"One Thing" for Mon. Apr. 14

Track Attack started at our school today. My kids absolutely love it! They get to go outside, run, jump and throw and generally have a great time. At Diefenbaker, we do have eight stations to rotate through and do three of them on the first sunny day of the week (like today), another three on the second sunny day and finish with 2 on the third sunny day. Some schools do it differently, but most follow the same guidelines.

Why do we do it? Well, besides promoting fitness and being active (and if there is one thing I would change if I could, it would be having the students moving and running more and standing less-while waiting for others to do the given event) the purpose is to record distances and times so that when we plan for which students are going to be in which events at the zone track meets we can figure out who those should be plus ensure that students get an equal number of events that they are able to participate in.

This year, our zone meet is on Thursday May 15th (at Minoru, of course). This year we will again be taking grade 3 students (my daughter is in grade 3 at Gilmore and she is excited to be going for the first time too!). It can be an exciting day, but students are encouraged to make sure they are eating healthy and not simply spending the entire day in the concession line!!


Here are a couple of shots from Minoru last year:

I was a proud dad after my son finished his high jump doing the best he could do. Which was great because we had even been practising in the Diefenbaker gym!!

"One Thing" for Thurs. Apr. 10

Normally in this space, I try to post about school stuff or come up with educational "musings." In sticking with the "one thing" theme, however, today was truly about one special thing for me (and my kids).

Today would have been Mrs. Rollins' (aka Mom's) 45th birthday.
We miss her more than words in this (or any) space can say.

We wrote messages to Mom on a helium balloon and then sent it into the sky. I borrowed this idea (Thanks L! :D) and thought it was a great way for us to honour and connect with Tracy on this day.  

 

She inspired us (and her students) all the time. We know she will get our messages. 

cheers!

"One Thing" for Wed. Apr. 9

Mr. Fish, "lover of science" and how it affects or, essentially leads to "Magic" visited our school today. He was entertaining and engaging and got the students actively participating in the show.

Here are K.N. and C. L. demonstrating "condensation tricks:

I think everyone's favourite part of the show was when he used an optical illusion spinner, put it in front of his face and got us to stare at it for almost a minute. The first time he pulled it away, his head grew bigger. Way bigger. The second time, it grew smaller. The students (adults) were amazed.

We also used this time for a few teachers to meet in the library with Mrs. Matheson to go over our school goals for the upcoming year, so it was a successful and productive afternoon all around.

"One Thing" for Tues. Apr. 8

Yesterday, Mr. Robert Stewart and Mr. Kevin Lyseng, both from the school district, came to our school at lunch to meet with our "Green Team". They were telling us about the new composting system that will be coming to our school. By the end of the month!

The idea is that all the food waste (from lunches) will be deposited by students into one of 5 "shifter bins" that will be located in the hallways of our school. At the end of each day, the material from the "shifters" will be taken by the custodial staff out to a larger bin locked up and located outside. This is part of a GVRD initiative where recycling food scraps will be mandatory by 2015 in certain areas (like schools).

In my class today, we set up an experiment that will be running until the end of the year. We took a bunch of food waste that we found today and put it into the two sectors of this composter that we have at the school.

We will then be checking it every 2 weeks, taking photos, writing down about what has happened in each of the sectors and seeing what the differences are between the section with dirt and the one with newspaper in it. We're keeping it in one of the courtyards, so hopefully we won't have any fruit flies either!

In addition, we plan to do an audit of the school's garbage and find out what kind of stuff is getting thrown out!

"One Thing" for Friday April 4

Sorry that I haven't posted anything since spring break, but easy to get back to it on such a fantastic Friday afternoon.

With my class this term, we are looking at David Suzuki's "Connecting with Nature" curriculum and have already done several lessons using this wonderful resource. Earlier this week, I had my students plan on doing a "hike to the dyke". They were to bring their backpacks and anything they needed (for rain or shine) or wanted to bring. Then we discussed what they needed on this hike and what they didn't actually need.

Why connect with nature? I feel (like Mr. Suzuki does) because children these days are spending less time outside and appreciating what is out there. Remember that scene in the movie Wall-e where something fantastic is happening outside of the window and the people (on their floating move-chairs) are not looking out the window, but are instead watching it happen on their "tablet"? That's what I'm worried about...

