Revel Recap: February 22 - 26, 2021
First of all, we’d like to congratulate the Rebels for getting 2nd in the MangaHigh Math Influencers competition!
Welcome to Session 5! In our three studios we will be studying architecture, biomimicry, and climate change. We are so excited to see the ideas that the Rebels come up with over the next six weeks!
Spark Studio
Mindfulness & Launch
On Monday morning we started our day off with our candle breath exercise. We imagined there was a candle in front of us and took a deep breath in through our nose. We slowly released our breath as we exhaled through our mouth, trying not to blow out the imaginary flame. We then discussed our favourite part of the weekend before completing an entry in our Gratitude Journal. On Tuesday we played our bell listening game. We sat in a comfortable position, closed our eyes, and listened to the sound of a bell ringing, and raised our hand when we could no longer hear it. The first few times, many Sparks raised their hand as soon as the bell rang. But as we practiced more, we observed that if we really listened we could hear the bell quietly ringing for a few seconds. We then tried to listen to the sounds around us. We observed the sound of the furnace fan in our room, which we noted we hadn’t heard before. We then completed a writing and drawing activity, focusing on a meal that our family likes to enjoy together. On Wednesday, Sparks joined the Discovery Rebels for yoga in the gym with Mrs. Jenna before learning about Pink Shirt Day led by one of our Exploration Rebels. Thursday we completed a construction colouring page before celebrating our first in-person Spark birthday! After working together to make a card and birthday crown, we learned our studio birthday song and lit a candle. We talked about how the Earth takes one year to move around the Sun and that we celebrate our birthdays once a year. While carrying the globe, our birthday friend walked around the candle which represents the sun. We sang, “The Earth moves round the sun, the Earth moves round the sun, one whole year has passed and you turned one.” We continued singing all the way until six, stopping each time to discuss any memories from that year. We then talked about one hope they have for this year and they made a wish as they blew out the candle! It was a lovely celebration. On Friday we started our day with some creative writing. The Sparks were challenged to imagine anything in the world or on another planet that they could build. They drew a picture, wrote what it was, and then shared it at circle time. They talked about building a water slide, a bridge, a big house, and three cat houses!
Quest
We began our Session 5 Quest by diving into all things construction-related! To start off our conversation we read The Ultimate Construction book. We then brainstormed and created an anchor chart about all the things a construction worker can do, what they need, and what they build. We discussed how they can design, build, measure, draw/read blueprints, drive trucks, hold signs, carry materials, use tools, dig holes, and do inspections. They need helmets, boots, vests, tools, wood, concrete, bricks, dirt/rocks, trucks, wires, pipes and flooring. They can build houses, schools, stores, roads, bridges, cottages, hotels, playgrounds, hospitals, offices, apartment buildings, pools, barns, amusement parks and zoos. The Sparks demonstrated their strong knowledge of this field by contributing all these answers to our chart. We shared about different construction sites we have observed and were very excited at recess when we saw a variety of construction vehicles driving by related to our conversation! On Tuesday, we read Old Macdonald had a Woodshop, which sparked a conversation of all the tools we could name. Next, we began looking through a real toolbox. The Sparks were then excited to work with some of these tools. They practiced using a screwdriver to fasten and unfasten screws and working with nuts and bolts. They used a measuring tape and level to check out things around the studio. Everyone was excited to use a plastic hammer to put golf tees into styrofoam and cardboard. We will continue to practice our hammering skills, as the Sparks are looking forward to using the real hammer from our tool kit to hammer in some nails this session! This week we also learned how a blueprint is the plans that the construction workers follow to create the buildings. We then used blueprints and building materials to design and build our own creations. The Sparks then had time to design their own blueprint and see if a friend could recreate the building using blocks. Lastly, we were introduced to an inspection report and the Sparks had fun inspecting each other’s completed buildings.
French
In French class this week we are learning the days of the week, numbers up to 20, and the alphabet. We have also been dancing to “Promenons-nous dans les bois”, “Tête, épaules, genoux et pieds” and “Savez-vous planter les choux” in order to learn the different parts of the body! On Thursday, we played Zingo in French and we received one sticker for completing our Zingo board and another one for helping clean up!
