Financial Literacy, Oral Language & Media

As an oral language project, students recently created a presentation...documenting a dream trip.

This task involved: a) internet research skills b) financial skills (calculating total costs based on real world amounts), c) preparing a media presentation (using the medium of their choice: Frames 4, Prezi, PowerPoint or old fashioned bristol board) and d) oral language skills (speaking to the topic using appropriate terms, clear loud voice, etc)

Students were given 'an unlimited budget' for a long weekend getaway (approximate time frame) that required air flight. They were to research flight times and costs, as well as hotel costs, and transportation at the destination. They were to plan an itinerary (things they planned to do), with incidental expenses included as needed. The total cost of their getaway was to be included (in Canadian dollars). Pictures were also to be included.

Some of the places we have visited so far include Banff, Las Vegas, Cancun, Madagascar, Paris, and Moscow. We are not quite finished, and have a few more places yet to travel to...

With each presentation, we have been noting the 'total costs' of each trip on chart paper. Our final task, once all the presentations are completed, is to look at minimum wage in Ontario and calculate how many hours it would take to work and save for each trip's final tally. Just to put some of these dream trips into perspective!

Here are photos from some of today's presentations!

Anti-Bullying/Anti-Violence Discussions & Media

This past week was anti-bullying week and thus it seemed an appropriate time to address certain aspects of the Gr. 7/8 health curriculum:

Gr. 7-assess the impact of different types of bullying or harassment on themselves & others and identify ways of preventing or resolving such incidents


Gr. 8-demonstrate the ability to assess situations for potential dangers and applying strategies for avoiding dangerous situations


We spent some time discussing these issues by first reviewing various media messages and youtube videos, such as:

Anti Bullying Commercial Words Hurt , Bystanders 'take the pledge'  and The Price of Silence
 The real-life footage of  Casey Haynes Incident in Australia.
Homophobic Bullying Rick Mercer Reports  RMR Rant Bullying #1  RMR Rant #2

We also had a guest speaker: Ms. Smith, our Vice Principal. She spoke to our class about her experiences and the bullying/violence she has seen in her education career.

Our emphasis was on strategies as a bystander & prevention, what options were available in certain scenarios, how to handle violence.

As a culminating task, students created a '3 word' message (similar to this great '3 word' project --though ours has an anti-bullying/violence focus). I took photos/video of their '3 words' and will be creating a media piece to display it. I have included a few examples here.

PS. The video has since been created and uploaded to our youtube page! 

Tell Tale Heart Videos

These are the youtube Tell Tale Heart videos we will watch & compare to the original text.

Modern Adaptation

Animation

In Less than 2 Minutes

Highschool Student's Production

I love the creativity the creators of these videos have brought to their retelling of this classic tale!

Shakespeare in Bits: Coming in January!

Shakespeare in Bits is software created by Mindconnex Learning in Dublin, Ireland. Our class is very fortunate to be part of the Educator Partnership Program--which means that we get to test drive the software and give feedback! Fiona from Mindconnex will be talking to the class via Skype on Dec. 14th!

Plus, we are the only Canadian participants!

HOW COOL IS THAT?!

Recently, Shakespeare in Bits was showcased on a video called 'Dublin's 30 Second Start Ups' (created by Tech Europe of the Wall Street Journal).  They are the first '30 second' clip at about the 44 second mark in the video. I thought I would post it here so students & parents could see a 'face behind the software': Michael Cordner.

Michael Cordner is also right: every student encounters Shakespeare at some point!

Shakespeare's appeal is ageless--primary kids can study Shakespeare. Most students typically encounter the original plays in high-school (typically Romeo & Juliet in Grade 9!). As part of preparing for the transition to high school, this class is going to get a 'taste' of Shakespeare through whole class study of the play using this amazing software (via the Smartboard). We are also going to watch 2 movies based on the play (and based on that, we will write our short comparative essays).

Winter is going to be a very exciting time as we launch this project!

For more information on Shakespeare in Bits, check out their websete. The link is also on the sidebar.

Here is the video! Enjoy!

Frames 4 Awesomeness!

I mentioned in an earlier post how we spent a period learning about the software Frames 4. I showed how to use it and we spent some time exploring and just playing around with it. I asked students to create a couple of slides, to prove they knew how to make a simple animation...some students really came up with awesome clips! I can't wait to see what they create as we use Frames 4 for literacy & math communication! (Note: for some reason, blogger cuts off the last few seconds of these videos!)

J.S

M.G.

D.P

S.V.O

J.R

J.S

For some reason, the O keeps cutting off! This is supposed to spell HELLO!-Mrs. J

K.M.