What a great way to spend the afternoon though:

Here's a link (I may have posted this before) to the PDF document that the Suzuki Foundation has created.
http://www.davidsuzuki.org/what-you-can-do/connecting-with-nature-education-guide/#d

"One Thing" for Wed. Mar. 12

Guess the teacher's baby picture? Who knew this would be so exciting? The Me to We club set this up as a fundraiser for the victims of the hurricane in the Philippines 

and it has been a huge hit at the school so far. So much so, that I couldn't even move in the hallway at recess today there were so many people crowding around the board and table...


Here's the crowd:

And here is a close up (sort of) of some of our beautiful staff. Look at all those smiling photos. 

I'm in this one. Somewhere... 

So, please keep the donations and entries coming. It's for a good cause. 

"One Thing" for Tues. Mar. 11

Today at Diefenbaker, we had the Dufflebag theatre join us. Their website is http://www.dufflebag.com/ and they are an acting troupe based in Ontario that has been going for 22 years, with one of today's performers (named Marcus) having been with them since the start. Today's performance of "CINDERELLA/CENDRILLON" was done with a lot of the lines "en français," which was great for our French students. Students were called up to act as some of the roles and then the whole thing is what I would call "scripted improv" so it was pretty funny. Lots of laughter. At the end, some of our students got to ask questions and a couple of them even asked theirs in French which was "fantastique!"

Students, if you would like to ask a question of today's performers, but did not get a chance to do so, just send them a message by clicking HERE

"One Thing/Fun Thing" for Fri. Mar.7

I had the privilege to attend a fundraiser for KidSport last night and it was fantastic. All sorts of Richmond athletes were there including Angus Reid and Bobby Singh (BC Lions), former BC Lion Geroy Simon, Olympic rower Darcy Marquardt (who visited Diefenbaker earlier this year as part of the ESTEEM Team), Pasha Bains (Canadian basketball player) and others. The purpose of the night was to raise money for kids to be able to participate in sports when they are young. There were also several young athletes there and this was good to see. The purpose of the organization is not to develop elite athletes (like those mentioned above) but several of them got their starts when they were young.

They showed a couple of videos/ads about sport skills being "Life Skills" and I couldn't agree more. Kids need these skills and there are so many great life lessons that one gets by being part of a team or doing an individual sport, even if it's just at a recreational level. I have loved playing sports since I was young and many of my friends today are those that I have met through playing on teams together. After just finishing coaching basketball at the Hugh Boyd tournament with a group of grade 7 boys that made a lot of progress this season(many couldn't make a lay-up at the beginning) I feel that sport continues to be an important part of our lives and one that should be available to all kids growing up.

This one is my favourite: 

 

Way to go, buddy!

also pretty good:

"One Thing" for Wed. Mar. 5

Today was the start of the Hugh Boyd Feeder Basketball tournament for both our grade 7 boys' and grade 6/7 girls' teams.

Playing against Gilmore, the boys lost 32-16 in a physical game. Both teams played hard and Diefenbaker scored the first and last (as the buzzer sounded) baskets of the game. 

The girls team, playing against Dixon School had a lead until the late shifts and ended up losing their first game by just 4 points. They play later in the night cap at 7pm. 

The idea of this tournament is for the students to get a bit of an introduction to their high school and we will all be heading to do the same thing at McMath next week.  

"One Thing" for Tues. Mar. 4

Today was World Down's Syndrome Day. In Richmond, anyway.

The real day is on March 21st. Richmond School District got a bit of a jump on this by holding a special day at our school A couple of years ago, I wouldn't have known this. For the past two years, however, I have had a girl named Jodi in my class who has Down's, so now I do. Today, for what I believe was the 4th time, Diefenbaker was privileged to host Richmond School District's Down's Day. This is a day where all the students in the District that have Down's get invited. They played games, sang karaoke, danced, played BINGO, did lots of stuff in the gym (including the always exciting parachute) and got to hang out and not have to go to "school" for the day. Pretty neat stuff. There were quite a few people from the district there as well and this was good to see.

Today they also had a "Crazy Socks" theme. Unfortunately, I didn't get that message ahead of time.

