bullying Infographics to share with the school. They included information on who to reach out to if you need help, and what you can do to help a friend in need. 

February was another fast and busy month for us in 6A and 7A, and we are very much looking forward to our upcoming March Break and jumping into Leadership with both feet upon our return! 

Making New Friends

What a wild month it has been! At the beginning of the month, just as we started talking about friendship, we found out that one of our science fair teams was going to the Regional Nunavik Science Fair in Inukjuak. This took place the 13^th to the 16^th of February. Here is a peek at the proud team explaining their project to a judge.

These guys were so excited to get to go, and we had crazy fun time taking plane rides, learning more about science and presentations, and eating Beluga (a generous gift from our host family).

 Then we got back and had a blizzard, and then we finally got a chance to sit down and watch Jesse’s new video on friendship. The kids were so excited to see a new video after so long and Jesse gave us a great challenge. Find someone in your class that you do not hang out with and learn two things you have in common, and two things that are unique about each of you. I was so proud of the students as they worked on this. They worked very hard on this challenge and were excited to learn some similarities and differences about people that they thought they already knew!

We followed up this activity by watching a read aloud of Chesters Way . This is one of my favourite stories about friendship. We had a great discussion about friends that are different from us, and why that might be a good thing. 

Then came Pink Shirt Day. Because many of my students do not have pink shirts and it is not easy or cheap to get t-shirts up here, we decided to look at Pink Shirt Day a little differently. Instead of showing support by wearing pink we showed support by acknowledging the kind things that we do for each other every day and by highlighting them. We wrote out "Tickets" every time someone did something kind for us. The tickets included the name of the giver and receiver and what kindness was shown. We then put them in a jar and at the end of the day we pulled out a few to read. 

We also designed our own Pink Shirts.

We still have a little bit of friendship to cover. We will be talking about how to be a good friend throughout March while we tackle Leadership! Cannot wait to see how this class can show Leadership in their school (more than they have already!) Thank you Jesse Cockney for a great lesson on making new friends and great qualities to look for in them!

Friendship is Sweet in 4/5

My class has struggled with friendship issues this year, so this month's topic is much needed.  We talked about how having many different types of friends is important, because different people bring new ideas and experiences to your life. Real friends don't get mad or stop being your friend when you make a new friend.  Our mentor's video helped create some discussion around these topics. Arianne challenged us to get to know each other better by learning two new things about a classmate and finding two things we have in common. Students used this Two Handprints graphic organizer to list 5 interesting things about themselves and then meet with a partner to learn new things and find common interests.

 
We watched the video, Kid President makes a New Friend. I thought it was very timely as it promotes getting to know a variety of people and embracing our differences.

In our lifetime, we will have many different types of friends: old friends, new friends, best friends, friends from the neighborhood, friends from far away, sports friends, gaming friends, school friends, family friends, and even furry friends.

Students made Friendship Trees that have names of friends on each leaf. I asked them to leave empty leaves for friends they haven't met yet.

We took advantage of the Valentine’s Day holiday to build each other up with positive comments. Each student was given a Friendship is Sweet page. They wrote their name at the bottom. Then students snaked through the classroom and wrote a positive comment on one line for each student.

By the end of the activity, each student had a page full of sweet comments from their classmates!

Finally, we watched the video, How to Disagree, by Kid President. He had some great advice on how to stay friends, even when you have different ideas and beliefs.

We are fortunate to have some public health nursing students in our school at the moment. They will be coming into my room at the end of the month to continue our lesson on friendship. I hope some of these ideas stick with my students. Thanks for a great topic!

Perseverance Month

We really enjoyed watching Lex's video lesson about perseverance. The students always get so excited when I tell them we are going to get to watch a message from Lex. He is an amazing mentor for my students. The students were very interested to hear about how Lex and persevered through challenges in his life.

After watching his message, we had a discussion about what Lex did when he had challenges in his life. Then, the students talked about challenges they have had and how they have persevered. After talking as a class, they wrote and draw about times when they have had to persevere.

Some students talked about times when they had trouble learning how to do something but kept trying and were able to improve. Other students talked about things that had happened at home that were really difficult but eventually got better. When the students were done drawing and writing we all sat down in a circle and the students shared their stories.

 This message of perseverance is one of the most powerful ideas for my students. Many of them face incredible challenges and the ability to persevere is going to help them make it through to the other side. This idea goes along very nicely with the idea of having a growth mindset which is a constant theme in our classroom. My students really understand that if they are not able to do something yet as well as they would like, they can get better at whatever it is with effort and time. The pictures are of the stories that they drew and wrote about their experiences with perseverance.