There are many different types of literacy in the world. Here is a video made in Manitoba on Media Literacy...check it out!
Leave a comment telling me what you think Media Literacy is, from watching this video and from your own experience. In what ways are you working on improving your Media Literacy? Can you think of other types of literacy that you deal with on a daily basis?
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Remembrance Day
To celebrate Remembrance Day each of the students was asked to write a postcard message to either a Veteran of war or a current Canadian Forces member. I am going to share some of the messages that the students wrote:
To Remember
Remember Remember the 11th of November. The day the guns were silent. When the trenches were quiet. When the field was calm and quiet. When the tanks stop dead in their tracks. When the skies of Europe were calm and fly-less. As the poppies grow we shall never forget the fallen. Remember Remember the 11th of November.
By: Waynell
Waynell wrote this poem at home and brought it to school. It is fantastic! The amount of thought that he put into this poem is very obvious. He read this poem at the Remembrance Day assembly at school and he did a really good job! Thanks Waynell for this beautiful poem.
Dear Veterans:
Thank you for fighting for our country and risking your life in World War I and II. One Remembrance Day I am remembering the people who died. Like Anne Frank.
P.S. Thank you
From: Leanne
Thank you for fighting in World War II and World War I. For taking your life for all of us in Canada. For making a sacrifice of leaving your family behind to go to war.
From: Lauchlin
Dear Veteran,
I want to hear your story about the war. Was it scary in the war? How long were you in the war for? Thank you for saving our country.
From: Adrian
Dear Veteran,
Thank you for fighting in World War II. You don't know how much I am thankful. Because of you everyone in Canada has the freedom to do anything they please.
From: Cylie
Dear Canadian Forces,
I know you have been fighting for us. I always thought of joining the forces. But I have to be 18, but someday I will be fighting along with you. Best of luck to you and keep our country safe.
From: Austin
Dear Veteran:
Thank you for the life you given to me. Thank you for fighting in the war and protecting the people of Canada. We thank you.
From: Laycen
To: Canadian Forces member
Thank you for protecting this country. For protecting our freedoms and I like that I have a safe place to stay. Thank you for making a sacrifice so that other people could live.
From: Troy
These are just a few samples of the postcards that my students wrote. Most of them did an excellent job and I am looking forward to sending them to the Veterans and Canadian Forces. Who knows, maybe some of my students will even get responses to their questions. I know that my students would love to see some comments on their work...so feel free to leave comments and I will make sure that they read them!
Hopefully, you can find something to remember on this day, just as my students have!
Monday, October 26, 2009
Literacy Carnival
Exactly two months
Can you believe that it is already the end of October? I can't! Today it has been exactly two months since the start of school. This is so hard to believe because it seems like just yesterday I walked into Dene high for the first time and my students greeted me for the first time!
But it truly has been two months and things are really starting to get interesting in room 114.
ELA 8K has started a unit called "Telling One's Life Story". In this unit we will be reading a novel called Go Ask Alice. This story is writen in diary format and is a 15 year-old girl's story of her battle with belonging that eventually turns into a drug addiction. We will also be reading poetry and short stories that show others telling their life story. Everyone has a story to tell and journaling/blogging is going to be a major way that students in ELA 8K will be given the chance to tell their story. You can check out the students' blogs here.
ELA 8J is still working on narratives of First Nations people. This works together with what we are working on in Social Studies. In SS 8 we are working on treaties in Saskatchewan. As a matter of fact, today we finished looking at the historical world views of different First Nations groups, such as the Cree, Dene, Saulteux, and Lakoda/Dacoda/Nekota people. Can anyone tell me one similarity and one difference between these groups?
As the end of the month is coming soon AMP (Attendance Motivation Party) is also coming up. This will be held on November 3, 2009 and invitations will be handed out to the students invited the day prior. AMP is for students with perfect attendance and less than 5 lates in a month. Hope to see many of the students there!
