Remembrance Day 2013

In Flanders Fields

By: Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, MD (1872-1918)

Canadian Army

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow 


Between the crosses row on row, 


That mark our place; and in the sky


The larks, still bravely singing, fly 


Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago 


We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, 


Loved and were loved, and now we lie 


In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe: 




To you from failing hands we throw




The torch; be yours to hold it high.




If ye break faith with us who die




We shall not sleep, though poppies grow




In Flanders fields.

Remember...

We have a public holiday on November 11th for Remembrance Day so I always talk about Poppy Day the week before.

My island home has been very blessed in that we have never had a war fought on our land although we have supported military bases of other countries and played our part in World War Two.

We have very few veterans left and nearly all of them fought in WWII. Very few of our young men or women have served overseas in war zones - which means that few of our children have been exposed to the loss and heartbreak that occurs when family members are lost.

Of course there are the children who know that their grandparents died fighting - and some have family members who are enlisted but they are the exception rather than the rule.

Every year I find it more and more difficult to help my class see the importance of Remembrance Day. We are so removed from the concept of war that they don't seem to be able to relate to the "remembering" aspect of Poppy Day.  For them it's just a holiday - a day off from school.

So we talk about Remembrance Day - about why we keep it, what it means. We read "Flanders Field" and discuss it and we watch a slide show that I made 3 years ago for an assembly - set to the song "Where Have all the Flowers Gone" - and discuss our reactions.

We talk about how war starts in our hearts - and how we can become peacemakers even when we are very little. We can forgive, we can be kind, we can find ways to solve problems.

And then we make our poppies.

This year I slightly adapted a project I found on thatartistwoman.

We painted coffee filters

We used 4 different colors

  

We painted the backgrounds grey and
added black splotches when dry

We drew stems and leaves on black card

We folded and cut our painted filters
into petals.

Then we shared our petals so that
everyone had a mix of colors

A poppy made through sharing

We glued the petals and stems and added a
tissue paper center

A beautiful Remembrance poppy

On November 11th - REMEMBER

My son on November 11th 2012

Pumpkins and Polygons

I decided that it would be fun to introduce measurement of weight (grams and kilograms) by using pumpkins (actually winter squash because, as you know, there are NO pumpkins here!) so I set up my center activities this week with that in mind.

Center 1: weighing pumpkins, converting grams to kilograms and back again, doing a little addition and subtraction with pumpkin weights, estimating pumpkin weights, holding different gram and kilogram weights... fun stuff.

Center 2: reviewing polygons and lines of symmetry (I stress the "reviewing" word here!) with nice bright orange shapes to fold and glue. Very hands on!

Center 3: reviewing place value by rolling fun foam place value dice with a group and then solving problems related to the 4-digit number that was rolled.

Center 4: practicing time - matching analogue, digital and written times with a cut and paste activity.

WHAT WAS I THINKING?!! 

This was NOT a sensible thing to do the day after a week of half term holiday!! My kiddies had clearly forgotten just about everything we did before the holidays - sigh.

There were some very....ummmm.... "interesting" answers on those papers. 

So today we went back to the drawing board with polygons and lines of symmetry and painstakingly, with lots of different colored pencils, drew lines of symmetry on regular polygons before playing a loud and boisterous team game at the end to see how much they remembered.

And... I breathed again. :) MUCH better. :)

Lesson learned - allow for a day of acclimatization before embarking on center work. :)

My Truth Monday

Denise at Sunny Days in Second Grade is doing weekly My Truth posts - helping us all to learn more about each other. I've been reading all the linked up blogs and they're fun!! So I decided to join in.

This week is: My truth about becoming a teacher

To find out how more teachers became teachers head on over to Sunny Days in Second Grade.

Autumn - our style!

So... back to school tomorrow after a fun holiday - and a fairly productive one too. I had an autumn-filled half-term break despite the fact that we don't really have autumn here! No trees change color on a tropical island and it remains hot and humid (in fact today is pretty disgusting!) so we kind of have to experience autumn vicariously in the classroom. :)

I love autumn. I like the poems, the colors, the imagery, the art ideas - it's such a great season - so I spent half term making autumn themed activities for my class. We will SUBMERGE ourselves in Autumn!

I'm re-doing my anchor trays for the second half of term with autumn themed activities - autumn math problems, autumn writing activities, autumn general knowledge; I'll do lots of autumn art to add to the pumpkins and leaves we already have scattered around and I'm going to start the 2nd half of term off tomorrow with autumn math centers.

