We had some great discussions about war-torn countries and refugees and we were shocked to see a tweet that “one in every 122 humans is now either a refugee, internally displaced, or seeking asylum” and that half are children! (http://www.unhcr.org/558193896.html). Hearing that made us realize that we need to do something! In groups we brainstormed what we can do to help and then we reflected individually prior to making our independent blog posts about what we can do to help refugees. We’ll see where that leads us! If you're curious, check it out on Kidblog. We'd love comments :) We've also posted questions to our class twitter account @howdensclass.
This week we had NDP candidate Rebecca Smith visit our school to share her party platform. Sunrise kids had some great questions about crime, health care and the environment. It was interesting to how students wanted to know about the NDP party’s plans to help Syrian refugees…linking real life to our class GRA novel. Next week Dean Drysdale will be visiting our school to share the Conservative party’s platform. And of course we have students sharing their oral presentations on who they think should be the next prime minister.
Fresh Grade is in action! (Surrey school district now has district Fresh Grade accounts, so there was a minor delay during the transition). Students logged in to Fresh Grade for the first time this week and were able to read feedback on a blog posts and on Federal election brainstorming. I immediately heard “I need to fix that” and “can I redo that?” (music to my ears!!) Students always have the opportunity to challenge themselves, revise their work and resubmit. It’ll be exciting to see students challenge themselves in the months to come.
Here are some other things we worked on this week:
Continuing with qualitative and quantitative observations:
- Dean Drysdale Oct 13
- Federal Election 2015 Oral Presentations Oct 13 (will be shared via Fresh Grade)
- Identity Day Oct 16
- Student Vote #studentvote Oct 16