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.