We're reviewing symmetry and polygons, place value and time and I decided to introduce weight in grams and kilograms by weighing pumpkins and answering questions about them. I thought it was a great idea so I wrote the worksheets, got the scales, printed and copied everything and then went looking for my 5 pumpkins.

Wouldn't you think that just a couple of days after Halloween there would be pumpkins galore? Well, there aren't! In fact, I couldn't find a pumpkin ANYWHERE.

Zero. Zilch. Nada. NO pumpkins.

So we're weighing winter squash (sigh).

It's not quite the same (despite the pretty colors) but it will have to do. I hope they last until tomorrow - sadly one of them is already growing a little blue mold coat (it really IS humid today!) so he's been scrubbed and dried and is warming next to the stove. (Hope he doesn't cook before Math class!)

We'll see how it goes - grams and kilograms are always a little tricky the first time round. Last year we started by weighing the class tortoise but hopefully "pumpkins" will be just as much fun.

This is the activity we're doing - it's nothing fancy but if you'd like it a freebie then just click the link. :)

*freebie link*

I like my autumn task cards - and these (once they're cut up and laminated) will keep my speedy finishers occupied for a while. Plus I can use them as one-on-one support for some of the kiddies which will be helpful. Here's an example of what they look like in their pre-cut state. :)

And of course, even though Thanksgiving is not a national holiday here, a lot of my kiddies have American parents or grandparents and will celebrate the holiday. So we'll do some Thanksgiving-themed activities too. :)

I'm definitely doing Turkey's Thanksgiving Feast with my girls because they love open-ended projects. I'm donating all the proceeds from this project to Pencils of Promise (you can read about the organization here if you are interested) so if you'd like to share the project that would be great. :)

Hope everyone has a fun-filled and non-stressful week :) Happy Autumn!!

Pencils of Promise

One of the keynote speakers at a conference I attended earlier this month was Adam Braun of Pencils of Promise.

He was AMAZING! The entire conference room - more than 700 people - sat in rapt silence as he told us about his "defining moment" in his life and how he came to found Pencils of Promise.

Adam is in the lower right square.
Other keynote speakers were: Jessica Jackley of Kiva,
Peter Diamandis of Singularity University
and Marc and Craig Kielburger of Free the Children

Pencils of Promise, as an idea, first swam into existence when Adam asked a question of a small boy begging on the streets of India but it had its roots in an earlier incident in Adam's life.

He explained to us that as a young boy his goal in life was to succeed, to become rich and he had made that his focus in education. He worked hard, he went to university, he graduated magna cum laude with a degree in  economics, sociology and public & private sector organizations but his focus changed when he enrolled in Semester at Sea and began to travel around the world.

Adam told us that his ship was hit with a rogue wave - an enormous wave that caused the ship to wallow and tip and almost go down. Adam said that it was at that moment - when he faced almost certain death - that an incredible calm settled over him and he knew that he wouldn't die that day. He hadn't fulfilled his purpose in life.

When he returned home he packed a backpack and began hiking around the world, visiting over 50 countries and becoming very interested in international development along the way.

In India he asked a young boy a question:

What do you want most in the world?

When Adam told the conference attendees this story he said that when he heard the answer he called over an interpreter and asked him to translate the question. He didn't think the child could possibly have understood it.

The interpreter asked the question and the answer was the same:

A pencil.

From the Pencils of Promise website here are Adam's words:

I reached into my backpack,

handed him my pencil, and watched as a wave of possibility washed over him.

A smile erupted and his eyes brightened. And I saw then the profound power and promise brought through something as small as giving a pencil to just one child.

And from these two defining moments in a young man's life - a rogue wave and a question - the non-profit organization Pencils of Promise was born.

Starting with a $25 deposit in a bank (and we got to see that initial deposit slip :) ) the organization has now built more than 100 schools and hopes to break ground on many more this year.

57 million children in the world don't have access to education. Pencils of Promise is working to help that - and 100% of online donations directly fund schools.

$25 will educate one child for a year.

How many lives could we impact?

As October draws to a close another set of holidays looms on the horizon. In November I will be talking about Remembrance Day and Thanksgiving with my class. We will be remembering all the reasons we have to give thanks - and one of those reasons, surely, should be the fact that we can go to school.

