Minor Details - November 8

November 8 - 12, 2021

Random Acts of Kindness Action

Today we decided to look after our school yard by picking up trash. In addition to discarded face masks and food wrappers, we picked up 52 cigarette butts. Stay tuned for why these are particularly toxic to our environment.

My Thoughts about Random Acts of Kindness Day

November 13 is “Random Act of Kindness Day”. How did this world-wide event start? In 1982, a customer named Anne Herbert wrote "practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty" on a placemat while she was eating in a restaurant in Sausalito, California. People picked up on her message and it spread quickly around the world, with people doing all manner of kind acts for strangers. Obviously the message of kindness resonates with people. The Random Act of Kindness organization publishes a wonderful blog with stories of kindness and suggestions for things we can do to be kinder to each other. You can find it here.

What would it mean to me to have the kindest year ever at school? First, I could just be me! People would appreciate and respect me for my unique personality and talents. I could focus on my work without the fear of bullying. I would feel welcome and included by everyone. I would feel free to take risks and make mistakes without judgment. Lucky for me, I work at DeWitt Carter where my colleagues not only care about kindness, but show it through their actions every day.

My first “kindness memory” of DeWitt came before I even set foot in the building. When I was hired, I received a flood of “welcome to the family” emails from teachers I didn’t even know. It still makes me feel emotional.

What are the most important choices people can make to be kinder? I think kindness needs to be our “default” setting. We need to be looking for ways to be kind all the time, not just on November 13. Smile. Be present when people are talking to you. Be understanding. Listen. Take time to think before talking. Say thank you. Forgive.

Today, students will be reflecting on their own kindness vision and I will post some of their thoughts. We will also head out to our yard to perform a "senseless act of beauty" by tidying up our school yard.

Remembrance Day

Intermediate students shared their dramatic tableaux and reading for "Remembrance Day" by Jan Goodman. A special thank you to Bannon, Sheyanne, Will, Kylie, Josh and Dreadin for being the "voices" that accompanied the tableaux. Here are a few images of the tableaux we created.

Remembrance Day at DeWitt Carter was particularly meaningful this year. From the 150 white crosses on our front lawn to performances by students and the fly over at the end of the ceremony, we heard messages of sacrifice, freedom and the importance of peace. You can read my opening message in the Google classroom (click here).

We are so fortunate to live in Canada and we should never take our freedom for granted.

Hat Spirit Day

DeWitt Carter student council has planned several fun spirit days for the next 6 weeks! Today was Hat Day.

"Re-Set" Class Discussion

I feel so fortunate to be able to teach in an environment where I am valued and treated with kindness and respect every day. This doesn't happen by accident. This is a conscious effort by everyone at DeWitt Carter (principal, secretary, custodians, teachers) to make kindness a priority. There is a reason why DeWitt feels like being part of a family and why teachers want to teach here.

On the first day of school in September, I asked students how it would feel if this was the kindest year they'd ever had at school. Students felt, as I do, that this would be a dream. The wonderful thing is that this dream can easily become a reality when we all make kindness and respect our first choice in our personal interactions.

We all wrote down what we were committed to doing to create a culture of kindness and respect in our class.

Somewhere along the line, we forgot those commitments. Over the past couple of weeks, we lost our way and there were incidents of physical aggression, rumours and name-calling. Some students were feeling devalued because of the slurs and personal attacks from other students.

So today, we had a 40-minute discussion to re-focus on the reasons why we want to be part of a kind and inclusive community. We talked specifically that dehumanizing words have absolutely no place in a community of learners focussed on mutual respect and acceptance.

We have hit the "re-set" button and written new commitments. We will be very focussed on how things are going over the next few weeks to stop any disrespectful behaviour.

Finally, we are remembering to express gratitude and appreciation for the things that make a positive difference in our day.

Health Project - High Fructose Corn Syrup

Most of us have heard that the sugar in an apple is better for us than the sugar in Coca Cola.

Is this true?

We have started a research project to find out.

We discovered an ingredient that seems to be in a lot of sugary processed foods (e.g., soda, Skittles, even breakfast cereals). High fructose corn syrup will be the subject of our research and presentation to educate people on what HFCS is, where it comes from and how it affects our metabolisms.

Finding the Whole in a Percent Problem

We are continuing to practise solving a variety of percent problems.

Up until now, we have only solved problems where we have been given the percent and the whole and we need to figure out the part.

Today we developed a strategy to find the whole when we're given the percent and the part.

To make sure we "get it", tomorrow we have a quiz on the 3 types of percent problems:

Type 1, Strategy 1 uses the visual model (when you're given the percent and the whole and the numbers are multiples of 5)
Type 1, Strategy 2 uses a proportion (when you're given the percent and the whole and the numbers are NOT multiples of 5)
Type 1, Strategy 3 uses an unknown and an equation (when you're given the percent and the part and you need to find the whole)

You can find sample solutions for all problems in our Google classroom. Here is a sample solution for a Type 1, Strategy 3 problem.

We are continuing to focus on writing solutions that communicate our thinking clearly.

Writing Screenplays

Last month, students wrote short stories that showed their understanding of the different types of sentences and how to write paragaphs. The other criteria was that the story would make a great movie.

Eventually we will be turning stories like Joshua's "Mike and the Masked Shadow" and Jersey's "The Watched" into short movies! We had some fun writing "What if?" theme statements for several students' short stories:

What if a group of 13 year students went to the Smithsonian and a dinosaur came to life? (Will)
What if a man won a prize of either his dream home or dream car? (Colin)
What if a group of young soldiers were sent to rescue a comrade from a POW camp? (Logan)
What if a young teenage girl discovered she had schizophrenia? (Macy)

Our next step is to write the screenplay for our movie. We will be using the Academy standard screenplay format to re-write short stories in "scenes". We will be working on this for several weeks.

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