Stuck in the Middle

I often felt sorry for the grade seven students at school.  A grade shy of being the all wonderful, attention getting Gr 8s and too old for the Gr 6s.  

When you think about how elementary school is set up, it's kind of relegated to "teams".  The JK/SKs.  The Primarys.  The Juniors.  And then, there are the Seniors.  And yet, in Gr 7, you kind of get the impression that the focus of "seniors" is really on the Grade 8s with their Muskoka trip, Confirmation, leadership opportunities in the school and GRADUATION.  

MIDDLE SCHOOL aka SOLUTION

Being a product of the K-6 model myself, I understood that the seniors probably felt like they were walking around in shoes that had grown too small, too confining and with no room to breathe.  Afterall, many had walked these hall for 8 years by Gr 6.  

CCMS mascot is a cardinal

In September 2014, Corpus Christi Middle School opened on the FJ Brennan campus and gathered the students in Grades 7 & 8 from feeder schools, resulting in three JK-Gr 6 schools.  Students at St Bernard were given the option to remain for one more year before the school would officially become JK-Gr 6 (Sept 2015).  Thirty-five seniors chose to stay (only 11 from Gr 7). 

Grade 6 Day

Grade 6 Day celebrated at CCMS with an Olympic theme...girl at the podium is former St Bernard student!

This past Friday, grade six students from St Bernard, St Jules and St Rose were invited to CCMS for Grade 6 Day which gives the kids the opportunity to tour the school as they move to various events, experience lunch in the cafeteria, meet their future classmates and see first hand what perks Middle School has to offer.

Because, let's be honest!  Are the kids here for the education or the experiences?  If your school is made up solely of students that are Gr 7 & 8, there's gonna be advantages to that (read AGE APPROPRIATE).  It's a feat to please all the demographics in a building made up of children aged 3-14.

Just some of CCMS' future grade sevens enjoying lunch in the cafeteria

It was great to see former St Bernard students continue in leadership roles and hone their skills in technology, dance and band to name a few.  With no recesses and no outdoor playground, CCMS offers clubs during the lunch hour.  The variety suits the range of tastes of all its students.  

Imagine having your club everyday ... guaranteed!  The skill level rises exponentially.

Former Panther, Emily (Gr 8 but first year at CCMS) shares vocal skills while concert band listens

Former Panther, Anthony (Gr 8- 2nd year at CCMS) plays drums in Rock /Concert Band 

Former Panthers, Sierra, Angelina, Mikayla and Lana continue their love of dance on CCMS' competitive dance team

Having attended Grade 6 Day since its inception in Spring 2014, I'd say this was CCMS' defining year.  Each student truly feels that "I am CCMS".  They have bought into the Middle School model and seem to appreciate the opportunities for growth and allowance to be themselves that it affords them.  

To witness how students have matured in the past two years out of St Bernard is a testament to middle school allowing the Seniors to become unstuck and blossom.

~MissBrooks

Cracking the Code

Students had the opportunity to create their own version of popular games like Flappy Bird and Mindcraft

On Friday, our class attended FJ Brennan's first ever Tech Summit for students in grades 5 - 7.  This was held at the high school, had sessions run by high schoolers and was overseen by a Google for Education Certified Trainer and Innovator.  FANCY!

All feeder schools were invited to take part.  Our JK-6 elementary school alone sent 60 students and were joined by some 350 other participants.  Conveniently, the high school kids were off this day, giving us access to their gym, WiFi, classrooms and cafeteria.

Waiting on the bleachers for the Tech Summit to begin

After meeting for introductions of participating schools, O Canada and prayer, each classroom was brought to their learning room for their first workshop.  Teachers had previously signed up for areas of interest for their own kids.  My class is 2/3 boys, many of whom count themselves as computer savvy or "gamers" and who often give one to two minutes of attention to something if they are not interested.  I needed something that would engage my students beyond how to create Google Slides (although they certainly could use some time to play with all of the features available and begin including them in their presentations!) or how to use Google Drawing.   Because there were three 50-minute sessions ... and that would quickly add up to dealing with behaviours ... and attitude if these kids did not buy into the learning opportunity provided them.

