Aisle Try That!

First Field Trip of the Year!

When the trip is 4.1 km down the road, involves food, learning about nutrition, and is FREE (only need to pay for transportation), who wouldn't jump at the opportunity?

Through the generous support of Field Trip Factory and their partners, the class was able to take their learning outside the classroom walls and apply learning in a real-world setting.   

Meeting Cindy, the dietician at Zehrs on Tecumseh Rd East

For one of our students, this was the first trip to a supermarket in Canada as he only arrived in the country on Sept 21.  Can you imagine what a bounty that would look like when you aren't used to it?  Talk about sensory overload in terms of sights and sounds and smells!

And Produce was just the first aisle we went down

Learning about fibre, carbohydrates, Canada's Food Guide, sodium and Zehrs' "star system" was both interactive and interesting.  Students were tasked to find a vegetable that they had never tasted before and to look for star counts in the produce aisle (everything is a 3).  Rutabaga (cross between turnip and cabbage--Sweden), daikon (white radish--Japan) and spaghetti squash (noodle-like squash--Manchuria, China) were some of the less familiar veggies.  A big surprise was seeing dandelion in the store because few knew these were edible and, during a recent science unit, many believed them a nuisance to be destroyed because they served no purpose!  

There are those greens--dandelion and collard

The long white one is daikon

In the bread aisles, students eventually came across one bread that had stars on it (whole wheat).  It was a challenge!

You're COLD....keep looking!

Moving on to the butcher (more 3 stars!), students learned that their plate should include a fist-sized portion of protein.  Here, for the vegetarian crowd (ALL meat eaters in this group), students discussed meat alternatives.  Tofu anyone?

Towards the end of the tour, the students were let loose in the cereal aisle (SO many choices) and were to find the cereal usually purchased in their home and check for stars, carbs (lower than 10%), sodium (lower than 10%) and fibre content (higher than 10%).  The results were surprising!

Brooklynn finds a good choice

Honey Bunches of Oats

These should "POP" into more cupboards

Really high in fibre (=good) but a wee bit high in sugar but 2 stars!

The kiddie catching cereals with colourful characters on the box

Is this side of the cereal aisle for adults only (i.e, healthy choices)?

For many, snack time before returning back to school, was the highlight.  Cindy asked that the kids try one new food before the end of the month.  Almost everyone accomplished that goal today!  Dragon fruit, tofu, snap peas and carrot harissa hummus were new flavours and textures for many palettes. 

NO double dipping!

Dragon fruit with water to cleanse the palette

Tofu for you!  Smoked sriracha flavour.  Wait for it....The heat kicks in

Miguel got the leftover "to go" since he just loved this hummus

Encourage the "no thanks/not yet bite" in your house.  After one bite, you're allowed to say "no thanks" and even spit it out (politely).  Since our palette is ever evolving, continue to try foods that you didn't like in the past.  Eventually, they might grow on you!

~MissBrooks

WEcdsb Day 2017

This week, the grade sixes were presented with the opportunity to attend our local school board's WE Day event, held at the St Clair Centre for the Arts.  After hearing the messages of the various presenters, it was impossible to leave that venue without being more inspired to become a changemaker than when you'd entered.  

With gratitude to the organizers, sponsors, presenters, volunteers!  Here are some of the highlights from our perspective...

• Quinn Meawasige of Serpent River First Nation fired up the crowd with his message "Water Is Life" which the some 1200 audience members chanted as he streamed on Facebook Live.  

• Lauren Carlini, a Gr 10 student from St Thomas of Villanova choreographed a moving dance routine.
• Carson Reaume, a 13 year old who can be seen in the upcoming movie "The Shack", sang covers of Justin Bieber, Niall Horan and Ed Sheeran.  MANY were "fan girling" when he hit the stage!  

• Abbey Neves, a student of Walkerville and a talented singer who has tried out for the Voice this past January, shared a powerful message of God's love.  
• Krislyn Bell, an 11 year old student of St John the Baptist, wowed the audience with her powerful voice as she sang Demi Lovato's "Warrior" and Andra Day's "Rise Up".
• Spencer West is a man who climbed Mt Kilimanjaro...without legs because he had them removed when he was a child.   He spoke of finding your voice, finding your team and climbing your own mountain.  So very powerful.   

Our own Gabriella and Madyson auditioned and were invited to present their talents to the crowd of changemakers.   Gabriella belted out Adele's "Hello"....

Madyson shared her Irish jigging talents.  Despite falling towards the end of the routine, she proved she has the heart of a changemaker by getting back up and finishing what she started!

When we returned to the school, I asked the students what they thought the purpose of the day might have been.  Why did the WECDSB invest the time and talents and treasure to hold an event like this, on a school day and invite students at the elementary school level?

My heart bursted with shooting stars and filled with love and pride! 

Once they saw past the entertainment factor and had picked themselves up from swooning over Carson Reaume, they believed WEcdsb Day was an opportunity to prove that young people CAN make a difference and this event would encourage them to do set about doing so!

