Our Positive Digital Footprints

As part of our current religion focus into digital citizenship, we continue to have conversations on the importance of being positive digital citizens. Last week we had a conversation about the many different digital platforms we use at home and at school. We made a list and discovered that there are many platforms that students use in common and some that only a few of us use. The most important message we agreed upon was the importance of making a positive digital footprint. Students wrote about how they will make sure they are making positive and safe choices on the digital platforms they use most. This was our first time using the green screen this year and our first time practicing our reading fluency. Students have an important message to share about their social media use. We hope they inspire others to make better choices when they post, share or connect with others online.

 

Students watched the video today and reflected on their writing and their reading fluency. They had a lot of great suggestions for what they want to change for next time. Have a read at our goals for next time we made on Twitter:

Open House and Lorax Persuasive Writing

We have been working on Persuasive Writing in our room for the past few weeks. Students are learning how to convince someone to do something important to them. We need to make sure we are polite and we use kind words when we are trying to persuade. Our reasons have to be valid and have to be as convincing as possible.

We completed a Lorax persuasive task during Earth Week. We read the story and wondered as a class why the Once-ler was so determined to cut down the trees and take so much life away. We researched many reasons why trees are important to our life and to the life of other things in nature. We learned how to research and how to find reasons that made sense to our writing topic. Students used Google Slides to compile their research and then referenced the Slides while writing their persuasive letters to the Once-ler. Have a look at our research below:

 

Last week we completed another persuasive task. This time the topic was Open House. Students chose to either persuade the students of Assumption to buy books at the Book Fair or to persuade their parents to join us at our Open House breakfast. Students had to use transition words to help them compose their persuasive letters. Their good copy was typed on Google Docs where many students got to use Google Read and Write to help them edit their work. Ask your child to explain to you how it helped them with their writing. We also shared our final draft on an iPad app called Chatterpix. Students loved experimenting with this app. We posted all of their completed Chatterpix creations on their KidBlog accounts. Please visit our KidBlog accounts to leave a comment on their writing. They loved creating them and are excited to see they are available on YouTube!

Lent Project

For the past few weeks, students have been collaborating to promote and raise awareness about our Lent project. Our mission is to raise as much non-perishable food as we can as a school. We want to spread kindness in our school and in our Vanier community. We are collecting food to help families who are in need to benefit our community food bank the Partage Vanier Food Bank.  It is amazing to see the generosity and the kindness that our school has shown. Together, our contributions are growing steadily. A huge thanks to all families who have donated and especially to the grade 6's who are challenging us to bring more each day.

Students have been writing announcements each day.  This week we planned and filmed Green Screen videos to promote what students in our school can donate and to share the purpose of our mission. We used our school green screen and the Do Ink iPad app for the first time. We posted our videos on YouTube and now they are live and ready to view on our KidBlog accounts. We are really proud of our hard work and are eager to share them. Please follow the link to our class Kidblog account to view each of our videos and share a comment to show support.

We worked on our Lent Project Green Screen promotions today. Stay tuned to our Kidblogs for the finished videos! pic.twitter.com/zzKWeeStmh

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) 4 March 2016

Healthy Food Commercials

Great news...we have completed our Healthy Food Commercials! We are very excited about the opportunity to share them online. We worked really hard to research what makes the food we chose so healthy. We consulted wonder websites and safely searched Google to find information on our chosen food.

After researching, we talked about What Good Speakers Do. We discussed what speakers need to do when speaking to an audience. We made a list and students referred to it when they filmed their healthy eating commercial.

The purpose of our commercial is to teach everyone about the health benefits of our favourite food. We hope that we have been persuasive enough. To film our commercial, we tried our our brand new Green Screen for the first time! We used the app Green Screen by Do Ink to compose our interactive commercials. Students got to experiment with the app by adding a background of their choice. They ensured that they had a good speaking voice and focused on what good speakers must do. All of our commercials were posted to YouTube and shared on our KidBlog accounts. We spent time watching our videos today and added some great feedback. The comments are well thought out and provide the students with great feedback from their classmates. Please feel free to add comments to your child's commercial via their KidBlog account! We hope you enjoy our creations. 

We are taking the time to watch and comment on our healthy eating commercials this morning. pic.twitter.com/XJ09H1s1dY

— Mrs. Ciampa (@MrsCiampaClass) June 15, 2015

Open House Persuasive Letters

Our current writing unit focuses on Persuasive Writing. We completed persuasive letters to the Once-ler in The Lorax last week. This time we brainstormed and worked to persuade our PARENTS why it is important that they come to our Open House taking place this Thursday May 7th from 4:30-7:00.

Amelie on Educareations:


Freyja on Chatterpix:


 Brandon on Chatterpix:


 Hyabeal on Educreations:
 
Calvin on AudioBoom:

listen to ‘cw open hose’ on audioBoom

Elizabeth on Chatterpix:

 Zachary on Chatterpix:

 Jeremy on Chatterpix:

 Styve on Educreations:

 Winnie on Educreations:

Naisha on AudioBoom:

listen to ‘NN's open house letter to mom’ on audioBoom

Tomi on Educreations:

Alessia on AudioBoom:

listen to ‘AO openhouse letter’ on audioBoom

Let us Teach You About Grit!

Welcome to Catholic Education Week! This week we have many exciting events planned. To kick off the day, we celebrated by hosting a Literacy Day. Every class in the school read the story The Most Magnificent Thing by Ashley Spiers. The story is an inspiring tale of a young girl who perseveres to overcome a big problem. Along the way we watch as she struggles. Her best friend inspires her to have a growth mindset.

We used this story in our class to talk about what we can say to ourselves to show what grit truly means. We made a list and came up with positive things we can say or think instead of being negative. The students shared this video today during a school wide assembly. They are truly demonstrating that they have a growth mindset. Below is a video we made using the app YouTube Capture. We hope this video inspires you to show GRIT...and offer you some real strategies to persevere!


 


 This is the read aloud we read today using Stop Motion on YouTube. Enjoy!

 

What does Peace Mean?

We used this video called Peace for Kids to help us come up with describing words for peace. We created a Wordle to share our ideas. Have a look at our adjectives for peace.

If you would like to see how schools in our school board are sharing their learning for Remembrance Day, please follow along with this hashtag:
#werememberocsb

Digital Citizenship iMovie

Today we made a movie all about being a good digital citizen! We used the iPad app iMovie! Here is the link to our YouTube movie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_20PwcxHZs