November Update on Community

November Update on Community

November is already over! I hardly noticed because we were working so hard in Grade 5 on our Helping Our Community project! After we watched Jesse's video we wanted to learn a little bit more about what was special about our community, so we used the writing process to create paragraphs titled My Community. We learned all about the different things our peers love to do in our community like, going to concerts (yes we do have concerts all the way up here, usually by Inuit bands like Twin Flames, Jaji, and The Jerry Cans), playing hockey at the arena, playing outside, and going to the restaurant. We also wrote about the other things that are in our community like the nursing station, houses, the municipal building, and the Co-op. 

After we talked about what our community had we started to talk about what community members might need. We wanted to make sure that we did a service project that would be helpful to our community; some ideas just wouldn't work up here! We finally settled on a food drive. Since food is so expensive in Northern Canada, some families go without food, or with very little. 

We started our project by brain storming our Goal, and how to get the word out. 

After we decided on a goal we created a Goal tracker to have a visual of how close we were.

Our next step was to create posters, so everyone got a lesson in making posters in Word. 

Our next steps will be to collect the food and then bring it to the DYP for distribution! 

In the mean time we started another smaller community project. We will be going to the grade 3/4 class to teach them straw weaving. The kids have been practising all week to make sure they are experts when they start teaching!

We are loving community, and counting down the days till Christmas now!

Fair Play Wrap Up

The Grade 5's have been working so hard this week to finish our fair play projects. We started this week by reviewing what fair is because we had a whole week out of the school and a whole week not speaking English! Then we created fair play "rules."

After we had some specific rules to work from we created story boards of people showing our fair play rules.

We then voted on our favourites. I gave each student a sticker for each "Rule" and they voted on which drawing best showed that rule. 

Next we split into groups and used our favourite story board pictures to create tableaus about fair play!

I then printed out the images on paper and we started creating posters to teach others about fair play.

And here is the finished product!

Thanks so much Jesse! We had a blast with Fair Play and a ready for community in T minus 2 days and counting!!

Grade 5 - Akulivik

Goal Setting With +Arianne Jones (Take 2)

Here is the second of three videos showcasing the students as they read their goals to +Arianne Jones.

We had a few complications but mostly we had fun.  Thanks for the goal setting challenge Arianne. We have completed our Fair Play Skits but I want to be able to put them together as a video before posting.  They will be posted by the end of the week. Then we will be starting our Community unit.

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!

Fair Play – October

This month went by so fast! We are not finished with fair play yet, because we only had two weeks. At our school the students spent the past week learning all about their Inuit culture out on the land and all over town. I cannot wait to have them back, hear what they did and continue our lesson on fair play.

 (I will add a “rap up” post after we finish!)

We started out the month talking about fair play in our morning meeting. We discussed what it was and how we could show it in our lives.

Then we watched Jesse’s video on fair play, and got a sneak peak at the ski room. We followed that up by watching a few videos of different ways athletes showed fair play on the field.

I talked about fair play vocabulary and we described what fair play looked and sounded like.

Then we made an anchor chart to help us remember.

 We talked about ways that we could show fair play, and we took the challenge to show fair play in gym class. After gym we wrote about ways that we showed fair play (not everyone is finished yet).

 Next up is some readers theatre that shows people

not playing fair. We will re-write them to show fair play and then read them out to the class.

Afterwards we will choose a short moment in our script that really shows fair play, and create a tableau of that moment which we will take a photo of to make posters teaching other students in our school how to play fair.

As you can see lots planned! We should finish in the first week of November so that we can move on to community. Stay posted for more (better) photos of our fair play!

Grade 5 – Tukisiniarvik School, Akulivik Quebec