Tamara Taggert, from CTV has a son named Beckett who has Down's. He goes to school in Vancouver, but she came to the event today and talked to all of the parents who came about her experiences with her growing son. She said her biggest fear was about him going to school. However, when he got there and she met the principal and saw that everything was about inclusion, she wasn't worried any more. She was very candid about everything including Beckett's birth and how it was trying to get him to eat solid food. Even though she apologized afterwards for "blabbing," her talk was amazing, inspirational and fantastic to hear as a parent. I'm glad I was there to hear it.

Sorry about the blurry pic, Tamara.

"One Thing/Fun Thing" for Fri. Feb. 28

It's the end of February. Wow. That was fast.

Here's a pretty amazing video (not all shot in one take) of a boy who has clearly put in his 10 000 hours to become an expert in his field (as per Malcolm Gladwell) of trick bike riding. The fact that he even looks at the possibilities of doing the things he does on a bike is amazing.

And a late addition. A couple of our students were on the CTV news last night for their involvement in RYBL basketball here in Richmond.
Sorry, I was unable to embed this one. It's part of Perry's Prospects.
So CLICK HERE to see a couple of our students

Have a great weekend everyone.

"One Thing" for Thurs. Feb. 27

Last night, Dr. Brandy Wiebe, representing Saleema Noon's organization came to Diefenbaker to speak to our students about sexual health for adolescents.

Today she came to speak with our students in three multi-aged groupings. I attended two of these sessions and found them to be informative. I also was impressed by how much the students already know about what Dr. Wiebe likes to call "Body Science". She included some funny facts and the students giggled a little bit, but overall approached the topic with a level of maturity. Many students also asked thoughtful questions and this led to good discussion about what it is like being an adolescent in the year 2014. Some of them were sent with a bit of "homework" to go home and ask a trusted adult the questions that they may have had lingering after the session today, so we encourage parents to have a conversation with their son or daughter about what they talked about today.

If you are looking for more infomation on this topic, you can go to Saleema Noon's webiste: http://www.saleemanoon.com/

"One Thing" for Wed. Feb. 26

Today was Pink Shirt Day and we had a lot of pink around here:

Pretty in Pink:

Division 2:

Ms. Mathis and Mr. Rollins (turn down that pink!)

This afternoon, we got into our multi-aged Bulldog teams to do some "work" on Standing up for things that we believe in. We wanted to frame things in a positive light and make a statement that we believed there are actions we can take to help "Erase" Bullying, rather than simply talk about an "Anti-Bullying" message.

  "Acceptance"

Two members of a team share a seat

After getting together in our classrooms, the teams then designed and coloured shoes that represented what we "Stood For". 

Here are a few of the examples:

Creativity

Enthusiasm

Empathy

Uniqueness

Happiness

Respect

Thanks to the teachers who helped put this together (Ms. Hinks, Ms. Park and Ms. Matheson). Altogether, we had 32 different words and each group completed one of these posters. Come by the school and check them out. Hopefully our message, and the work we've been doing as a part of "Friendly February" will continue long past today. 

"One Thing" for Tues. Feb. 25

It was Science Jam over at the Aberdeen Centre today and several Richmond schools were involved. I have never been at a school that has participated in the Science Jam but have been to the mall a couple of times to see the experiments on display. 

Janice Novakowski was there today and put together this cool video display using "Animoto" of many of the projects, participants and even the School Trustees who were there. 

http://animoto.com/play/aL3OWESGPI0tvKPYokGkEQ

It looks like there were a lot more inquiry type of projects than there used to be in the past where students would just "reuse" someone else's science experiment "in a can" from years before. Students actually coming up with ideas, hypotheses and then creating an experiment themselves. Good to see. 

"One Thing" for Mon. Feb. 24

This September a new student named Beres joined us at Diefenbaker. He is in grade 7. You don't often get new students for the last year of elementary school, but Beres was moving here from Gibsons (where the family still lives) during the week so that he could attend figure skating practices more easily. Beres had been competing at a pretty high level in BC and the travel over from Gibsons was proving burdensome. He is not in my class, but I got to know him a bit at Outdoor Education Camp, located in (ironically), Gibsons.

This past weekend, Beres was competing at the BC Winter Games in Mission (and some surrounding areas) in the juvenile boys figure skating category. The BC Winter (and Summer) Games happen every couple of years and pit regions against each other. I attended a Summer Games in Prince George myself many years ago and have fond memories of making friends and participating in the sporting competition.