Additional Highlights
Every morning after mindfulness and circle time, we jump right into our morning work period. This week the Sparks were very busy working both with friends and independently in all areas of the studio. The Waseca reading drawers, counting chains, math boards, puzzle maps, care of the environment and various writing activities were all popular selections. The Sparks were holding each other accountable during this time, reminding each other to complete shelf work before moving onto building work or free time games. During our free time this week, the learners were busy working together to complete puzzles and to play many cooperative board games. While playing our musical instruments, we had fun trying to play them to the beat of a song. We practiced going faster, slowing down, playing the instruments up in the air or off to the side. We were all laughing trying to keep up with the instructions in the song. Outdoor play continued to be a highlight of our week. We have been enjoying spending time in the fenced area next to the school, working hard on building a snow fort with a moat, setting up a pizza shop, making snow castles with buckets, colouring the snow with chalk, building with ice cubes and just sitting and enjoying some sunny weather!
Discovery Studio
Mindfulness and Launches
Monday, Wednesday, and Friday yoga classes were all about deep heart-opener stretches and timing our breath with our movements. Tuesday and Thursday's mindful colouring periods included some of last week’s camp art activities, like our Vans Shoes and sweatsuit designs, for Rebels who were unable to attend. We began our Session 5 launch series with a discussion about the Perseverance Mars rover launch. After learning the names of the previous four rovers and discussing why they thought each name was chosen, we brainstormed potential options for the sixth should there be one. Tuesday followed up with watching and discussing the actual video footage of the rover landing on Mars. We discussed how we thought the astronauts, who have worked for years to make this possible, must have felt in this moment where their hard work come to fruition. During Wednesday’s Launch, we read the book “Life Doesn’t Frighten Me,” which brings together the work of poet Maya Angelou and painter Jean-Michel Basquiat. We talked about how both artists depicted fear through their art. Thursday’s Current Events highlighted a story about a new dog collar that helps owners communicate with their pets, what Black History Month means to Canadian youth, and our animal of the week was Neron the Black Jaguar who has a rare skin condition that gives him black fur with rosettes. After going over the basics of the tournament on Friday, Rebels received this year’s March Mammal Madness bracket!!! Rebels will have some time to make their choices before handing in their bracket on March 7th.
Rebel Readers & Warrior Writers
Draw and Anchor Rebels were off to a fabulous start in their first novel study, Pugs of the Frozen North. Rebels read aloud to each other in a reading circle, then discussed elements of the story and answered comprehension questions. During Friday’s Reader and Writer class, they completed the third chapter and began creating their Story Map for the first three chapters of the book. Rebels discussed elements of foreshadowing and predicted what was coming up next in the story, while also completing their spelling and journal entries for this week. Nice job, everyone!
Aim and Release Rebels also kicked off their next novel study, Holes by Louis Sachar. Reading some chapters together in a reading circle and some chapters independently, Rebels got some time on Friday in Reader/Writer to discuss what they thought of Camp Green Lake so far and predicted upcoming events. On Monday, we introduced our writing component for Session 5, formal Informative Essay on an animal of their choice. We looked over the outline and Rebels chose the animal that they will be writing about. On Friday, Rebels did a listening and comprehension activity about desert animal adaptations from an episode of The Magic School Bus. They completed their spelling and began some of their animal research to prepare for introduction paragraph writing next week. Great work, Rebels!
Math Lab
Our Draw and Anchor Rebels continued to work on their Math Facts That Stick progress in either addition, subtraction, or multiplication. After working on their new packets, they played a game of cooperative subtraction flashcards, “Heads and Tails” division, and Cloud Hoppers, a subtraction game.
On Wednesday, our Aim and Release Rebels took what we learned about honey bees and termites as architects and chose to either create 3D shapes using straws and pipe cleaners or the tallest termite mound with multiple chimneys possible with only 12 sheets of newsprint and a meter of masking tape. While there was frustration at first, the Rebels alone or in pairs all had something impressive to show by the end of Math Lab!
