"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