Session # 1:  Coding without computers

We dipped our feet in the CODING pool with our first session where we did not even open our computers! This might have been my favourite part of the day as it was a big eye opener for the know-it-all, can't-be-bothered, let's-do-the-least-amount-of-work types (read majority of class).  By giving instructions, the students had to get a "robot" (Kyle Tran from FJ Brennan) to cross the classroom and pick up a cup.

Instruction 1:  Cross the class and get the cup off of the desk

God bless Kyle!  I love that, like a robot, he did not bat an eye while I was overheating by that cocky instruction.  He simply crossed the class until he crashed into the first obstacle  ...  which was closest to him ... and nowhere near the desk the kids wanted him to go to!

Instruction 2:  Go to the desk with the cups on it and pick one up.

Of course!  Still trying to outsmart the robot and continuing to make my blood boil by doing the least amount of work and thinking that that is what makes them so clever.  GRRR!  

"Kylebot" starts walking in the opposite direction as though searching for his goal but crashes into the window.

Instruction 3:  (Maybe they've caught on?) Go right 

Kylebot turns to the right but doesn't stop when they want him to because, well, he's a robot and his programming has to be exact.  He continues turning in a circle.  So someone shouts "Stop" and he does. After about 30 trial and error instructions, Kylebot reaches the destination and successfully gets the cup. 

Can they do this more succinctly? 

Trial 2 proved more successful, requiring less instructions because the programming was more exact like "walk 10 tiles forward" and "turn 90 degrees to your left".  YEAH!  SUCCESS!

The students were then given the chance to act as the robot (smart alecs UNITE) while their table group gave instructions to get them to change a stack of 3 cups to a tower and a stack of 4 cups to two towers of cups.  This proved frustrating for some and may have been a good lesson for all about saying what you mean because robots (and teachers and EQAO markers) can't guess what you mean! 

After lunch in the cafeteria, we regrouped for our second session, An Hour of Code, where the students chose to program their own version of popular games on their computers.  It really did not take an hour to get your game to be playable but you certainly could spend time tweaking and adding codes to make your version less or more difficult / interesting. 

Programming Mindcraft

An artist game to program

The ever frustrating Flappy Bird programming

When the students were satisfied with their program, they could click FINISH and print a certificate of completion.  

Almost 100% of the class was actively engaged in programming or helping others (ME!) to get their game to become more successful and interesting.  Some of the girls found it difficult but I would chalk that up to less exposure and that, traditionally, girls aren't/haven't been pushed in the direction of computer science.  

Wouldn't this be a more acceptable (read educational) use of spare time in class than PLAYING games? Computer science! Loved the coding!

Our final session of the day was learning more about WeVideo, Chromebook's version of iMovie.  Since we use Chromebooks all day, it seemed we should see what WeVideo could do as this would be another effective tool for presenting our work.  We already LOVE iMovie and have access to iPads for short bursts of time but it seems such a bother to sign them out and make sure we get the right one the next time (and that no one has inadvertently deleted our work) and then sharing to our Google Drive.  

WeVideo is not quite on the level of iMovie but it will definitely serve the purpose.  I hope to have the students record their own poetry using WeVideo and we'll upload to our YouTube channel in the future.

What's your favourite coding activity?  Let us know in the comments below!

~MissBrooks

Probably?

Working with new table mates to complete STEM Egg Drop Challenge

What is the theoretical probability that kids (and teachers) who had not had a five-day school week in forever would struggle to be excited about learning by a Friday?

That would be a 100%!

 To keep the kids engaged (and since it was time to switch the seating chart), we ended the first week with a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math) challenge.  And, since we'd also just finished Easter break, it seemed logical to try the Egg Drop challenge.

Raw eggs ...

25 spring fevered eleven year olds ...

A recipe for SUCCESS!

