September 26- 29th

This week was packed with some important learning to honor and raise awareness around Orange Shirt Day/National Truth and Reconciliation. Our work, this week was to develop an understanding about how in the past, Indigenous children and their families were forced to give up who they were to fit in yet never truly belonged. Through literature, oral stories and discussions we took action and steps to learn, connect and take a stand toward reconciliation. One story we centered our work around was Nicola Campbell’s book Shi-Shi-Etko as it is gentle way to discuss Residential schools.  This beautiful story is about the four days before a young Indigenous girl must leave her family and go to residential school. Her mother, father and grandmother, each in turn, share valuable teachings that they want her to remember, while Shi-shi-etko carefully gathers her memories to remind her of home. After reading the book we then spent time honoring our own important memories and parts of our lives that are valuable to us and our identities. As part of this work, we examined why we are working toward equality and reconciliation in Canada and students very thoughtfully made commitments to the question - What will you do? 


As part of our commitment to continue to take steps/action we headed out on the land for some reflection and  connection. 




Upcoming Events/Reminders:

-Wed., Oct. 5- School Photo Day
-Fri., Oct. 7- Non-Instruction Day (No school)
-Mon., Oct. 10- Thanksgiving Day (No school)
-Wed. Oct. 12th - Field trip to Bow Habitat (more details to come) - please email me if you have your police clearance and are able to volunteer. 
-Friday, Oct. 28- Non-Instruction Day (No school)












Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
  September 8th  Welcome to our grade 2 blog!  We have had an awesome week getting to know one another, building community, establishing routines and expectations, learning from one another and having fun.  We will continue to build on all of these things as we navigate through these first weeks back at school. Here is a look at some activities from our first 6 days together.  A look at our classroom - room 9 Literacy Activities - We used the book , Our Class is a Family,  by Shannon Olsen as an anchor text to build on our discussion topic about families and what they might look like and what families we belong to. Students then created a self portrait to add to our family portrait wall.  We also began looking at our own identity and what makes us who we are. This included books on celebrating our looks and how our features give us our unique characteristics. The book, I like Myself, by Karen Beaumont provided inspiration for a writing activity - "I like my...." Math Activiti
Read more
Image
March 11th - 16th  The weeks are just flying by in March! We had such a great week together learning, exploring and making connections.  Here is a little snapshot of our week -  Community Walk - we were so very fortunate to have such a beautiful morning yesterday to head out on the land and experience the changes around us. We were very lucky to observe some ducks and geese along the river bank which sparked dialogue into what they were doing, eating and how they maneuver on the ice and water. We also spent time observing natural and manmade shapes in our environment and spent some time critically thinking about some of the purposes for buildings/structures that we viewed as well as analyzing the tree project that is underway on part of the river bank. It was an amazing opportunity to spend time together with our other grade two class learning from the land. Students expressed gratitude for: "time to see nature, to be able to see the ducks close up swimming, being out in the fresh
Read more
Image
June 5-8th What a week! We packed as much as we possibly could and it was amazing! It started with our field trip to the Weasel head in North Glenmore Park. We had terrific weather, amazing volunteers, fantastic opportunities to connect with nature and walked 7.1 kms! Some of the highlights of the trip were the tree swallows using mud to build nests, finding damsel flies, a bumblebee, spiders, and a grasshopper, having lunch with a pair of squirrels, listening to different bird calls and exploring a wet land area where we found snails, little water bugs and a fishing spider along with lots of mud! On Tuesday, we spent time reflecting on our adventures using the medicine wheel to document the components of ourselves while we were on our field trip - Mind (what we learned/wonder), Spirit (our emotions), Heart (support), Body. Here are a few examples: Learning about the Medicine Wheel - Our class has been using the medicine wheel as a learning tool to help us learn about ourselves - our i
Read more