Six Word Memoirs

I've been sharing this Six Word Memoir learning activity created by Sarah Landis & Lisa Highfill with my colleagues.  I've also tried it out with a few classes and found it to be an engaging writing activity with some great options for infusing technology.  If you want to try this out, use the link to Landis & Highfill's hyperdoc above to get started!   

When I shared this activity in classrooms, we began by viewing a moving video called "The Conditioned" which is about a man named Raimundo and his life.  I've watched it several times now and it's super powerful every time.  

Students were then tasked with developing a six-word memoir to describe Raimundo's life.  Some of our Park West School Division students posted their completed memoirs to Padlet, so you can see samples  below:

Next, students thought about their own lives and wrote six word memoirs for themselves.  This was a bit more challenging, but students came up with some excellent memoirs to highlight their lives.  Once they'd chosen their six words, students designed a digital poster to share their memoirs.  Some classes used  Google Slides to put together their images and text and other classes used Canva to design their digital posters.  They turned out to be beautiful pieces of work and several students agreed to let me share their memoirs.  You can see some student samples below, courtesy of Mr. Baskerville's Grade 6 class and Mrs. Bowley's Grade 6/7 class.  

Cookies for Tanzania: A service learning project & video contest winner!

Congratulations to the Decker Colony School students in Mr. Elias Wipf's ELA class for winning the Next Vista for Learning Service via Video contest!  Their wining video, Cookies for Tanzania, tells the story of how their school has been supporting projects in Tanzania through their fundraising efforts over the past few years. This contest was created to encourage young people to "tell stories of people serving their communities" through video creation. 

The Cookies for Tanzania fundraiser sales were put on hold this year due to COVID, but this group of students found a way to continue contributing to the cause by raising awareness with their video.  Four students collaboratively planned and created the video, including sourcing images, writing a script and narrating the video to tell their story.  They also worked with students, parents and community members to obtain the permissions required for people appearing in the video.  The resulting video is a great showcase for this service learning project -- be sure to watch it below!

The video is now featured in the Next Vista for Learning video library.  

Congratulations to Matt, Gabe, Jesse and Abby on a job well done and to Elias for supporting his students in their video production project!

Global Read Aloud 2020: Student-hosted Twitter Chats

 For Global Read Aloud this fall, I had the pleasure of working with staff and students at Miniota School to host Twitter Chat discussions about their books.  Mrs. Tynelle Graham's Grade 3/4 class hosted two chats about Planet Omar: Accidental Trouble Magnet.  Ms. Stacy Paull's Grade 5/6 class hosted a chat discussing Indian No More.  Mrs. Tricia Lelond's Grade 7/8 class hosted a Twitter Chat for Prairie Lotus.

Before the Chat
I met with each class for a planning session prior to the date of the live chat.  Each group of students brainstormed discussion questions and then narrowed it down to a rich question set for the Twitter chat.  The question prep led to lots of great discussion before the "official chat" even began.  The Grades 5-8 students used a Canva template I'd created to prepare the graphics for each question.  We Tweeted out the question graphics ahead of time for any classes wanting to prepare answers before the live discussion and shared the details for our chat in hopes that lots of other teachers and classrooms would join in.

Students also prepared their own answers to the questions for the chat, so they'd be well-prepared to participate in the discussion and share their ideas.  Some students wrote their answers on sticky notes to be photographed and Tweeted during the chat and some (older) students typed their answers in a Google Doc to be copied into a Tweet during the chat. 

On the day of the chat, each class developed a schedule for posting questions within their one hour live chat time.  Each class designated a couple of students to Tweet out the questions at the scheduled times...and they were very precise about following their planned schedule! 

During the Twitter Chat
During the live chat time, students had a few roles:

(1) Designated students posted the question graphics at the planned times with question numbers and a reminder to use the chat hashtag.

(2) All students posted their own responses to the questions.  Students answered 1-3 of the questions and the class made sure someone contributed their ideas to the chat for every question.  (ie:  Student A might have wrote an answer for questions 1, 2, 3 and Student B might have Tweeted their answers to questions 4, 5 and 6).  

(3) As a class, students worked together to moderate the chat and reply to other participating classes.  The teacher in each room used TweetDeck to follow the chat hashtag and projected their screen so all students could see the Tweets coming in.  Classes composed their responses together, with the teacher typing and sending Tweets that they could all view.

After the Chat

Tweets continued to come in after the live chat time, so classes continued to moderate and respond to messages on Twitter.  

It was a lot of fun to be involved with these student-hosted Twitter Chats.  The students did an excellent job of planning and hosting!  I hope it's something I'll get to experience again!

Tech Tips: Quick Communication with G Suite

Today, students are returning to school here in Manitoba.  It's exciting to be back, but also a very different back to school experienc given that we are teaching and learning during a pandemic.  This school year, I'll continue to serve as the Literacy with ICT Teacher Leader for Park West School Division.  In this role, I support students and teachers in using technology for education.  It's an awesome job and I'm very excited to be back at school!

