Toronto Teacher Mom: April 2018

Help Make Kindness Stick in Your School

Have you read the statistics lately? Nearly 50% of Canadian parents report having a child victim of bullying and 1 in 3 Canadian youth have been cyber bullied. While these statistics may sound staggering, the good news is that we can do something about it. It was incredibly uplifting to see so much pink light up my social media feeds in support of the #PinkShirtPromise movement last February. But what warms my heart even more is the ongoing desire, especially among today's youth, to continue working towards change and to help put an end to bullying. Thanks to the Shaw Youth Grant Program, students who want to create a school environment where everyone feels safe can put their plans into action with the help of a Kindness Sticks grant of up to $5000!

How to Apply for the Shaw Youth Grant Program

Think of a project that focuses on making kindness stick in your school.
Ask yourself the following questions:

How does my project contribute to a positive school environment?
What kind of budget does my project need?
How can people volunteer and get involved to make my project come to life?
Who does my project impact and reach?
How is my project creative and unique?

Obtain a letter signed by your principal to ensure your project has the support of the school.

The letter must be on school letterhead.
Include your principal’s name, phone number and email address.

Visit shaw.ca/KindnessSticks and begin the online application.
Submit your project before April 30, 2018, 5 p.m. MST.

There are a total of ten grants available and they are open to all students up to, and including, Grade 11 students who are attending a school within Canada (excluding the Province of Quebec).

Teachers and parents, I hope you will join me in encouraging our youth to get creative and design a project that will promote kindness in our schools. As a thank you, I have created a fun sticky notes template if you want to add or create a Kindness Sticks mural. I sketched these using the Sketches app on my iPad and imported them into a Google doc.

Kindness Sticks Printable Sticky Notes #ShawYouthGrant

I have adjusted the size of each image to 3" by 3" to fit a standard sticky note. Once you print out a copy, apply a single sticky note on top of each one, aligning them with the borders and the sticky part adhered to the top of each square. On my printer, I placed the sheet of paper with the sticky notes face down and the top of the template closest to the print head. Et voilà, pretty pink "Kindness Sticks" sticky notes!

Disclosure: This post has been sponsored by Shaw Communications. Any opinions expressed in this post are my own.

Tuesday, April 24, 2018
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Interactive SMART Notebook Activities for La poule Maboule

AIM Language

If there's one thing my students are eager for, it's going up to the board to show what they know. But they love using the interactive whiteboard even more, especially my primary students. Students enjoy the tactile component and being able to manipulate objects on the screen using their hands or the interactive markers. Plus, they are used to using touch screens, which makes the activities more intuitive. And of course, the class becomes very engaged. So I decided to make some interactive SMART Notebook activities for my grade 1 classes.

Interactive SMART Notebook Activities - La poule Maboule - phrases folles

The first one is "Les phrases folles" where students create their own silly sentences. I created a bank of colour-coded words: black for subjects/nouns, blue for verbs, purple for "aime" since it doesn't require a preposition, red for prepositions and green for the objects/nouns. I enabled the infinite cloner on each word and locked them in place so all students have to do is drag the words they want to the lines below. Then, using an interactive marker, they can add any necessary punctuation and illustrate their sentence in the space to the right. Variations for older students could include a jumbled word bank to challenge students to find the right parts of speech. They can also write additional vocabulary using the markers.

Interactive SMART Notebook Activities - La poule Maboule - choisis le bon mot

For "Choisis le bon mot", I created separate text boxes for the answer choices and locked them in place but allowed for horizontal movement. As an alternative, since I added a lined paper background, students can use the interactive marker to write the answers.

Interactive SMART Notebook Activities - La poule Maboule - mets les mots en ordre

Finally, I created an activity for "Mets les mots en ordre" which, similar to the activity above, uses separate text boxes and are locked in place but can be moved horizontally. I also filled in the text boxes with colour to make them look more like tiles.

You may notice that I used the bottom half of the screen for the interactive portion of the activity. This was done intentionally as my primary students cannot reach beyond the middle section of the whiteboard. Feel free to download a copy of this Notebook for "La poule Maboule". Keep in mind that you will need to have SMART Notebook installed on your computer to view it. If you do not, you can still use the SMART Notebook Express which has many of the basic features. However, it will likely affect the formatting.

Sunday, April 15, 2018
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Visit Gaiam Canada at the Toronto Yoga Show

Athletic Apparel

Thursday, April 12, 2018
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Make Your Own Red Lens Viewer for Breakout EDU

Arts and Crafts

Have you seen the new Breakout EDU kits? Unlike the original Breakout EDU kit that I had purchased a couple of years ago, they come with two new black Breakout EDU boxes, a directional multilock that comes with additional wheels, a deck of reflection cards, two hint cards and 12 months of access to the Breakout EDU Platform that contains 10+ Subject Packs. (Fear not. If you already have a kit and you don't want to purchase a platform access code to check out the new games, you can still access hundreds of free Breakout EDU games by registering for a free account.) I recently discovered that the new kit also comes with a cool red lens viewer and my first thought was: I want one! So of course, my crafty instincts kicked into gear and I found a way to make my own red lens viewer using materials I had at home.

How to Make Your Own Red Lens Viewer

For this project, I found an old pack of inkjet transparency film that I had bought while in Teachers' College. I don't use them anymore because really, overhead projectors are becoming as obsolete as the carousel slide projector. If you don't have any on hand, you could try looking for red acetate. And if you do find any, I would love it if you could share where you found it. Thanks!

Materials:

inkjet transparency film (or red acetate)
card stock
two-way glue tape
marker
scissors

Directions:

Step 1: Create a document with a large red rectangle to cover the whole page and print onto the inkjet transparency film. Be sure it prints onto the rough (not glossy) side of the sheet. Or, if you can find some, you could use red acetate.

Make Your Own Red Lens Viewer - printable template

Step 2: Create the viewer frame by printing out the above red lens viewer template onto card stock and using craft scissors to cut out the frames. If you're lucky enough to own a new Cricut Explore Air 2 like I do, you can design a template and have Cricut do all the hard work for you!

Step 3: Trace the perimeter of the frame onto the transparency or acetate using a marker such as a Sharpie and cut it out.

Step 4: Using a two-way glue tape runner from the dollar store or an advanced tape glider, adhere one frame to the film.

Step 5: Repeat Step 4 and adhere a second frame to the back to make it even sturdier.

To create a hidden message, here are instructions for using their fun Breakout EDU pattern background that you can print out and write on with a blue pen or pencil, or their editable Google Slides file where you can edit the secret message before printing.