Quest
In Session 5, we are studying biomimicry and will create our own inventions or innovations based on solutions inspired by nature. On Monday, we watched the first half of a video with some incredible examples narrated by Janine Benyu, the woman who brought biomimicry into the public eye. Rebels were reminded about the power of Mind Mapping as we brainstormed organisms we could find in Ottawa throughout the year. It was then time for a STEAM challenge! After researching spiders, Rebels were asked to create a spider web using only dental floss and a paper plate with the center cut out. Once their web was complete they took turns seeing how many paper bugs would actually get caught in their design. It was harder than originally envisioned! While this session is focused on nature’s inventions, we pushed our thinking on Tuesday by brainstorming fantastical inventions for a specific character using multiple graphic organizers for guidance. Each group was given a character card, also known as an “Extraordinaire.” Once they had made several observations about the character's job(s), personality, and needs they were given an invention that they needed to create with their Extraordinaire in mind. Groups came up with drink carriers for a ninja, chairs for a wizard, snack containers for an astronaut, storage devices for a fairy or a pirate! Rebels then met with other groups to show off their designs and get feedback on what was loved, what could be improved, and what they were still wondering about. On Wednesday we returned to the natural world and learned about how the incredible star-nosed mole senses. We then developed our biomimicry terminology using the peregrine falcon as a guide to learn about the words; organism, trait, function, biological strategy, human design application, and biological model. Rebels were then left to create a table in their lab notebook, like the one we had just used for the falcon, identifying the terms with descriptions of a jack rabbit’s ears. When they were finished, they designed armour to protect humans from accidents using turtles for inspiration. On Thursday, Rebels read an article about how researchers are turning to Indigenous populations for Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) to better understand the natural world and sustainability. We followed up our article discussion with an introduction to drawing Scientific Diagrams with Ms. Jenna. We observed several different types of birds (from Birds of the World on Disney+) and using some new sketching techniques, created our first nature journal drawings in our Biomimicry notebooks. Rebels did an incredible job applying our Scientific Drawing ABCs: Accurate, Big, Colourful, Detailed and Explained.
French
In this session, our French theme is Les Super-héros! On Tuesday we watched two episodes of Les Minijusticiers: Superinvisible and Supertomate. Then, we came up with what we will need to create our own superhero. On Thursday we started coming up with ideas for what our heroes will look like, what their superpowers are, and what vocabulary we will need to describe them to others. During French read-aloud on Wednesday, we read “Le courage de Desmond” and “Si j’avais une pieuvre”.
Civilization
This week in Civ, we finished up our story about Harriet Tubman and her role in the Underground Railroad. We then turned our attention to Africville, a community in Nova Scotia settled by groups of Black settlers, many of which were formerly enslaved people from the south, in the late 1700s and early 1800s. We discussed how due to racism, the settlers were treated poorly and forced to live on the worst land on the outskirts of Halifax. The City didn’t help the community with basic supports and as the years wore on, the problem was increased with the addition of a prison, dump, and infectious disease hospital. While not sticking with our timeline, we also learned about the tearing down of Africville in 1970 without the community being involved in the decision-making. With the time we had left we learned about the Great Migration that occurred between 1815-1850 when over 800,000 immigrants mainly from Ireland, Britain, and Scotland came to Canada to start anew.
PE
On Monday we had our first Rebel-led circuit and it was a huge success! A huge thank you to two of our Rebels for a fun and challenging circuit! We can’t wait to see what the next two have in store for us next week! Meanwhile, the other Rebels took a snowy walk around the Carlington Park trails, finding a steep hill to play on. Our first dance class on Wednesday was a blast! Rebels practiced breaking music rhythms down by counts of 8 and timing movements to counts. We also completed our first TikTok dance routine to “Blinding Lights” by the Weeknd! Those who chose to head outside for PE found themselves shovelling the rink before a great game of hockey, building forts, or having snowball fights in the park!
Exploration Studio
Launch and Closing
For Launch this Monday we took a Kahoot! True or False quiz to test our knowledge of the LGBT+ community before we embarked on our journey through the colours of the rainbow in French class. Some of the answers surprised us and gave us a lot to think about! With the recent guide changes, we went over the Exploration Studio schedule and covenants to clarify what the expectations were throughout the day. We are hoping that Rebels will hold one another more accountable over the next three sessions to be more productive and healthier. We used the “Extraordinaire” cards for an invention instant challenge on Wednesday and no surprise, the Rebels showed incredibly creative and humourous problem-solving. On Thursday, Rebels learned how to play the game and practiced a couple of rounds with a partner in preparation for a full studio game in the afternoon. After going over the basics of the tournament on Friday, Rebels received this year’s March Mammal Madness bracket!!! Rebels will have some time to make their choices before handing in their bracket on March 7th. This week we also listened to the various aspects of the “Lake Conundrum” and debated who we felt was at fault for the destruction of the lake and who was responsible for then saving the lake ten years later. We critically thought about our own bias and questioned many of our original assumptions.
