T'was the Second Week Before Holidays

Another week in the books with only one more to go before the Winter break! This week the kiddos finished up their narrative scenes in writing and helped to co-create out next adventure in writing; the digital story! These kids have so many great ideas and are so keen to get working on this new writing assignment. We will most likely get the prewriting done this week and start to work in the drafting and storyboards when we come back from the break.

Brainstorming for Digital Stories

We worked on demonstrating an understanding of informational texts with a What in the World article entitled "Turkey versus the Syrian Kurds". This was a tricky reading with lots of discussion around the conflict in the Middle East. This article was accompanied by a few infographics that we dissected as a class. Showing an understanding of information in infographics is a section on the OSSLT (the  EQAO literacy test that students need to write in grade 10) and I want these kids to have as much practice with this skill as possible. 

One of the infographics we worked with this week.

To help prepare for the digital story assignment we have been looking at different tools that the kids can use. iMovie will be the main app that students will use during the editing phase of the project. I gave them and iMovie 101 checklist to see what they already know and we have som clear experts in both classes. They also learned how to use the apps Adobe Spark Vidoe and Animoto as other possible options. I love both of these tools as alternatives for communicating. To help the kids get more familiar with these apps they did a little mini-research into the superstitions behind Friday the 13th and communicated what they learned through the production of a piece of media of their choice

Friday the 13th Research

The students of 8D have also been working hard to prepare for the last week before the holidays. We have a dedicated team that has taken a lead on the door decorating competition.  Special thanks to Kate and Jordyn for preparing a slide deck with possible ideas for the class to vote on to get the ball rolling. 

Short and Sweet

It was a short week with no school for students on Wednesday and Friday and we also had a powerful assembly from the folks at Get Real on Tuesday that was sponsored by the MDHS GSA. Students shared their challenges in both life and school and also thought about all the things that they were grateful for. The assembly finished with sharing ideas about what we could do to make MDHS a better place. 
                                                             Link to Get Real website

We continued to work on reading like writers as students keep their eyes peeled for examples of literary devices and new vocabulary in their independent novels. We have also been playing different games to boost our understanding of similes, metaphors, hyperbole, personification, imagery, allusions, oxymorons and onomatopoeia just to name a few.

Both classes were putting the finishing touches on their narrative scene writing assignment.  We are working on the concept of showing instead of telling in narrative writing as well as mastering the inclusion of dialogue in stories. There are so many important dialogue punctuation and formatting rules to remember when writing stories and students demonstrated their understanding of this in this last assignment. We will be moving on to the co-creation of our last narrative writing assignment next week and this time we are getting digital!

We discussed the road map for digital storytelling so the kids have an idea of where we will be going. Those that finished their narrative scene writing began to explore and refresh their memories about iMovie, the powerful video editing tool that we will become experts in over the next few weeks.  Stay tuned for the next assignment and assessment tool!

November No More!

And just like that, November is gone! It felt very surreal changing over the classroom calendar and putting
up Hunnuka, Christmas, and Quanza on Friday afternoon. In a blink of an eye, we will be in 2020! E 109
has been an even busier room this week as it has become the home base for all intermediate school
spirit wear sales. The hope is to have all the clothing to the kids before the holidays and due to the OSSTF
strike on Wednesday, we will be placing our order on Tuesday. If you have a clothing order that you
would like before the holidays then please get your paper orders in by Tuesday, December 3rd and online
orders in by Monday, December 2nd. Any orders that come in after will be filled but will be delivered in the
new year.

Link to order clothing online: https://avonmaitland.schoolcashonline.com/ 

The kids continue to build their reading stamina during our daily independent reading. I love how students
have gotten into the swing of really owning their learning through the choice of novels they read and reading
response menu options. This week we are adding a new assignment to the creative writing section of
independent reading response choice menu thanks to Ben! He created a “Choose Your Own Adventure”
slide deck based on the themes from his novel Fly Boy by Eric Walters. 78 had fun working their way through
his story, trying to make the right choices so that they could survive as a WWII pilot. The kids have also started to work
on vocabulary building by keeping track of new words that they come across in their independent reading. After
each reading session, we share new words or phrases that we noticed as readers. 

We read an article from Global News that inspired us to send cards to Canadian military service members
who will be overseas for the holidays. We worked our way through the writing process and by the end of the
week I was able to post the thoughtful and touching cards that I know will bring smiles to the faces of the women
and men who are serving our country overseas.
Link to Global News Article

78 and 8D kiddos handwriting cards to Canadian Service personnel 

We have also spent this week learning about different literary devices (similes, metaphors, alliteration,

onomatopoeia, oxymorons, personification, and imagery) and word choice. We will be working to notice
these stylistic devices in the books we read and include them in the pieces that we write. We also spent
time this week working on the narrative scene assignment that is due next Wednesday. Once we have
mastered the scene we will move to the creation of digital stories.

Mid November News!