Our school division is currently using G Suite for Education.  I wanted to share a couple of tips for quick communication using Gmail and Google Classroom.

(1)  Use labels for your email contacts to make it quick and easy to email a group of parents, students or colleagues.

For example, I might create a label called "Parents 2020-2021".  I can label all contacts for parents & guardians of that class.  Then, when I go to compose an email, I simply type the label name "Parents 2020-2021" into the TO or BCC field of my email to message all parents at once.  

Note:  When you are emailing a group, using the BCC field to send a blind carbon copy is good email etiquette so that you are not sharing contact information with others.  The BCC field prevents other recipients from seeing email addresses that the message is being sent to. 

The instructions for using labels are here 

(2) If you are using Google Classroom, you can quickly email students and guardians from the "People" tab.  

Once you have invited students to Google Classroom, you can easily contact individual students, multiple students on your class list or your entire class.  Similarly, once guardians have signed up with their student, you can also email them using the list in Google Classroom.  

The instructions for emailing students, guardians and co-teachers in Google Classroom are here.  

Book Trailers released by Rossburn Elementary School Grade 5/6

Along with some other classes from around PWSD, the Rossburn Elementary School Grade 5/6 class has joined me in creating book trailers for some of their favourite books this year!   Similar to the process we've used with other classes taking part in this project, this group of students viewed sample book trailers, set criteria, made a plan for their video and then started designing with Powtoon.

Here are the videos released by RES Grade 5/6:

Where the Red Fern Grows 
book trailer by Deegan


Hockey Superstars
book trailer by Reid


Bridge to Terabithia
book trailer by Anna


Patches
book trailer by Faith


Front Desk
book trailer by Tatum


Where the Red Fern Grows
book trailer by Jackson


The Maze of Bones
book trailer by Natalie

See more trailers by Park West School Division students

Book trailers released by Decker Colony School 

Book trailers by MPS Grade 6

More book trailers by MPS Grade 6 

Book Trailers released by Decker Colony School!

One of the projects I have done with students this year is creating Book Trailers.  The latest book trailer releases come to us from the Decker Colony School Grades 7 & 9 class.  This group of students began by planning their trailers with a graphic organizer.  We viewed some sample book trailers (both professionally-created and student-created) and set criteria for their work.  Next, students had an overview tutorial of WeVideo.  We reviewed the basics of how to use this video creation tool, which we are currently accessing as part of our Edwin pilot.   Students eagerly got started with this video creation project. 

When I returned to visit this classroom last week, it was evident that students had worked diligently to create book trailers which convey the mood and message of their chosen novels.  I was impressed by their video design skills, including their choice of music, images and fonts to enhance their trailers.  These book trailers sure do the job of hooking a viewer - I want to read them all now that I've watched these!

Check out their awesome work below:

Camp Blackeagle by Sigmund Brouwer
Book trailer by Matthias


Ranger's Apprentice: The Ruins of Gorlan by John Flanagan
Book trailer by Alex


The Emperor's Code by Gordon Korman (39 Clues)
Book trailer by Gabriel


The False Prince by Jennifer A. Nielsen
Book trailer by Daniel


The Night They Stole the Stanley Cup by Roy MacGregor
Book trailer by Jesse

Booksnaps by SCS Grade 10

I visited the SCS Grade 10 ELA class last week to introduce them to a different kind of reader response: booksnaps!   The idea of a booksnap (inspired by Tara Martin) is to "snap" a picture of a page in your text which you reacted to and then respond to the text by adding emojis and a short annotation explaining your response.   Booksnaps are a fun way for students to show their thinking about a text.  Students explore their response to the text and demonstrate understanding when choosing symbols and a caption that reflect their ideas about the selected section. 

For this class, students began by reading their choice novels with instructions from their teacher to flag something significant with a sticky note.  The class discussed that a significant passage could be something important to the plot or something that caused a reaction from them.  Once students had some time to read, we introduced the concept of booksnaps by presenting a few samples (student-created and teacher-created examples).  Through examining samples, we set criteria for their work.  Then, it was time to get snapping!

Students returned to the passage they had flagged as significant or read on to find an appropriate section to "snap".  This group of students primarily used SnapChat to create their booksnaps.  (PicCollage, SeeSaw, Google Slides and other tools also work well for creating them.)  Once they had a picture of a page in their book, students added their annotation, emojis and the title and author of the text. When their booksnaps were complete, they downloaded their snaps (rather than sending them to one of their contacts).  Then, students submitted their work to their teacher via Google Classroom.  Their finished products were very well done!

The following are Booksnap examples from this great group of students.

(*shared with permission* thanks for sharing*)