And so begins a renewed vigour to make a difference, beginning in our community, with our first ever CAN-aval Film Festival that we will hold the Friday before the March Break.  The students will be selling popcorn for $2 (recipient of proceeds to be determined) or 2 canned goods (which will be donated to Goodfellows).  The CAN-paigning has begun with posters in the halls and continues with announcements over the PA.  With a population of around 290 students, we CAN potentially collect almost 600 cans of food in one day and make a difference on Friday!

WE are learning to become changemakers.  How can you?

~MissBrooks

We Took (Virtual) Field Trips to Indonesia and Thailand

We just completed our second field trip with Brandon Hall from Learning Around the World GEOShow.

Minus the jet lag...

and without passports...

and no crossing of time zones...

We went to Thailand and Indonesia without even leaving our classroom and it was beyond expectation!

Our first VFT was to see the Asian Elephants in Thailand

The engagement and level of enthusiasm from almost every child was high.  These webinars allow the participating classrooms to interact with Brandon through Twitter, playing Kahoot and chatting (either face to face as an on-screen guest or through the chat feature by typing questions).  Field notes were provided for the Thailand trip and students scribbled to get as much information as possible.  This helped us make the leader board in the Kahoot challenge at the end of the webinar.

4th Place finish in the Kahoot challenge

Gloria's notes evidence her learning and engagement
throughout the hour long webinar.

For the second field trip, which was to Komodo, Indonesia, we signed up to be on-screen guests.  This was the first time for the kids to participate like this and luckily, Brandon controlled the mute button to block our chatter from the other participating classes!  Some of the students had read an article ("Dragon Alert") as part of their guided reading groups this week (happy accident) and they were eager to share some facts about Komodo dragons, a cannibalistic creature whose only predator is itself (and humans, but it's illegal to hunt).

Here's a tweet I sent out during the VFT to Indonesia.

Experiencing these trips has made the study of biodiversity (one of four strands in Ontario Science curriculum) interactive, engaging and interesting for everyone in our classroom.  Go check out if one of their virtual field trips applies to some level of interest in your classrooms.  It will blow you away!

~MissBrooks

Time Travel

On Wednesday, the Grade 6s headed to Ska-Nah-Doht in Mount Brydges, ON, a 2 hour drive east.  The real plan was for us to make this trip two weeks ago when there was snow so that we would be able to experience snowshoeing.  Alas, there was TOO MUCH SNOW!  So much that the leaders couldn't get into the conservation park!  This week, the snow melted with the 18C temps so we ended up foregoing snowshoeing but still enjoyed stepping back to 1016 to experience life in this Iroquoian village.

The palisade greets visitors and challenges them to find entrance to the village

Rose, our guide for the day, made us use our math brains as she threw numbers at us and had us calculating time, distance and number of trees.  Field trip doesn't mean your brain is on vacation!

Having granite, bones and pelts guaranteed survival

At the age of 4, boys were expected to be the "muscle of the village" and would carry what the women gathered, learn to hunt rabbit, muskrat and eventually, deer, moose and bear.  Girls became gathers, searching for berries, planting the "3 Sisters" (corn, squash and beans), learning to sew with bone needles, and cooking over open fire.

Rose teaches us that it takes 10 deer to outfit an 11 year old and that our "village" had 22 children.  How many deer would we need to hunt?  Notice the moose hide behind her.  MUCH bigger!

Can you imagine needing to rebuild your house every 2o years?  Ska-Nah-Doht (the village that stands), is presently 43 years old and on its third rebuild.  Cedar trunks needed to be about 2m around and at least 6m tall.  Oh, and you only needed about 10,000 trees to make a village!  In the present, Rose says the trunks she gets look like "toothpicks" because they are too young and skinny.  Whatever the Iroquois took from the land, they replenished for the 7th generation.  This meant that a tree would be about 80 years old when it was ready to be used for the longhouses and palisade.

The frame of the third longhouse is getting ready to be replaced

These longhouses are not the usual 75 feet (they're about 30) and would only hold about 6 families (30 people)

The students also learned the importance of tools.  They were divided into "tribes" and had to elect a leader.  This was their first "test" to see if they had been listening to Rose mentioning that the females were in charge.

Then, the tribes were challenged to make tools using the materials found in a bin.  These materials were sticks, stones, bones and string.  Which tribe would be able to survive?

The available materials

Tealie was elected "elder" of her tribe because she was the oldest in her group.  Good thing she's female! 

Tools needed for these seven areas of life in the village...in order of importance!

The students had some innovative ideas but given the short window of time (10 minutes), they felt discouraged when their ideas didn't measure up to what they had imagined.  Still, we got to see some multi-purpose tools and tools from many of the areas.  We might have to try this challenge again at school!

We're grateful for this opportunity which was completely funded by an outdoor education grant from the Ministry of Education.  

~MissBrooks