Mrs. Hepworth's grade 9 SS class will be putting on an Elder's Night at the Dene building on Tuesday, October 27 from 7-8 pm. All are welcome and those students in my SS class are asked to attend so that they know what they will need to do for the Elder's Night we will be hosting on December 1st.
Photo from Flickr Creative Commons LostMyHeadache
But it truly has been two months and things are really starting to get interesting in room 114.
ELA 8K has started a unit called "Telling One's Life Story". In this unit we will be reading a novel called Go Ask Alice. This story is writen in diary format and is a 15 year-old girl's story of her battle with belonging that eventually turns into a drug addiction. We will also be reading poetry and short stories that show others telling their life story. Everyone has a story to tell and journaling/blogging is going to be a major way that students in ELA 8K will be given the chance to tell their story. You can check out the students' blogs here.
ELA 8J is still working on narratives of First Nations people. This works together with what we are working on in Social Studies. In SS 8 we are working on treaties in Saskatchewan. As a matter of fact, today we finished looking at the historical world views of different First Nations groups, such as the Cree, Dene, Saulteux, and Lakoda/Dacoda/Nekota people. Can anyone tell me one similarity and one difference between these groups?
As the end of the month is coming soon AMP (Attendance Motivation Party) is also coming up. This will be held on November 3, 2009 and invitations will be handed out to the students invited the day prior. AMP is for students with perfect attendance and less than 5 lates in a month. Hope to see many of the students there!
Mrs. Hepworth's grade 9 SS class will be putting on an Elder's Night at the Dene building on Tuesday, October 27 from 7-8 pm. All are welcome and those students in my SS class are asked to attend so that they know what they will need to do for the Elder's Night we will be hosting on December 1st.
Photo from Flickr Creative Commons LostMyHeadache
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
One week and then a week off...
This week started off with an excellent day! While the weather is starting to get colder, there are many good things that are keeping the classroom busy.
8J has started a Treaties in the Classroom unit in Social Studies and in ELA we are working on Narratives of the First Nations. I am trying to link what we are doing in both classes so that students can relate better to the material. This will also help to make the classes more dynamic and help the material come alive. The hope of integrating curriculum is that school will begin to mirror real life. We don't separate our everyday lives into ELA or Social Studies or Science. Everything happens all at once so it only makes sense to have school start to look like that as well. We have read two narratives in ELA:
Premiere Brad Wall mandated that all educators teach Treaties in the Classroom. The Office of the Treaty Commissioner has come up with a great resource that lays out how to teach this sometimes controversial topic. We have only done a couple of days, basically an introduction, of this topic. One of the major topics that we have been discussing is how long the treaties were designed to last for.
"As long as the sun shines, and the rivers flow" is what is stated in the material and in the video that we have watched. What does this video mean to you and who put these conditions into the treaties?
ELA 8K is finishing up their final projects on Mystery at Latham House. They have two tasks:
Photos from Flickr Creative Commons - River (Levendis) and sun (Thai Jasmine)
8J has started a Treaties in the Classroom unit in Social Studies and in ELA we are working on Narratives of the First Nations. I am trying to link what we are doing in both classes so that students can relate better to the material. This will also help to make the classes more dynamic and help the material come alive. The hope of integrating curriculum is that school will begin to mirror real life. We don't separate our everyday lives into ELA or Social Studies or Science. Everything happens all at once so it only makes sense to have school start to look like that as well. We have read two narratives in ELA:
Premiere Brad Wall mandated that all educators teach Treaties in the Classroom. The Office of the Treaty Commissioner has come up with a great resource that lays out how to teach this sometimes controversial topic. We have only done a couple of days, basically an introduction, of this topic. One of the major topics that we have been discussing is how long the treaties were designed to last for.
"As long as the sun shines, and the rivers flow" is what is stated in the material and in the video that we have watched. What does this video mean to you and who put these conditions into the treaties?