Quest
Our new Quest theme is Climate Change. We want to recognize all of the learners in the Exploration studio for the maturity and responsibility they take towards this topic. We have a strong faith that we can tackle this topic and that each learner will leave the quest with optimism and a feeling of empowerment through their choices.
On Monday, we started the quest by doing a Lego activity. We have a huge flat sheet of Lego and each learner chose one piece of Lego that they wanted to contribute to the sheet. The learners were told they were building a city and each piece they put down could represent something added. The most common contributions were green and living spaces. We were able to have conversations about how to make a sustainable city from this activity. Afterward, the learners brainstormed in groups what they knew about climate change as a primary assessment.
In this session, learners will be learning in a “T” style which means they will be exposed to as many different topics as possible but will choose one topic to dig deep into, becoming an expert on that topic. On Tuesday, we viewed over 20 different graphs that detailed the various intersections of Climate Change, from how countries impact the climate and will be impacted by it, to politics and inaction. At the end of the work session, the learners thought about what topic within climate change they were most interested in so that by the end of the next week they can choose a topic to explore deeply.
Wednesday and Thursday were “LABAPOLOOZA” (naming credit goes to a Rebel). We completed 7 different labs in two days, that explored heating oceans, greenhouse gases, ocean acidification, erosion, water cycle changes, and more.
Next week we will be running a government simulation where the learners will represent the different levels of government and start making plans and decisions they think our governments should make regarding climate change.
Big History
The theme for Big History this session is myths. On Tuesday, we studied four different creation myths from around the world and throughout history. The learners discussed similarities between the myths and analyzed their characters, plot, setting, conflict, and theme. On Thursday, the learners started writing their own myth and we were blown away by the creativity that the learners illustrated in their stories. They finished off the work session by sharing their work.
Math Lab
Our Exploration Rebels also took part in the honey bees and termite challenges! Learners had to use what they knew about the two insects as architects and chose to either create 3D shapes with straws and pipe cleaners or the tallest termite mound with multiple chimneys with only 12 sheets of newsprint and a meter of masking tape. The competition was intense and we were especially impressed with the level of commitment to creating the tallest termite mound.
French
In this session, we are exploring the colours of the rainbow as represented on the rainbow flag through the lens of essential human qualities. We started this week with Rouge Courage. On Monday, we talked about what it means to be brave and we brainstormed some vocabulary. On Wednesday, we earned our first rainbow stripe by writing three sentences about what makes us feel brave, afraid, or proud. The Exploration Rebels also practiced their conjugation skills while listening to French music.
PE
On Monday we had our first Rebel-led circuit and it was a huge success! A huge thank you to two of our Rebels for a fun and challenging circuit! We can’t wait to see what the next two have in store for us next week! Meanwhile, the other Rebels took a snowy walk around the Carlingotn park trails, finding a steep hill to play on. Our first dance class on Wednesday was a blast! Rebels practiced breaking music rhythms down by counts of 8 and timing movements to counts. We also completed our first TikTok dance routine to “Blinding Lights” by the Weeknd! Those who chose to head outside for PE found themselves shovelling the rink before a great game of hockey, building forts, or having snowball fights in the park!
Potential Discussion Ideas or Questions to Ask your Rebel:
Exploration: What changes can your household make to lower your carbon footprint?
Exploration: What topic is your learner interested in that they can develop a project for in Quest?
Discovery: Discuss our Reader Writer Quote of the Week: “Sometimes when you are surrounded by dirt, you’re a better witness for what is beautiful,” from the story Last Stop on Market Street by Matt de la Pena
Discovery: Do you feel you are better at coming up with the ideas or putting them into action? For example, in biomimicry do you have lots of ideas but aren’t sure how to execute them, or are you drawing a blank for the initial solution but able to build once one is presented? Would you rather work alone or with a partner on your final project?
Spark: Would you like to work on a construction site? Which job would you like to do? (Operate a crane, drive a construction vehicle, create and draw the blueprints, carpenter, plumber, electrician, etc)
Spark: If you could build anything in the world what would it be?
Spark: Which tool did you like using in the studio? (Hammer and golf tees, level, measuring tape, screwdriver, nuts and bolts?)
Upcoming Events & Special Dates:
Session 5 Discovery Exhibition: Wednesday, March 31st at 1:30 pm
Exploration Field Trip: Thursday, April 1st
Last Day of Session 5: Thursday, April 1st
Session 6 Begins: Monday, April 12th