Hello parents and guardians,
I want to start by apologizing for not posting more often in the past month. I was out of the classroom way more than I wanted to be, and as a result fell fairly far behind in almost everything. I spent the last few weekends catching up, and I think I'm almost caught up.
October had me fairly busy with in-services and cool opportunities, and I want to share a few of those opportunities with you. I was selected to participate in a joint partnership project on sustainability. This project is a joint partnership between the Public and Catholic school divisions, the University of Saskatchewan, the Saskatchewan Environmental Society, Saskatoon Light and Power, and the City of Saskatoon. The project involves a handful of classrooms from around the city and will culminate with an event sometime in March or April. I will have the opportunity to meet and plan with grade alike teachers, have access to some incredible human resources, and be given a tiny budget to work with. (Any money is better than no money! :) What does this mean for our class? Well the students have to chose a measurable project that they would like to undertake, and then they will have help to design a campaign that is aimed at making change. We will learn how to audit this change and will have to report back to our partners later in the year. What kind of changes? It could be reducing the amount of idling in front of the school, reducing the amount of lights the school uses on empty rooms and classrooms, reducing our use of Styrofoam.
As a result of this project, I have slightly changed the direction our current unit has taken. We were going to write persuasive letters right now, but I think we will hold off and do that as part of our action a little later in the year.
I had another in-service I attended on technology. Since I've never learned how to teach practical arts, and grade 7 students need to do some practical arts, I signed up to learn how to make movies. I spend a day learning by doing. We had to storyboard our idea, film it, and use iMovie to create a 5 minute movie. It was great fun, and I almost can't wait to do this project with the class. (Now that we have 31 kids in our class, I'm a little nervous about how we'll share the technology and how I'll be able to work with each group.)
I've also been working on another grant. Last year I pursued a TreatySmarts grant through the Saskatchewan Arts Board. That grant paid for the our treaty/spoken word project last year. This year I have applied for an ArtsSmarts grant. I wrote the grant around dance, music/beat boxing, and spoken word/rap. This year our focus will be on the globalization of culture and how technology fuels that globalization. We will have an emphasis on hip-hop and look at its origins and cultural influence and impact. The grade 8 class will participate in the project with us. I have partnered with some very accomplished, and very cool artists, as well as The Mendel Art Gallery, and the AKA Paved Arts Gallery. I won't know for about approximately 40 more days if we were successful in securing the grant, but I am hopeful. Writing an Arts grant is very time consuming, it was another thing that kept me busy in October. I believe firmly in the power of the arts to transform learning from something that is bland and abstract into something that is concrete and has a lasting impact.
On Friday portfolios will be sent home. As a staff, we decided to move our portfolio in a new direction. This year we will create growth portfolios. The goal of a growth portfolio is to show growth. This might look different from last year in that last year portfolios may have had more polished showy work, and not as much of the messy "beginning" work. This term, we will select pieces that show where we started. (And, some of them aren't that great.) Keep in mind that to see growth, we have to show you where we started. Some of that growth may be evident already, some of it might not be evident until later in the year. We have also started to do some new kinds of learning with art journaling, mind mapping, and our inquiry journals. These are all new forms of work for me, so I am also growing as I try to figure out how to push students to show their deep thinking and reflect on their thoughts.
Today I will send home a parent access code for classroom dojo. This is a new-to-me online tool for classrooms. Your child has his or her own avatar, and when they are on task or off task I can give them points. As a parent, you can check on your child's classroom behaviour by signing in daily or weekly. I've selected 3 ways for students to earn or lose points: being on task, being prepared, and being on task. I'm not very good at using the program, yet. I hope that it becomes much easier to use as I get accustomed to it. I've decided that if as a class we can have a weekly positive rate of 90% or higher, the kids will get a treat. (Maybe an extra phys. ed. period?)
Have a great week everyone. I hope to be on here a lot more regularly now that I'm back on track.
-Ms. Gallays
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