Bullying Awareness Week: How do you want to be remembered?

This week for anti-bullying week, we explored concepts of respect, rudeness, meanness, bullying and standing up for what is right. Please check out the activities we did and the videos we watched this week.

We listed mean words and actions we have seen at our school and asked ourselves why these things continued to happen despite what we know about respecting others.

 

What is Bullying?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRZz2eU9LHg

 

The next day, I listed all of their words and synonyms on the board with a strong message: Stop the hate.

 

 

That’s So Gay: What do you say to that?

http://www.niot.org/nios-video/what-do-you-say-quotthat039s-so-gayquot

I asked the students, "How do you want to be remembered?" As the oldest kids in the school, the students talked about the importance of positive actions as many of the younger kids look up to them.

 

The Bullying Experiment (I really like this one! “If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor”)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EisZTB4ZQxY

Erasing Meanness: The students participated in a talking circle to respond to the promt, "How will you erase meanness in our school?" They then went up to the board and replaced a mean word with a characteristic/action they want to be remembered for.

 

 

I was so impressed as they continued to add to this board independently over the following week.

 

Carefully consider the impact of your actions and words on others.

How do you want to be remembered?

--BE KIND -- BE RESPECTFUL--

 

The ideas for this activity were adapted from: http://www.yourkidsteacher.com/2012/04/erasing-meanness.html?m=1

Autism Awareness Day

April 2 is Autism Awarenss Day. Today we watched two videos about autism and analyzed them using our viewing strategies. Students were asked:

1) What were the main messages in both videos?
2) What features did the producers use to make the videos effective?
2) Which video did you find more effective? Use specific examples to support your response.

I was so impressed by the connections that the students made and the understanding that they demonstrated for individuals with autism.

Check out the videos that we watched today:

Carly's Cafe
My Autism and Me

Math Funnies

It's all about perspective!

Persuasive Speeches

As we progress into our Environmental Choices unit, we are noticing that many media articles and videos about this topic are persuasive and biased. How do others try to persuade us?

To explore this idea further, we watched an old video of a great persuasive speech. Although we chuckled a little bit about the 90's hair that we saw, there was a really good message. Click below to watch it!

Severn Cullis-Suzuki

Here is what the students had to say:

Lucas- I thought that she was very motivational. She was almost insulting the adults but they felt bad too so they took her side.

Jordan- I agree with Lucas because she got the adults to realize that what they are doing is wrong. Even though they can't fix it, they can help prevent it.

Bethany- I agree with Lucas and Jordan because the adults can't fix what is happening but can work to prevent it.

Silas- Her perspective is that she thinks of the future. She is thinking of the generations to come, not what is happening right now. For example, if there is a war, they have to deal with it right now.

Julia- I agree with Lucas. I like her metaphor “if you don’t know how to fix it, don’t break it."

Wade- I don’t like how she kept saying that she is just a child. It made her seem like she was not capable of doing anything about it.

Blake- I disagree with Wade. I like how she went back to the same fact that she was just a child. She was actually smarter than them knowing and thinking about the future.

Mikayla- I think that she was very persuasive in saying that the adults should be doing something about it. If I was an adult, I would feel pretty bad and want to start helping.

Taylor- I agree with Wade, she is not an adult yet, when she grows up, she can begin doing some of the things she said.

Ethan- I like how she could talk so strongly in front of all those adults. Her confidence was good.

Lighting the Night Sky

What do we know about light pollution?

Jaelyn, "In big cities where there is lots of light, it can become impossible to see the stars."

Julia, "If you live around a big city, you can see the lights from miles away."

Ethan, "It fills the sky with glare."

Wade, "It is using a lot of energy that probably isnt needed."

 

After View One

Jordan, "The picture of the birds that have died from colliding with buildings makes me feel like light pollution is bad."

Blake, "Even without the lights, birds still crash into my house. The information is false in a way, they leave a big part of the picture out."

Jaelyn, "I agree with Blake. One time in the summer, a bird just hit our window and the blinds were down. Maybe the birds just have died from other causes too."

Julia,  "I agree with Jaelyn because birds sometimes run into the windows. It can definitely happen from light or not. Birds carry many diseases so they may have died from that."

Final Thoughts

On the last slide, they showed resources from government agencies. This makes me think that the message is coming from powerful people-  Jordan

Even though in this article, they missed a lot of facts to present one side, I do think that light pollution is bad and that we can fix it if we all try. - Julia

Wade- I think this essay had lots of author bias because the author only stated a couple of positive points about light, and they stated many negative points about how it effects the environment.

Jaelyn- Maybe in the bigger cities, they need to keep the lights on so that you can see for safety.

Blake- I think this article is poorly written because it leaves out too many important facts. It tries to make you feel bad about something that we cannot control. There was too much author bias.

Humans! A disease??

Today in class we watched a video about humans. It was told from the perspective of earth and painted humans as destructive and awful beings.

 

What did we think about this video:

Silas, "They made it seem like we are all bad but they forgot about the good things that we do."

Brayden,  "I saw a picture on instagram of a great white shark next to a scuba diver. The caption said, "in this picture you can see the worlds greatest predator, and beside it is a great white shark.""

Jaelyn, "I found the video might be offensive to someone who might cut down trees. We actually don't run around with axes killing animals. This video makes hunters or lumberjacks look bad or feel bad."

Claudia, "It made me think that the video made humans look like killers. It is not fair because not all people are like that, even though some are."

Wade, "It made it seem that people are out to destroy the environment, but they forgot about the people that are trying really hard to conserve the environment for future generations."

Jenna D, "It's not fair that they make it seem like everyone is going to be like that."

Blake, "If you look around, every house has wood in it. All of that wood came from live trees that have been cut down. So we all are guilty."

Taylor, "Different things like fur, wood and products are natural to the environment and we are using them."

Jenna R, "My mom went on a trip once with her school and they visited a wood company. There were stacks and stacks and stacks of wood. It was hard to believe that we use that much."

Ethan, "Some people just hunt and fish for sport and do not use the meat. It is killing the environment Their representation made me think about that, but it wasnt accurate."

Andreea, "A human made that, and most humans use products. The creator might be a hyppocrite."

We learned that we need to be careful of biases and perspectives in

TV, papers, books, websites etc.
 

We think it was a great video and it makes sense.

Even though it was "overkill", it made a strong point!

I was proud of the students today as they analysed the video with maturity. Theiy demonstrated high thinking ability throughout the entire the activity!