J.F.

Note: Blogger cut off the last second, there is supposed to be a crayon suddenly stuck up his nose!

Media Literacy: Library Partnership Program

Tuesday starts our collaborative project with Mrs. Calabretta in the library. We will be using Frames 4  animation software to retell either 'One'  or 'Zero' by Kathryn Otashi. 

Students, you will also be using a checklist to determine the effectiveness of media/video content & techniques.  In class, we will be reviewing media & explaining how well they use colour, image, pace, and music to convey meaning.

CLICK HERE for the google doc checklist for media (when Mrs. J tell you to in class!)

WALT: create media forms and explain how media conventions & techniques (i.e.: use of colour, images, pacing, music) create meaning

Frames 4 Is Fabulous!

On Friday, we had the laptops for a period and because we will be doing a large number of media projects this year, I wanted everyone trained on Frames 4.

Frame 4 is an easy to use animation software program available on all the school computers. (I tried my hand at it just last week! Students rightly noted that my intro slides were TOO FAST. Students, you know intuitively what makes good media! We will be exploring this further, articulating the way media effectively (or ineffectively) communicates meaning--which is part of the Media Literacy curriculum expectation for both 7 & 8).

Some of the students were more familiar with this program than others. Essentially, I went through all the features, demonstrating how to use the software, then expected a 4 to 5 slide animation from students as they 'test drove' the features. It could be on anything, as long as it showed movement.

All I can say is...WOW! We have some extremely talented animators in our class. In just this short free play period, they came up with some amazing stuff! I can't wait to transform these into web-ready videos and post them for all to see!

Who will you become?

We received news today. Ms. Scigliano, the other teacher for this class, is leaving us. We are happy for her new & exciting position & adventures in teaching! We are also sad because we will miss her.

We also  know that this will bring changes and disruption as a new teacher is found for the afternoons and a new routine is created.

This is a new challenge for our classroom but, as we have been discussing, we can control our response to the challenge.

Again, I ask you: Who do we want to be? What kind of class environment do we want to experience? We each control our actions and contributions. We add to the atmosphere. We create it.

It is in our power to experience AWESOMENESS!

You can part of the solution or part of the problem. You decide!

Here are two videos from Michael Jordan that relate to the power of choice and the transformative power of endurance and maintaining focus on a goal. It relates to sports. It relates to life. It relates to our class community.

BECOME LEGENDARY. CREATE GREATNESS THROUGH YOUR EVERYDAY CHOICES.

"I have something more important than courage. I have patience. I will become what I know I am"-Michael Jordan from "Look me in the eye".

We will be coming back to these brilliant videos at a later date to examine them from the perspective of media literacy.

Coming Up This Year in our Awesome Literacy Program...

I have been telling the students about some of the cool things I have planned for our class this year. I thought I would highlight them all here on the blog & tomorrow we will review all of them in more detail:

• 4 guest speakers (writers). These are real writers writing in the real world. Our first guest is Chris Simon, editor of the Innisfil Scope, who will be speaking in person about report writing & editorials (next Wednesday). The other interviews will take place via Skype as these writers call in from various part of the world. We will be speaking with a novelist, a reviewer (including video game reviews) and a poet.
• literacy & media collaboration projects with Gr. 9 & 10 students at Nantyr Secondary School
• Wii project with Nantyr Secondary School
• class youtube page & website(s) to showcase the wide variety of media/videos we will be creating
• Educator Partnership Program with shakespeareinbits.com. This is a software company in Ireland and we will be skyping with Fiona in December. We will be using their software in class in Jan/Feb as we study Romeo & Juliet and providing feedback about their software.

In addition to that, I will be incorporating all kinds of real world media representations to generate discusion, responses, writing, and to use as comparisons to texts. 

I hope you find this program as exciting as I do!

Poplit Lyrics

This summer I created a website for junior, intermediate and senior students called Poplit Lyrics. This site uses popular lyrics as texts to discuss main idea (with supporting evidence--this is a precursor to essay writing), connections to text and figurative language like similes and metaphors. Often, I include a media element (like a music video) so we can discuss how media uses the lyrics (and images) to convey meaning.

Recently, we have been studying Katy Perry's Firework lyrics. This is a very rich text...the lyrics are rife with similes and metaphors. In addition to discussing the main idea (and finding supportive evidence from the text), we located similes and metaphors and then acted out the song, putting gestures to the figurative language.

The music video we looked at was the Firework flashmob/lipdub created by Magnolia High School in Texas and we discussed the ways the video conveyed inclusion (the character trait for the month).

To see the video on poplit lyrics click HERE.