3S Welcomes + Arianne Jones to Harry Balfour

I have finally posted a short video to welcome Arianne Jones to 3S at Harry Balfour School in Grande Prairie.  It is really too short for my preference but perseverance and determination got this humble offering completed.  I wanted students to video tape each other and we certainly tried, however the results were not great.  I took the clips that were not too shaky, quiet or had excessive background noise, and put them together in a short video. Here it is finally.

I hope you enjoy it.  It was a great learning experience.  Now the students know:
1.  You need an external mic.
2.  You need to keep the mic steady.
3.  The person speaking needs to speak slowly and clearly.
3.  You need to keep the I-pad steady.
4  The person on the video needs to look directly at the camera.
5.  DO NOT try to video during class changes.

Mrs. Simpson learned not to upgrade her MacBook pro when she is on a deadline!  LOL! Enjoy!

Grade 2 at PPS Welcome Justin and Tristan

Grade 2 students at Provost Public are so excited to have Justin Snith and Tristan Walker as their mentors! The students chose aspects of their classroom which they thought were important to their learning.

Welcome to the Journey and Goal Setting in Akulivik!

September Over View

We had so much fun with August/Septembers focuses! To start out the year for “Welcome to the Journey” we made hand prints and wrote “I have what it takes!” on top. Then we each signed our handprints. We started learning about our athlete with puzzle clues (an idea I found on our amazing community!). We split into groups and had races to see which group could decipher the puzzle first, and then we researched some new words to understand the clue. After each clue we added to our giant KWL chart about our athlete, which we will continue to revisit throughout the year, and we added a little to our athlete discovery board.

After we learned that our athlete was Jesse Cockney we watched the first video. The kids were so excited to hear him say my name and our village! One of our “Wonders” on our chart was the Olympics so we started to research about the Winter Olympics. We learned all about the symbol of the Olympics and made our own with tissue paper.

We did a “Write the room” activity all about the sports in the Winter Olympics. We watched some videos including the amazing highlights from the Sochi Olympics and we read all about the Olympics with some comprehension books.

Then September started and we went full force into “Goal Setting!” We talked about what goals were, then we watched Jesse’s goal setting video. The kids were captivated! We re-watched the video while filling out a fill in the blank sheet that I designed to get the important parts.

We then began writing our SMART goals. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timed. The students created water colour backgrounds for their mountains, and cut out a mountain silhouette to glue on top. They then wrote their steps for their goal on small pieces of paper and glued it onto the mountain.

 

Throughout these two months we also learned about what a mentor is, and created a video entitle “A Mentor is…” which I will be posting soon!

We had a crazy, busy, super fun start to the year, and the kids are so proud of everything they have accomplished!

Thanks to Classroom Champions and Jesse Cockney! 

What does it take to be a Champion?

What does it take to be a champion?

This is the essential question we started our discussion with.  Once we shared ideas about being a champion, I read the story Salt in His Shoes while the students listened to find out what helped Michael Jordan to be successful.

This lead to a discussion about what makes a mentor and we brainstormed examples of mentors in our lives.  Because our Grade 6s are the oldest students in our school, we provide them with a variety of opportunities to be leaders of the school.  Many of the students were able to recognize that during these times they are mentoring the younger students.



   
Athlete Mentor Reveal

The students were very excited to finally learn who our athlete mentor was.  We started by learning about all of the Canadian Athlete Mentors, by doing a gallery walk to learn about their sports, hometowns, and other interesting facts.  At the end of the gallery walk, students selected an athlete to introduce to the class.

After we met the athletes, we revealed clues on the SmartBoard, one at a time, to narrow the field down to two athletes:  Jesse Cockney and Barrett Martineau.  Students took turns putting together pieces of a puzzle created by Wendy Billinsky (thanks) to identify our athlete – Jesse Cockney!  We concluded this lesson by watching Jesse’s introduction video. The students were very excited to meet Jesse and they were very impressed that he mentioned us in the video.

CHALLENGES

Video Tour

Students were thrilled to find out that our first challenge was to create a video tour of the school.  We had spent quite a bit of time talking about what is important about our school as we worked to develop a Charter of Rights and Freedoms for our class and create a Code of Conduct that would respect every student’s rights.  So they were ready with plenty of ideas about what we could tell Jesse about our school.

Once we narrowed down the scenes for our video tour, students signed up to work on the one that was most important to them.  They worked in small groups to plan the scenes using a storyboard.  Then we began to film using the classroom iPads.  

Our Mascot and Motto were featured in our video, which provided us with an opportunity to revisit a song that was created a few years ago, highlighting our school Motto: 

Growing

Achieving

Together

Opportunities for all

Respectful, Responsible, Resourceful

Goal Mountain

 

In order to prepare for Jesse’s Goal Setting video, students were asked the following question, “If you nothing could stop you, what would you want to achieve?”  Once students had drawn a picture of them achieving this goal, we reflected on their own experiences by thinking of a time when they were successful at achieving a goal they had set for themselves.

Our second challenge was presented by Jesse – create your own version of Goal Mountain. 


Students were encouraged to select their own dream goal to put at the top of their goal mountain.  They explored the concept of short-term and long-term goals by recording ways they can work toward their dream goal using the following prompts

1. What can you do now?
2. What can you do this year?
3. What can you do in the next few years?
4. What can you do when you are close to reaching your goal? 

We worked together to set a classroom goal to reduce food waste in our classroom.  I am looking forward to using what we have learned so far about goal setting to guide the students as they write two more goals for the year.   One goal will be something that will help them to be successful in school this year.  Another goal will be related to a personal interest outside of school.

This week is our Terry Fox Run and I am excited to see the students make new connections to his journey, relating the Classroom Champions Topics to Terry's accomplishments.