Here we are again with another 2 for 1 blog post. Last week my work-life balance was upset by
a hockey tournament in Burlington. I missed my early Saturday morning writing session to cheer
on Malcolm and his teammates in a freezing cold arena. #hockeymom

Last week both classes participated in what I thought was going to be a global twitter chat but
turned out to just be us and French immersion kids from the Ottawa Carlton board. I’m putting
my feelers out for a better opportunity to collaborate with other students in the future. Each
group shared their ideas for what their vision for schools of the future will be like. To see more
check out #NPDLfutureschools on Twitter.

In the land of non-fiction, we tackled the topic of teen vaping. This is a very timely article as the
kids all agreed that this was a problem and that vaping is something that students of MDHS
definitely do. We had some great discussions in both classes where students shared their
thoughts and opinions about why they think that this dangerous trend is on the rise. They also
worked in small groups and took on the role of “Premier of Ontario” to develop regulations for
the e-cigarette industry. 

We have launched the next writing assignment in our narrative unit. We took the time to review
the essential elements of stories. We did a deep dive into how dialogue can enhance their stories
and grammar mechanics behind the use of quotation marks. Students should have completed the
“Understanding Dialogue” lessons assigned on noredink.com by the end of this week.

The next writing assignment has been posted in Showbie and we had a chance to co-create the
rubric that we will be using to assess this work. Students were reminded that the rubrics are
always given at the beginning of assessed tasks so that they know how they can achieve their
absolute best. Students need to make sure that they are submitting ALL stages of the writing
process. We also talked about the importance of prewriting and the difference between
brainstorming and planning.

Narrative Scene Assignment from Showbie: 

You know that stories are built on scenes that contain sensory details of setting, characters, and
action. All of this detail is essential to help the reader experience the moment.

Your mission is to craft ONE scene. Show a moment in time (scene) through the use of sensory
details (see, taste, hear, feel, smell) to help readers imagine and live inside the experiences of
those settings.

• Balance show and tell to establish the pace of the scene and to show readers what matters.

• Use dialogue to reveal characters both in what is said and through the words of other characters

• Use word choice to create a believable, consistent voice for the narrator of the scene.

We had a ton of kids away on Friday making it hard to teach a new lesson so I changed
up my original plans and we took advantage of all the different language games I’ve got.
We played Scrabble, Upwords, Bananagrams, Boggle, Scategories, and Pictionary. We
also accessed some great digital games like Camelion, Wordscapes, and Wordstacks.
I have o admit, it was a nice way to end the week!

Language Game Day!

Collaboration is the Name of the Game!

Collaboration was the name of the game this week in room E109. Both classes spent a lot of time this week preparing for the global twitter chat that we will be taking part in. I love that we are going to have so many different responses to the prompt, What should learning look like in schools of the future? Every day students were reminded what it takes to work well with others and reflected on their abilities as members of their teams.

                                                         G - Give encouragement
                                                         R - Respect on another
                                                         O - On task (stay)
                                                         U - Use quiet voices
                                                         P - Participate actively
                                                         S - Stay in our groups

We also made time to hone our writing skills with more Quickwrites inspired by beautiful mentor texts. This week we looked at an excerpt from the Book of Awsome and read the poem I Am From by George Ella Lyon. 

Happy Halloweek!

And just like that, we have two months of school under our belts! MDHS was the place to be this week
with all of our Halloweek dress-up opportunities. We also had our first intermediate dance and all of the
ghosts and goblins came to play! 

With both classes embarking on collaborative efforts to envision what learning will look like in schools of
the future, we started the week learning about what it means to be a good collaborator. We discussed
that this is one of the soft skills that are so important to possess that will serve them well for the rest of
their lives.  One aspect of being a good collaborator is having a solid awareness of who you are as a
learner and what you bring to the table when you are working with others. To help get a better
understanding of who they are, the students took a student aptitude test to gain insights into their
personalities using www.studentaptitude.com.

As part of a global deep learning task, we will be taking part in a Twitter chat with students from New

Zealand, Australia, Denmark, Finland, Uruguay, and the United States on November 11th and 12th.
Students will be sharing their responses to the prompt: What should learning look like in the schools of
the future?  I’m very excited about the opportunity to collaborate with students from across the world who
are also part of the deep learning community. 

This week we were in the routine of sharing novel responses, independently reading while I hold student

conferences followed by quickwrites where we read a mentor text to inspires us, write for 5 minutes,
revise our work and then share. We co-created the success criteria for our Future Schools collaborative
work and then the students worked to follow our action plan.

Two for One!

I’m sorry for missing last week’s post, I was caught up in Progress Reports and just didn’t have the time
to sit down at the old laptop and write. I was also not a great photographer this week as I was heavy into
conferencing, I'll do better next week! Now that we are into the swing of things we are going to start
really looking into some soft skills. We finished the week talking about what it means to be creative as
we get ready to move into some collaborative work.  Next week will learn more about the skills it takes to
work collaboratively.

