Poetry workshop

For anyone interested, Souvankham Thammavongsa will be leading a poetry workshop for youth on Monday March 14th at the Sanderson library. Some of my grade 6's may remember her from the tangerine or there are no pictures of my mother poems we looked at last year.

See info below:

Still Life Poetry: Write What You See

Register at 416-397-5970, or ksparling@torontopubliclibrary.ca

Ages 12-19

Work with Toronto poet Souvankham Thammavongsa and learn to see ordinary objects anew to make still life 'drawings' with words. You will truly write what you see!

Debate Links

Grade 6's will be focusing on a planned hydroelectric plant in Brazil. Here's the link that first brought it to my attention:

http://boingboing.net/2011/02/09/indigenous-brazilian.html.

Some other articles we've looked at in class:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-02-08/amazon-tribes-march-on-brasilia-against-world-s-3rd-largest-dam.html

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/feb/01/brazil-dilma-rousseff-hydroelectric-dam

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5216293,00.html

More information on Brazil's energy strategy Brazil's english language site: http://www.brasil.gov.br/cop-english/overview/what-brazil-is-doing/the-energy-matrix/print

A video showing the overview of the proposed dam site:
http://news.mongabay.com/2010/0830-belo_monte_google_earth.html

Grade 5's will be focusing on controversy about hydro-electric dams in Northern BC:


Some articles we've looked at in class:

http://www.bchydro.com/planning_regulatory/site_c/site_c_an_option/what_is_site_c.html

http://www2.canada.com/theprovince/news/story.html?id=43b4e082-0588-4147-ad0b-b1e07f41793b

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/story/2008/04/18/bc-private-power-project.html

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-
columbia/story/2010/04/17/bc-site-c-lekstrom.html

http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/story/jumbo-deception-qatmuk-declaration-ktunaxa-collaborators-and-theft-sinixt-land-and-culture/609

An overview of the issue from the BC government:
http://www.empr.gov.bc.ca/EAED/EPB/Documents/History%20ofColumbiaRiverNov139web).pdf

A video clip from the CBC archives outlining some of the problems the Cree have faced with the power plant in James Bay

(Edited to add some new links to the Grade 5 side on 02.23)

Two Interesting Invitations

Recently, one of the parents in our class sent our class an invitation to a Raging Grannies event in celebration of International Women's Day. I'll be there and wanted to pass along the invite:

Hi Lisa,

I hope this email finds you well! I wanted to invite your class to come
see the Raging Grannies at our International Women's Day event at Women
and Gender Studies at U of T. A grade 6 class from Huron is also
invited. Its in the evening, so it probably can't be a field trip. But I
am happy to "chaperon" if students want to come to this. Of course, you
are welcome too. I think there is singing involved!

On the raging grannies: http://raginggrannies.org/

WOMEN AND GENDER STUDIES IWD EVENT

THE RAGING GRANNIES, TORONTO CHAPTER


DATE: Wednesday March 9th
TIME: 6 p.m. - 8 p.m.
LOCATION: Lash Miller Building, Room 59, Southwest corner of St. George, at the corner of St. George and Willcocks

best,
Michelle Murphy

For more information, contact me and I'll put you in touch with Michelle.

I also got an interesting invitation from Darren O'Donnell, whose recent projects include Haircuts by Children, to get kids to take part in a new show he's working on called "Monster Makers". He's running several free hour long workshops at Harbourfront on February 27th, if you want to get involved. Here's the link to the facebook invite page:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=193220287363539.

In other news, we're filming on Tuesday (I have confirmations from two parents helping out but would love to pin down two more for sure) and reports go home on that day as well. Confirmation of interview times will go home with reports.

The new pacing has been a bit tricky to adjust to this year, but when I look back over our year, I'm astonished and pleased at all the growth I've seen in the students. So many great experiences together already! and so many more to look forward to.

Snow Day!

Well, this is exciting (and almost unheard of in the Toronto Board)!

I'm enjoying my day off working on reports and keeping warm with lots of tea. Hopefully, we'll go tobogganing later when the wind dies down. I hope you all have similarly laid back enjoyable days.

I'm mostly posting to let you know that I've postponed the walking field trip tomorrow since the prospect of wading through 30 cm of snow to get to our destination seemed daunting. Instead, we'll go just before March Break.

Have fun!

Tying up loose threads

This week is a light one for the kids at any rate. We've finished our latest round of projects and have begun to work with Brigitte Berman, our video artist. I think it was a great first day. Students are prepping a pitch for Thursday and I'm off to coach a volleyball tournament tomorrow.

Meanwhile, reports are being written and marks are being finalized. Next week, I'll be setting aside a day for students who need to rewrite a math test to be able to do so. All those students eligible for rewrites have had the tests sent home to be signed, but I'll do my best to send a formal reminder home this week.

In many cases, I think the difference between a B and a C is simply a more careful approach to test taking: remembering to show work, reading carefully to answer all parts of the question and careful checking over after you're done can make up a lot of marks. Since we're a bit short on texts for the 6's, I'm also happy to photocopy chapters of the Grade 6 textbook for anyone wanting to review.

I hope students see this as an opportunity to build on their success and am happy to follow up with any extra questions you might have.

Regards,

Ms. G

Banethi Performance

Here's the video of last night's performance:



I'm really happy all our hard work with Andrew worked out.

Next week, we're on to work with Brigitte Berman, our video artist, and there's two walking field trips coming up as well:

On the 4th, we'll go to the Osborne collection to look at the history of children's books. This is a trip I've done before and I always find it fascinating. Hopefully, the students will as well.

On the 11th, we go to the Gerstein library at U of T, where we'll be looking at environmental change and running some computer simulations and experiments.

This year has seemed particularly busy, but I'm excited at all the opportunities the students have had to learn from different experts and in different mediums.

Brochures: a requested post

Both the Grade 5's and 6's have been working this week to put together a brochure. For the 5's, the brochure should explain the citizenship process using information from their textbook, while the 6's have each chosen a country to research. Their brochure will persuade the Canadian government to begin or increase trade with that country. Most students seem to be progressing fairly smoothly with the research, but are looking to make their brochure look as good as possible.

We went over a few key points in class together about brochures in general:
--The importance of the title page to attract the reader and give the main idea
--The final page should conclude by summarizing main points, making a call to action or by asking a question
--Brochures need a word/picture balance to communicate without overwhelming
--Brochures are a persuasive medium so it is important to remember your audience and your purpose

Then we headed to the computer lab today, where we looked at some key features in Word, like using columns and adapting margins, different types of bullets and font choices, etc.

Tomorrow, we have a double library period, which should prove useful in getting our work together.

Here are my suggestions for how to proceed:

1. Gather data
2. Decide on your topic headings and titles as well as basic layout (4 column? 6 column?)
3. Add main text information
4. Play with font size and wording to find the best fit for the space available
5. Decide on images and order of information
6. Review the outline and rubric: Is there anything you have forgotten?
7. Fine-tune font and colour choices, play with backgrounds and other fun stuff.

Of course, you can also choose to do part or even all of your brochure by hand, but a typed brochure automatically looks more professional and polished, so try to get your information typed in, if nothing else. Good luck and see you in the morning.