For several years, people have been raising concerns about the impact social media is having on our privacy, morale and mindset. There is particular concern over the effects Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are having on teens.
In the documentary, The Social Dilemma, we learn that our brains are being manipulated and even rewired by algorithms that are designed to get our attention, make us buy things and convince us of distorted ideas about the world, ourselves and each other. You can watch the documentary here.
We will be reflecting deeply on our own relationship with social media and will be setting some goals for ourselves.
We are completing a scale drawing of our school yard (due Monday December 20). We will be using these to plan designs for The Big Project school yard re-design.
We measured our pace length and then paced out all the features in the school yard. Several students realized that a sketch was very helpful to record important dimensions.
Our focus on building our leadership skills continues. Today we are teaching grade 2 students in Ms. Cooper's class how to make the 3D stars. The grade 2 students have recently learned how to use a ruler to measure so we will be leveraging those skills as we teach them the steps to creating the stars.
It was amazing to see the engagement, focus and strategies students used with their grade 2 partners. Following our experiences today, we will be reflecting on our strengths and struggles so we can improve our leadership skills.
We are learning how film-makers use storyboards and are creating our own storyboards for our cigarette butt PSA.
One of the most challenging aspects of this project is to understand our target audience and to create a PSA that will not only educate, but change behaviour when it comes to disposing cigarette butts.
I love this photo!
I asked students to share, on a scale of 1 to 10, how much they have learned over the past 4 weeks. You can see that most students are holding up 10 fingers!
We started by learning how to ask open-ended questions and how to be a good conversationalist. We learned the structure and elements of podcasts and designed our own podcast logos. We learned how to use Anchor to edit and produce our podcasts.
This project is due next week.
Over the past 2 months, we have been working on many engaging projects and assignments. Chloe, Will, Bannon, Jersey and Macy are the only students who are completely up to date. They should be proud of the initiative, responsibility and leadership that they show every day.
In this screen capture, you can see a complete list of work that students are responsible for. As always, assignment descriptions, notes and all relevant materials are posted in our Google classroom.
Lucky winners this week were Josh, Isaac, Bannon, Will, Jersey, Matthew and Chloe (twice!)
A reminder that students get their name added to the daily draw when they demonstrate leadership and responsibility.