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! 

JDH in our Community!

Community in Grade 6 & 7 

Where oh where did November go? I still cannot believe it is over and we are rushing closer and closer to Christmas Break! 

November brought many exciting things to our Grade 6 and 7 classes, including our first live chat with our mentor Kieran Block! 

Community is a big part of our classroom all year round, so coming up with ideas of how we can help our school and local community seemed like easy work for our kids! 

As part of Canada's 150th Birthday Celebration RBC has launched a campaign called #Make150Count. People tweet at RBC with this hashtags for ideas of how they could make $150 count in their community. Both classes came up with pitches for RBC and tweeted them out in early November. While we did not hear back from RBC it really got the students heads in the game for what's to come. We had so many lovely ideas from giving to the food bank, to buy and splitting wood for someone in need of heat this winter, to donating warm clothing to those who cannot afford it. 

During November we also celebrated the Week of Kindness where we celebrated all of the staff members in our fantastic school. Each student made a thank you card for a staff member and hand delivered it with a hug. It is easy to forget how important the people we see every day are to us! 

This past Monday we had our first live chat with Kieran! The kids were so excited to hear more about his life and to share information about us. We cannot wait to share more of what we are doing with Kieran as the year carries on. Including the essays and letter the grade 7's are writing about why Classroom Champions is such a valuable program! 

Finally, as we move into December the grade 6 and 7's are busy planning what we are going to do for our community before our break. We have plans to bake 150 cookies to hand deliver to the Long Term Care home just before Christmas! The grade 6's are also working hard every day at learning Silent Night on the Ukulele as well as the words to the song in both English and Arabic as a way to welcome our new classmates and their family members to our school community! Look forward to that video before Christmas - if I can keep my emotions in check long enough to video tape it!

 

Team 6/7 is Fair Play

Fair Play in Grade 6 & 7 

It is hard to believe that the month of October has come and gone. When I was a few days late giving our October lesson, I had kids waiting anxiously for Kieran's next video. It really goes to show the impact someone can have on their lives in such a short period of time. 

Students were eager to discuss Fair Play this month. They all seemed to think they had a good grasp on what that looked like both inside and outside of the classroom. We took the time to define what fair play is, and discuss how it is something that should be carried off the field, or hockey rink and into our daily lives. 

After watching some videos that exemplified Fair Play, we looked at the International Fair Play Charter. I initially had a lot of blanks stares and "huh's" happening so we decided to work in small groups to break down what each line meant. They did a great job! And what resulted was our
J.D. Hodgson Classroom Champions Charter of Fair Play! 

After developing an understanding of the Fair Play charter and the character traits it embodies, the students were asked to create an infographic using one of the character traits of Fair Play (respect, team spirit, friendship, integrity, equality and respect for the rules) so we could demonstrate for the rest of the school what Fair Play means. The products were phenomenal. 

When we got Kieran's challenge to document an act of Fair Play each day for the month of October, we decided we would put a twist on it. At J.D. H. we have been blessed with a new family's arrival. We have a family who was sponsored by a local group and has moved from Syria to Haliburton. 2 of the children have entered our grade 6 class to make us an even bigger family of 33. Our kids have been over the top amazing with them, teaching them new words, games, and welcoming them into our family. We knew that this was all an example of Fair Play and wanted to show the rest of our school community this. Our "switched up" challenge was to recognize the challenges our new students would face, and demonstrate Fair Play to make their transition easier. This may look like not getting frustrated or mad when they are tagged when playing a game and don't stop, or making sure they get to where they need to be on time. And while this wasn't directly Fair Play, it was embodying the aspect of Fair Play - respect, friendship, integrity, equality etc. And of course as the month came to a close we had the opportunity to experience something special with them. Their first Canadian Snow. And while both my classes dropped everything and rushed outside to play games in the snow with our new friends, I knew they got what Fair Play really is.