Beres took home the Gold medal!

Congratulations, Beres for all the hard work that got you to this point and good luck as you pursue your future goals in sport and life. We are proud of you, but not as proud I'm sure as your family is. Way to go!

  Beres in his Green Richmond/Delta/Zone 5 team jacket

Results: HERE

"One Thing/Fun Thing" for Fri. Feb 21

What a great day. Let's reflect on the legacy that the Olympics in Vancouver (2010) left on us. Canada won 26 medals here in Vancouver (a huge success by all standards, in my opinion) and we've got a guaranteed 25 this time in Sochi.

And yes, after Crosby's "Golden Goal" in 2010 and our Women's team comeback against the USA in hockey yesterday, "I Believe" anything can happen...

"One Thing" for Thurs. Feb. 20

I didn't have much of a chance to see anything happening at school today (or the fantastically exciting hockey game either) as I was in meetings for a good junk of it. However, I did get out and was able to enjoy the (February??) sunshine with some of the girls and boys in the gardening club. We are erecting a "recycled" fence made from old hockey sticks (Go Canada, Go!) in the hope that people will stay out of the garden beds once we have planted some of our seeds (which just arrived today). Hooray. We will plant them as soon as it says we are able to.

"One Thing" for Wed. Feb. 19

 From the "A Picture is Worth 1000 Words" file, here are a couple shots from around the school (taken today and yesterday)...

Division 9 doing Art in the round, (art in the style of Sandro Bottecelli

Lots of great looking beavers in there.

I was lucky enough to drop in on Ms. Park and her birthday tradition for Ernesto. She teaches about fire safety and everything after playing that catchy "Happy Birthday To You Song" from the internet. I know that if I was a student in her class, I would certainly feel special on my birthday (if not every day already). 

And lastly, this is our Long Jump Pit. It's just about ready for Track Attack (starting in April)... 

Or is is ready to be water skied on?

"One Thing" for Tues. Feb. 18

There are a couple of important "footprints" out there these days. Our environmental footprint and our digital footprint. Here's what I found on Twitter today about "How to teach students about their digital footprint:
http://www.eschoolnews.com/2014/01/20/kids-digital-footprint-937/

It's an article from eSchool News and talks about the consequences of images and words that go up online. We have probably heard cautionary tales about employers finding out information that led to the firing (or not hiring) of their (potential) employees after (easily) finding out information about the individual who has posted incriminating information about themselves online. The question is why was the individual not more discerning about what they were doing (or at least posting)? Did they not feel their boss would be able to search the internet?

Have you tried "Googling" (yes, apparently that is now a verb) yourself? Put your name in quotations (for a more accurate search) and see what comes up. I'll wait and see you after you go down an internet rabbit hole for a minute. The first thing that comes up for me is my Twitter account. Then there's stuff about my school and also the video application I did with my sister in hopes of getting on the first ever Amazing Race Canada (a goal of ours ever since the American version of the show first came out). While that's sort of embarrassing, at least it is something that is intended for the internet and we filmed it knowing this was where it was going. Only 146 people have viewed that though, so I'm not too worried.

Back to the article, it states that "The average young person ages 8-18 consumes 7.5 hours of media per day outside of school." That is a significant number. As a teacher, one of our roles is to try and help our students be smart and safe about what they put online and what they share. As soon as something has been put on the internet, there is always the chance that someone has taken a screenshot of it and that even if you take it down, the original can last out there. Forever. 

Is what is out there about you on the internet a true reflection of what you are like as a person? We would like it to be. So talk about this with your children/students and have a discussion about being a positive digital citizen.

"One Thing" for Mon. Feb. 17

At our Professional Development session last Tuesday with Jeffrey Wilhelm, one of the things he stated was that students will only attend to things that teachers give time to. This includes reading. If we spend no time reading in our classrooms (silent reading or reading novels or reading aloud together etc), then the students will not see reading as important.

One of his ideas was to create something that can be updated and shows what we are reading. So Mrs. Hikida made these for all of our staff and handed them out at our staff meeting today:

A couple of us even filled them in already:

So, take a look for these around the school, start a discussion and we'll see where this goes. Sometimes a great idea is a really small one.