#YYCLC Day 164: Interactive Displays!

This grade 5 class has been busy putting together an interactive display in the learning commons. They have been working on creating websites to go with their 3D Map they created with plastercine. The websites are linked to and accessed via the QR codes.

#YYCLC Day 116: Comic Life Advertisements

 

This Grade 2 class is doing a project about the importance of water in different Canadian communities. We are making visual advertisements (using Comic Life 3) to show what we know.

#YYCLC Day 105: Community Green Screen Project iMovie

 

This grade 2 class is creating Green Screen Video to talk about the different Canadian communities they have learned about in Social Studies. We used Do Ink Green Screen App on the iPad to record the video and then created the final video using iMovie on our iMacs.

#YYCLC Day 80: Holy Map!

Today we set up a map of Canada that we booked and borrowed from Canadian Geographic. We can't wait to see what happens on this map. More to come!

Stop... Collaborate & Research: #GAFE

Marlborough School is an early adopter for the CBE GAFE (Google Apps For Education) initiative.

We have been able to use GAFE for about 3 months now and it's only recently that I have noticed our staff and students really connecting with it and realizing its power! As teachers begun to use GAFE with their students it has quickly spread. The infectious nature of collaboration and success is unreal to watch.

This project was the first major project that one of our grade 6 teachers embarked on using GAFE. The subject, some would call fairly dry, was learning about the decision making process used by the Iroquois Confederacy. The students would eventually write about the topic as well as create a giant infographic.

Research and Assessing

Students worked together to research the Iroquois Confederacy. Using Google Forms, students read about different aspects of the Iroquois culture. They filled in a separate Google Form (picture above) with each new piece of information. All the information was then collated in a shared spreadsheet for all students to access.

Gathering and Communicating

Once all the information was collected, students formed their own groups and then synthesized their understanding of all the information. The first task was to come up with a few paragraphs which they would writing collaboratively using Google Docs. Students were able to simultaneously write in the document to form their finished piece of writing.

The groups also planned their infographic using the Google Drawing app. This was an interesting process of collaboratively drawing their plan which would utlimately become a massive poster on paper. All the group members were able draw simultaneously with the drawing app. They worked really well together on this part of the project in an app that no one had ever used before. It was amazing to see them adopt this new way of working together.

Once all the writing and drawing plans had been completed, the task was then to put all of the info onto paper. Because of the collaborative and organized nature of this project, groups have been completely focused and on task throughout. We really look forward to seeing the finished work.

Grade 1: Celebrations!

Welcome to our Grade 1 Celebrations!

Over the last two months, all of the grade one students have been learning about Celebrations and Traditions. The students were encouraged to share about a celebration which they participate in, why it is important to them, and explain a tradition (something that they do every year) that they do every year for this celebration. They were asked to present this information to their peers and hopefully bring an artifact (object) to supplement their presentation.

Below, we have explained the learning process from beginning to finish, including the planning, preparation, instruction and assessment of this work in the Learning Commons. Please enjoy.

First we thought of all the celebrations we know.

Then we decided what would be needed for a decent presentation. We came up with the following sentence prompts and practiced with each other. 

We choose to talk about the celebration that was most important to us and filled in the needed information.

We tried to include most of the parents by sending home a form asking them to help fill it out with their child.

While the forms came in with detailed information about student's celebrations, we let others in the school share their celebrations with us. Since the grade three students were doing a similar project about Celebrations and Traditions around the World, we had a few students come in as expert speakers. We also had a grade one teacher share her Mother's Day celebration from Albania with us. 

We then shared our Celebrations and Traditions with each other with the sentence prompts on the SmartBoard in case we forgot what to say. We each brought an object to share that was related to our presentation.

While we were presenting our work to each other, our teachers helped us by asking us questions about our celebrations.  

Sometimes we took breaks and had questions to think about and answer in small groups. We were first asked, "What was the same or different between some of the presentations?" and then we were asked, "What is one thing we learned from a presentation?"