Reading

The kids have been continuing to work on their independent novel reading responses and this week I
introduced more options into their leaning menu. Students can now choose from a variety of ways to
share their understanding of their novels based on their learning styles and interests. We have also
introduced non-fiction into the mix with articles about Greta Thunberg and the fires in the Amazon. We
have been looking at the features of non-fiction texts and talking about how we can use these features to
help us get a better understanding of texts we read.

Link to new independent reading learning choice menu

Writing

We have put the memoir writing to bed this week. Students uploaded all stages of their writing process
into Showbie and then took time to reflect on their skills as writers. They were asked to think about their
strengths as writers, their weaknesses and to share the strategies that worked for them throughout this
memoir-writing process. We will be getting ready to move into our next lap of narrative writing next week
where we work on creating one scene in a narrative.

Media Literacy

I love the What in the World publications that we subscribe to because they are full of all kinds of great
current news topics and often include fantastic images and infographics for students to think about and
respond to. Over the last two weeks, the kids have read infographics about global warming trends and
Amazon wildfires.  We are going to be taking part in a global Twitter chat at the beginning of November
where we will be sharing our thoughts on what we think learning should look like in the schools of the
future. We took some time to brainstorm various ways we can show our thinking. The students of 8D are
excited about the prospects of starting a YouTube Channel. I’ll be sending home permission forms early
next week to make sure that I know who can participate in our new learning adventure.

Oral Communication

We have been continuing to work on active listening and speaking clearly through our classroom

discussions. The kids will be starting to work collaboratively on a presentation that will detail their group’s
thoughts about what learning should look like in the schools of the future.

The Power of Prewriting

Reading

This week we reflected on our reading responses from I am Not a Number and The Secret Path.  After

taking up their work the kids self-assessed their responses against the success criteria and made note of
what they could do to improve the next time they are asked to write a response to another text. The kids
also continued to work on their independent novel studies and shared a few more novel related Minecraft
creations.

Oral Communication

This week we talked about what active listening looks and sounds like during class discussions and
students put this into play while we took up our work form Orange Shirt Day. Students were encouraged
to build off of each other's ideas as they shared their thoughts and feelings about both stories. We had
some more really great thought-provoking discussions.

Our plan for memoir writing. First draft to be finished for Tuesday, October 15.

Writing 

This was a big week for writing. We started by watching the classic NFB film, The Sweater which is an
animated memoir written by Roch Carrier. We then reviewed the writing process before we began the
work on our own short memoirs. We co-created the success criteria for this assignment and then got

down to work. We started the prewriting stage by having conversations about possible memories to
share and then reviewed the work that we had done with our quickwrites for inspiration. I really stressed
the importance of spending lots of time planning before writing and shared that students who brainstorm
and plan before writing responses on the OSSLT tend to do better.  We took advantage of the beautiful
fall weather and moved our classroom to the courtyard to get our creative juices following. Students
worked on their first drafts which are to be finished for Tuesday so that we can move into the revision

stage of writing.

Idea generation through talking.

Courtyard writing with 78

Courtyard writing with 8D

Honouring Residential School Survivors

Fall is definitely here with the crisp morning air and sounds of Canadian geese making their way South.
We are really starting to settle into a nice routine in East 109. This week,  we had a very heavy focus on
reading with Monday being Orange Shirt Day, a day created to honour and pay respect to all children,
families, and communities who were devastated by government-enforced, church-run residential schools. 

Reading

Students continue to do a great job of signing up for conferences when they need to chat about their
individualized reading response assignments and I have received some really great finished work. We
talked about what they need to do to successfully respond to any text in writing and then they put it into
action in their responses to I Am Not A Number by Jenny Kay Dupuis and Kathy Kacer and
The Secret Path by Gord Downie. We spent some time learning the skill of making a comparison
between two texts and reviewed the skill of finding the theme in literary texts.

Students worked on making comparisons of literary texts.

Writing

We have continued to work on the skill of idea generation this week. We also worked on reading like
writers as we examined Sarah Kay’s poem “Hands”. Students worked to identify the Smiley-Faced tricks
that she used in her writing. We also made connections to idea generation and improvisation in Drama.
We played the game Who, What, Where which had students quickly thinking on their feet to create short
skits.

Generation ideas through improve.

Media Literacy

The Secret Path animation is a beautiful example of a digital text. We looked at how the original graphic
text was transformed into a moving animation. We also continued to work on our sketchnoting skills this
week and I am so impressed with the attention to detail that is going into their work. I love to see the
creativity blossom in these amazing kiddos! https://www.secretpath.ca/

Oral Communication

Students worked on their listening skills as we watched The Secret Path and Sarah Kay’s performance of her poem “Hands”.  We had some deep classroom discussions this week and it was great to see how they listened to one another and built on each other’s ideas as we talked about the residential schools that indigenous children were forced to endure.