Each group received the same materials with the following instructions:

Using any of the materials and as much or little as you like, create a device that will protect a raw egg being dropped from a height of 2m

Materials included 4 bendy straws, 3 popsicle sticks and 1m of tape (not pictured), a coffee filter, 1 Solo cup and 1 clear plastic cup, a sandwich size Ziploc bag, 1 rubber band and 2 paper clips.  All were contained in a brown paper lunch bag (which could also be used)

The teams were given a total of 20 minutes to design, build and test their devices.  I gave each team a plastic egg with which to practice.  The weight would not be the same but the size was pretty close.  Any adjustments to the device needed to be made within the time limit.  You can watch more of the process here.

Since the stage is approximately 1m from the floor, students simply rested their "drop hand" on the metre stick (2m) and let the device fall to the garbage bag-covered floor  below.

Probability of kids being entertained and engaged in communicating ideas, participating and collaborating with their new table mates?

That would be 100%!

Seems a good plan to attack probability in math while we were on a roll.

Is Rock, Paper, Scissors a fair game?  

Our results showed ROCK was most common after 2 trials.  Experiential probability is not far off from theoretically probability of 1 in 3 chances of winning.  We concluded that it is FAIR because each has something that it can beat (Rock beats scissors) and something that beats it (Rock is beaten by paper) and you have a choice of what to throw out.

Is 7 REALLY that lucky?
Students predicted what numbers they might roll (using 2 dice) with 12 rolls.  We realized it is IMPOSSIBLE to roll a 0 or a 1 since the lowest number possible is 2 (2 ones) and the highest is 12 (2 sixes).  We then collected data from the whole class for how many times each student rolled each number.  

The numbers in green are the number of combinations or chances you have of rolling  a number.  For example, you can roll a 7 with a 1+6,  2+5,  3+4,  4+3,  5+2,  6+1 (6 ways are the most chances of any number).  Our results showed that, on this day, 6 was actually the lucky number

We even "played" Lotto 649, using the winning numbers drawn on Wednesday night's draw.  This was an attempt to prove that the probability of winning the lottery is very UNLIKELY.  Someone even thought to check the OLG website to see if they had any data on the most and least common numbers chosen.

We wondered:

• Does where we live have any bearing on winning? (NO)
• How much does having 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 of the 6 numbers get the winner? (nothing, free ticket, $10, 9.5% of collected, 5% of collected)

We learned:

• 1 student out of 20 in our class accurately chose two numbers (5%)
• 8 students out of 20 accurately chose 1 number (40%)
• 11 out of 20 did not guess any numbers correctly (55%)
• 95% of the class would have "donated" $2 to the lottery with no reward

What are the chances that the students understood this strand of Math?

I HOPE that would be 100%!

~MissBrooks

MIXing with FM 96.7

Welcoming our hosts, Jay and Morgan from the Mix 96.7

I admit that, until we got the call, I did not even know there was such a thing as "Student of the Week" from local radio station The Mix 96.7.  That changed last Wednesday afternoon when I got paged to the office, in the middle of our salsa making experience, to take a phone call.

What could be so important to get pulled out of salsa making? Could it be Justin Trudeau, PM of Canada, calling to let me know he'd received our class tweet and would reply shortly to a letter that Zach had sent him back in February?

The caller was a Scott Despins from Blackburn Radio.  He began letting me know that a student in my class, Justin, was nominated as "Student of the Week" which meant that our entire class would receive a FREE hot lunch from Harvest Fresh and a visit from the morning team, Jay and Morgan.  But why?

Here's what Scott emailed to me:

Justin was nominated by *Tania Mask for the following reason,

     Justin rides the bus with my children (Olivia 8, grade 2 and Alexander 5, SK). On Wednesday Alexander went to the hospital to have his adnoids and tonsils removed. When I put my daughter on the bus that morning I told the driver that Alexander would not be back before March break.

    The next day my daughter came home with a giant card and some books for Alexander, from all the kids on the bus (and the driver). We were told it was Justin's idea. Such a kind a caring young man should be rewarded for his thoughtfulness.

*Tania Mask is Alex's mother

Morgan and Jay pose with Justin after giving him a prize pack which included tickets to a Windsor Express game, tickets to Silver Tee Virtual Gaming, tattoos, pen, writing paper and the letter written by Ms Mask.