ELA 8K is finishing up their final projects on Mystery at Latham House. They have two tasks:
- Create a cover for the novel. It must include a picture related to the novel, the title and the author. Stay tuned for pictures of how these covers turn out. I have seen the beginnings of this task and they look great!
- Write a different ending to the novel. It must be a page long, double spaced. The students will be posting these endings to their blogs which will be created this week.
Photos from Flickr Creative Commons - River (Levendis) and sun (Thai Jasmine)
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
AMP Night
Students with perfect attendance and less than five lates for the month of September were invited to the first AMP (attendance motivation program) night. This night was organized by the middle years homeroom teachers and was held at the Dene High School from 7-9 pm. There were 36 students from grade 7-9 that were invited to AMP night. When the students arrived they had popcorn, drinks, played in the open gym, watched movies and even played some games of sardine and hide-and-so-seek. Fun was had by all that attended!
Congratulations to those students that were invited to attend this event.
Attendance resets each month so there is still a chance to get yourself at the next AMP night!
How to...
Here is a Jing tutorial that I created to let the students know how to put images, videos and links into their blog posts!
Enjoy!
How to insert images, video and links into a Blogger post
Enjoy!
How to insert images, video and links into a Blogger post
Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
What are we up to?
I know that it has been a while since I updated everyone on the Happenings of Room 114. Last week was a short, but busy week for me and for that reason I have just updating now. Here are some pictures of things that we have been doing in class:
Below is a picture of the sentences that the students wrote during their first Speed Week. We are starting another week this week and stronger sentences is the goal!
Below is some of the student work that I had described in one of my earlier blog posts about Canadian culture:
This is the collections of collages gather around the Canadian map!
The students came up with the following reasons why the newcomers left their land to come to Canada:
In the 8J homeroom the students have started work on their own blogs. I will post the links to these blogs very shortly, please check again soon for the links!
Below is a picture of the sentences that the students wrote during their first Speed Week. We are starting another week this week and stronger sentences is the goal!
Below is some of the student work that I had described in one of my earlier blog posts about Canadian culture:
This is the collections of collages gather around the Canadian map!
The students came up with the following reasons why the newcomers left their land to come to Canada:
In the 8J homeroom the students have started work on their own blogs. I will post the links to these blogs very shortly, please check again soon for the links!
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
A New Day
The first unit that we are studying this year in Social Studies has to do with culture and immigration. Today the students each got themselves a Maple Leaf and had to create a collage of what it means to be Canadian...what makes up the Canadian culture?Some students picked pictures of hockey players, other pictures of Canadian bill, while others still picked pictures of the Canadian flag. There are many things that make each of us Canadian's, and many things that make us proud Canadians. Health care, diverse cultural and religious backgrounds, peacekeeping versus war, democratic government, and rich Aboriginal history are just some of the things that I think of when asked what it means to be Canadian. What does it mean to you to be a Canadian? I would love to read your comments.
ELA 8J has started work on adjectives and are progressing very well. Adjectives are words that describe a noun or a pronoun. Can you identify the adjective in the following sentence:
The tiny dog ran across the street.
Let me know what you think it is, if you are one of my students...bonus marks!ELA 8K finished chapter 5 questions for The Mystery at Latham House and will be starting to read chapter 6. We are moving along quite nicely in the novel and will be done it in no time...I can't wait to see what happens with Toby and Ali!
Monday, September 14, 2009
On a hot summer day...
September 14, 2009
It figures that just as school starts the weather starts to get nice. Even though we have not had much nice weather here in Saskatchewan all summer! The students might have been squirmy and hot but we got some great things done today! Here is what happened in Room 114 today:
ELA 8K beat me in a trivia game that reviewed the first four chapters of the novel that we are reading, Mystery at Latham House. Not only did they beat me but I believe I only got one point compared to their 15 or so. The entire class had to work as a team, if they answered the question correctly they got a point, if they answered the question wrong or didn't know the answer I got a point. Needless to say, they know most of the answers! For their efforts they will be well rewarded!