I would like to support Pencils of Promise - I will do it personally but I am also going to donate all the proceeds from a new Thanksgiving project that I have created for my class - Turkey's Thanksgiving Feast.

Find it HERE

I'm grateful for the opportunities I've had - I'd like to pass them on.

Round Square Inspiration

Abraham Lincoln wrote years and years ago that:

"The philosophy of the school room in one generation will be the philosophy of the government in the next."

What philosophy is in our classrooms now? What are we really teaching this generation? 

I was forced to really think about this when earlier this month I was able to attend the International Round Square conference in Florida. It was an inspirational and seriously thought provoking conference with amazing speakers who have really made a difference in the world.

I can't write about everything in one post (- look for later posts because I will write about some of these amazing people soon -) but I thought that today would be a good time to start to put some of my thoughts about the conference into written form.

This is a long post but I hope that you will take the time to read it all...

Our school has been a Round Square school for quite a few years and I have been aware of the ideals and principles of the organization but I haven't really been involved. This conference changed my whole outlook. It decided my class assembly theme and has caused me to really look at what I think is  important in education.

Round Square is an association of international schools - more than 100 now - on 5 continents, that represent 60,000 students. The international conference had 500 student representatives from around the globe as well as 200 teachers and heads.

The organization was founded on the ideas of Kurt Hahn, a philosopher (who was also responsible for the formation of the United World College movement, the Duke of Edinburgh Award and Outward Bound.)

Kurt Hahn believed that it is "the foremost task of education to ensure the survival of these qualities: an enterprising curiosity, an undefeatable spirit, tenacity in pursuit, readiness for sensible self denial, and above all, compassion."

I loosely translated these qualities for my children into: courage, curiosity, creativity, leadership, principles, generosity and compassion and we produced our assembly using these words - and the IDEALS of Round Square - as our focus.

The IDEALS are the pillars of a Round Square school - they are what we believe in and what our educational program is hinged on.

Internationalism, Democracy, Environment, Adventure, Leadership and Service.

The problem to date has been that most of the Round Square activities are for older children - for middle school and up - so my challenge was to see how we can fully integrate the ideals into Primary.

 My class and I brainstormed and we came up with the idea of a Round Square Ripple club.

We based our idea on the quote by Mother Teresa:

"I alone cannot change the world, but I can cast a stone across the waters to create many ripples."

We held a Round Square table talk where we arranged our desks into a big square and we brainstormed ideas.

We talked about ways to integrate internationalism and service and leadership into our classrooms and my girls came up with great ideas.

We decided that we could work really hard to learn another language - we do Spanish but no-one is fluent so we decided that we could ask our 2 Spanish-speaking students to help us all learn it better; we can re-link with schools in other countries through our class blog. (Last year we linked with a school in Wales and in Morocco and this year there is a possibility of adding Romania, Columbia, South Africa and Wisconsin, USA to our international classroom!)

We talked about service and the little things we could do (like growing our hair for Locks of Love or donating our birthday money to the SPCA).

We decided that at recess we would pick up any trash that we could find and we discussed our school garden (Year 4 will take ownership of one garden bed this year so we will be planting vegetables)

We talked about the things that we think make a great leader.

These are, of course, things that we talk about at school all the time but this was the first time that I felt like my class was really taking ownership of it.

They painted pictures for their assembly, they got the video camera and interviewed other Primary students to find out what they knew about Round Square (sadly, very little!) and we put together a powerpoint to showcase the IDEALS with photos from Primary to show what we are doing already.

It was a huge success - and my class have been asked to repeat their assembly for the Secondary department on November 19th.

This is, of course, wonderful and my children are thrilled - but the biggest thing about this assembly, and the conference, for me was that it really made me think about the way I teach, why I teach and what our responsibility as educators really is.

School is much, much more than simply teaching children to read and write - we have a huge responsibility to the future generations of our world. If we don't teach them the principles of kindness, love, tolerance, generosity and compassion NOW then our world is going to be a miserable place in the future.

Today we read about atrocious acts occurring in schools all the time - the incident at Sandy Hook shocked the world - but smaller acts of bullying and unkindness take place all the time in our classrooms and schools.

It's our job as teachers to make a difference. And we do that though compassion and love for our students.

"Not all of us can do great things but we can all do small things with great love." 

Mother Teresa.

God grant me the ability to do this in my classroom - every day.