Not to be outdone...the whole class hams it up for the camera

Fast forward to today...

The class was buzzing as we waited for Jay and Morgan's visit.  We're always up for paparazzi photo ops ... we're used to it!  Have you SEEN our Twitter page or YouTube channel?!  And we certainly enjoy food... and eating... and snacks... and pasta... and lunch... and, well, you get the idea.  But we also wanted to learn some things about being a DJ and, because of Justin, two LIVE DJs would be coming into our room.

Here are some of the questions we had:

     What time do you get up?  3:00 AM to drive out to Leamington station -- We feel sorry for you!

     What percentage of Canadian music do you have to play?  35% (Album MUST be produced in CANADA to qualify as Canadian content so Justin Bieber doesn't qualify)

     How did you become a DJ?  Morgan went to UofW and studied drama and communications.  Jay worked his way up to DJ by working at a radio station in Winnipeg.  They both like to talk and have great voices so they're in the right business!

     Do you need to drink a lot of coffee to stay pumped for the morning show?  Jay used to get extra large Timmies coffee but has switched to tea.  Morgan seems to be pretty energetic anyway!

And if all of this wasn't enough, we are going to be on the radio (7:50 am tomorrow)   we were on the radio on Tuesday morning and you can listen to it here!  Did I mention we received a FREE pasta lunch from Harvest Fresh catering?

What did we learn today?  One good deed can affect a great number of people with kindness and in the word's of Justin Timberlake:

~MissBrooks

Cooking With Class

Salsa Making Preparation

March was a month filled with more days away from school than in it (or so it seemed).  This week was possibly the shortest week ever slotted into a school calendar!  We began the week with Easter Monday and ended with a PD Day on Friday ... which happened to be April 1 ...

How to engage the kids who've been off routine because of March Break and Easter Break and who can't wait for another three-day weekend?

COOKING!

Biscuit dough, marshmallows, melted butter and cinnamon sugar are all that's needed

A tradition in my room after Easter weekend is to make Resurrection Rolls.  Now, I'm not about to take up time (because we CERTAINLY do not have time to waste with EQAO coming at the end of May) just for the sake of wasting time.  Making these yummy morsels is such a symbolic way of "rolling" out a religion lesson about the Resurrection of Jesus as all of the ingredients represent a part of Jesus' burial and resurrection.  Watch this year's class making theirs here.

Before the break, we received tomatoes, tomatoes, tomatoes from Forgotten Harvest.  You say tomato and I see SALSA!

The kids are currently in the process of writing their pages for a class cookbook that we are having published.  The criteria for their recipe choice were three-fold:

1. Nutritious:  Our plan was to revamp the school Nutrition Program with some new ideas.  We needed to stick to the rules of this program's delivery.
2. Inexpensive:  Read "cheap"!  We felt keeping the budget to a cost of $0.25/student (LOWER is ALWAYS BETTER) would make a recipe doable.
3. ECO-FRIENDLY:  This criteria was our chief concern.  After having attended Camp Sylvan back in the fall, we were given the task of an Eco project that could be implemented into our school life.  We had learned a lot about food waste and the generation of garbage and thought an "eco snack" would help our school generate less garbage.

Look at how that FRESH salsa hugs the chip

BACK TO THE SALSA ...

This was our second attempt at an "Eco Snack".  You can read about the granola bars, which sparked the idea for this cookbook, here.

Since the tomatoes were FREE, all we had to purchase was cilantro, onions, lemon and lime.  We already had cumin, sugar, salt and pepper available and decided against adding garlic and jalapenos (SPOILER ALERT.  This was a MISTAKE--we'd add these next time).  The entire cost to the Nutrition Program was $8.

Absorb that for a minute....$8.00!

  

We have 288 students at our school so the unit rate was $0.03/serving!  

You can watch the creation of our salsa recipe here.  It was modified from the Pioneer Woman.

Follow us on Twitter or subscribe to our YouTube channel.  We'd love to hear what you think!

~MissBrooks