ELA 8J started Speed Week, which is a week long activity to help them write better sentences. Today we brainstormed 100 things that we can write about. It took a while to get there, but we accomplished that goal. Tomorrow is day 2 of Speed Week! We also continued our work on pronouns...hopefully you all enjoyed the videos!
Hope that you all have a great night and I can't wait to see you at the school tomorrow morning!
It figures that just as school starts the weather starts to get nice. Even though we have not had much nice weather here in Saskatchewan all summer! The students might have been squirmy and hot but we got some great things done today! Here is what happened in Room 114 today:
ELA 8K beat me in a trivia game that reviewed the first four chapters of the novel that we are reading, Mystery at Latham House. Not only did they beat me but I believe I only got one point compared to their 15 or so. The entire class had to work as a team, if they answered the question correctly they got a point, if they answered the question wrong or didn't know the answer I got a point. Needless to say, they know most of the answers! For their efforts they will be well rewarded!
ELA 8J started Speed Week, which is a week long activity to help them write better sentences. Today we brainstormed 100 things that we can write about. It took a while to get there, but we accomplished that goal. Tomorrow is day 2 of Speed Week! We also continued our work on pronouns...hopefully you all enjoyed the videos!
Hope that you all have a great night and I can't wait to see you at the school tomorrow morning!
Sunday, September 13, 2009
School House Rock videos
Until I can figure out how to embed videos on the class website I will post them on my class blog. Here are two YouTube clips about Nouns and Pronouns. Enjoy!
Welcome to Room 114
Hello parents, students, administrators and fellow students!
Room 114 has been a busy place to start the school year, as both teacher and students try to learn about each other! Grade 8 Social Studies and English Language Arts are in full swing within the walls of this classroom.
Currently ELA 8K is reading the novel Mystery at Latham House. This novel has 1-2 page chapters and is about two best friends, Toby and Ali, that explore a mansion that has long been abandoned. Supposedly, a young girl and a man died in this house. Stay tuned to see what the students discover about this mysterious house!
ELA 8J is working through a unit that will introduce them to good writing skills. Parts of speech and weekly sentence writing are the focus of this unit. At the end of the unit students will have the opporunity to make a video about a specific part of speech and this will be posted on their blogs so check back!
The social studies class started off learning about culture and how culture is taught to youth. They formed groups and created their own cultures that had their own beliefs, norms, institutions and activities that were vital to their new culture. They created a visual for their culture (map, flag, song, etc.) and then presented it to the rest of the class. The students will soon be posting these to their blogs so check those out!
I want to congratulate Laycen, Ronald, Joshua, and Troy for winning the noun/pronoun matching game that we played in ELA 8J. Enjoy your breakfast on Monday!
Check back often for more updates on the Happenings of Room 114!
Room 114 has been a busy place to start the school year, as both teacher and students try to learn about each other! Grade 8 Social Studies and English Language Arts are in full swing within the walls of this classroom.
Currently ELA 8K is reading the novel Mystery at Latham House. This novel has 1-2 page chapters and is about two best friends, Toby and Ali, that explore a mansion that has long been abandoned. Supposedly, a young girl and a man died in this house. Stay tuned to see what the students discover about this mysterious house!
ELA 8J is working through a unit that will introduce them to good writing skills. Parts of speech and weekly sentence writing are the focus of this unit. At the end of the unit students will have the opporunity to make a video about a specific part of speech and this will be posted on their blogs so check back!
The social studies class started off learning about culture and how culture is taught to youth. They formed groups and created their own cultures that had their own beliefs, norms, institutions and activities that were vital to their new culture. They created a visual for their culture (map, flag, song, etc.) and then presented it to the rest of the class. The students will soon be posting these to their blogs so check those out!
I want to congratulate Laycen, Ronald, Joshua, and Troy for winning the noun/pronoun matching game that we played in ELA 8J. Enjoy your breakfast on Monday!
Check back often for more updates on the Happenings of Room 114!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)