Teamwork!

We're getting down to the final weeks of the school year and there is still so much to do! I still want to get a lot of writing done, and Ender still needs to cover an entire unit of science. There just is not enough time in the short and often disrupted Garden Hill year to cover things the way we want to. It`s frustrating but we're still really excited for summer.

Before March Break, Ender and I  did a lot of group work activities with our students. In science our students were investigating electricity and renewable energy. To finish up the unit, Ender assigned an in class research project on renewable energy which we called the 60 Minute Poster Challenge. For the challenge, students were given tablets and art supplies and needed to research and complete an informative poster about their chosen energy source within 60 minutes. Each group had to assign a leader, an artist, writers and researchers, and answer specific questions about their energy source. At this point in the year, students have a good idea of their strengths in a group so they can assign these roles themselves. It was interesting to see our students make the same choices we would for leadership.

We had some technical issues with the internet connection, but otherwise the activity went really well.  It was a close competition but the winning poster was for Biomass Energy. Their information was the most accurate and we liked their little trees.

In social studies, we have been investigating Indian Residential Schools and the Canadian Government's assimilation policy. Many of my students have grandparents or great aunts and uncles who attended these schools, but very few of them have really talked about what the schools were or what assimilation is, they just know that they were "bad." It's a difficult and sensitive subject, but the kids are really engaged and are asking good questions. To start off the unit we read Shi-shi-etko by Nicola I. Campbell and illustrated by Kim LaFave. It's a story about a girl who is counting down the days until she will have to leave her family and attend residential school. We talked about how we can be afraid of and excited about something at the same time. We also discussed the differences between having a school in your community and going away for school.

We also looked at photos taken throughout the history of the schools. Students listed all the things they saw in the photos and we talked about what information we might be able to learn from what we saw. For example, the photo of Thomas Moore, which was used to promote the effectiveness of residential school for the purposes of assimilation, many of the students had a hard time identifying that it was two photos of the same person.

Finally our school elder Lucy spoke to the class about her experiences at Portage la Prairie Indian Residential School. Before she came to speak we read Sugar Falls, a comic by David Robertson and illustrated by Scott Henderson based on Cross Lake First Nation Elder Betty Ross's real life experiences at residential school. After we read the comic I asked the class to think of questions they might have for Lucy. Afterwards we reflected on what we had learned and thought of new questions we could investigate on our own.



We also finally finished this collaborative map for ELA. Students were focused on shape and space, and needed to check with their classmates to see if their pieces would fit together. The map is from the TV show Avatar: The Last Airbender which we are watching in class. I'll post the finished map next time.