Revel Recap: March 7 - 11, 2022
Spark Studio
Mindfulness
From warm days to snowy days, the Sparks were ready for anything during our mindfulness mornings this week. On Monday, the Sparks started their day by repeating the affirmation, "Determination is my power." We used this affirmation to encourage the Sparks to be resilient and committed to starting their business during our Entrepreneurship session. On Tuesday, the Sparks listened to a story called Willow Whispers in connection to International Women's Day. The Sparks followed by colouring powerful women in our society. We took part in a yoga practice on Wednesday morning, and the Sparks stretched their bodies and got their minds fuelled to conquer the day! As for Thursday, the Sparks created a story using our imagination cards entitled Mr. Guy. The learners were full of laughter and truly enjoyed the story they made, asking the guides multiple times to re-read! Lastly, on Friday, we wrote in our gratitude journals. We focused on asking the Sparks to express why they are grateful for who they are after we read the story, Be You by Peter H. Reynolds.
Quest
The Sparks have been learning about Canadian currency with the help of authentic tasks set up by the guides. The learners had so much fun going to the bank and using their money at the grocery store, and buying loose parts to build a habitat for animals. Sparks were each given a different amount of money and budget with how much they received. Some Sparks thought it would be helpful for them to collaborate with their peers to have more money! To learn more about budgeting, counting money, and recognizing Canadian coins and bills, we listened to stories such as, It's Not Fair by Caryn Rivadeneira and Bunny Money by Rosemary Wells. The guides also brought out a cash register and a Canadian money kit. The Sparks had to sort their money into piles and count how much cash they had. Lastly, the Sparks came up with a persuasive reason for choosing the business they want to do for our end-of-the-session Exhibition. Let's say they now know quite a bit about MONEY!
French
…et Z! Our five words this week were zéro, zoo, zèbre, zigzag, and zombie. Sparks then added a cover to their alphabet books in the colour of their choice and tied it all together with some pipe cleaners. They are very excited to show them at the Exhibition! We also read two new books, Lave-toi les mains, M. Panda and S’il-vous-plaît, M. Panda by Steve Antony. Lastly, we watched an episode of Didou to learn how to draw a panda bear and wrote LE PANDA next to our beautiful drawings. Next week, the Sparks want to learn more French numbers and how to draw flowers.
Additional Highlights
What an eventful week in the Sparks studio! We kicked off the week by embracing and shouting out strong women in their lives they look up to for International Women's Day. The Sparks took the time to create flowers and wrote down words that described the women in their lives.
The learners have been enjoying the snow, so we agreed to extend our outdoor time as a studio. They use their imaginations and develop so many games to play outside, but let's be honest, it's mostly, "Let's play cats." We have been using Jenga blocks with different exercises written on them during our gym time and doing the action each Spark chooses. Many races took place; however, the guides took a break this week when it was apparent the Sparks had been working on their sprints. They are so fast!
With March Mammal Madness starting next week, the Sparks explored all the combatants involved and have chosen the Pangolin to be the winner. The Sparks’ animal knowledge is truly impressive!
We enjoyed reading buddies with the Discovery Studio and did Show and Tell to end our week. We can't wait to see what's in store next week in our studio.
Discovery Studio
Mindfulness
Last Friday, the Council started a wonderful conversation in Town Hall about how we've been tough-minded and taking Rebel Bucks to hold others accountable. However, we agreed there is a need to focus on the positive as well. So, Monday morning, the Rebels considered the idea of a Gratitude Jar, focusing on calling out the amazing team moments (#squadgoals) that occur in the studio daily. On Tuesday, the yoga flow featured new spring tunes for refreshing energy and lots of poses for leg muscles like Runner's Stretch. Our resident Rebel Mindfulness Coach delivered another lovely colouring and violin pairing for the Rebels on Wednesday, invoking the theme of relaxation. On Thursday, the Rebels wanted to incorporate this theme into our yoga practice to work towards a full 15-minute Savasana class eventually. On Friday, we started with a 2-minute relaxation at the end of the flow and will gradually increase this in the coming weeks.
Launches
What can adults learn from kids? Monday morning, we listened to Adora Svitak speak about how the world could benefit from more "childish" thinking, including bold ideas, incredible creativity, and, most importantly, optimism. We also discussed how great it feels when grown-ups are willing to learn from kids, making us all teachers. Rebels were given a recipe in this session and invited to lead a Launch or Closing. Rebels listened to Mme Marie's Briser la Glace read-aloud on Tuesday to celebrate International Women's Day. The book is about Manon Rhéaume, the first and only woman to play in the NHL. Wednesday's Rebel-led launch included a refresher on parts of speech and a fun round of MadLibs for practice! A smelly holiday where families leave bunnies for Santa? Thursday's Rebel-led launch was another MadLib; however, this story was about a sparkly sleepover where you jump to your favourite eating tunes while running slowly and reading about George Washington! Friday's Rebel-led Current Events report included: six athletes to watch in the Paralympic Games and a heart-warming story about a rescue dog from Texas who now lives with an Instagram-famous dog in Red Deer, Alberta.
French
After designing their storefronts, Rebels are now working on creating their clothing collections and writing inventory descriptions. We began the week with a series of Nearpod games to review previous material and introduce new vocabulary. Then, Rebels worked on their inventory individually or in small groups. On Thursday, we met all together for a couple of rounds of "J'ai…Qui a?" before another self-directed work session.
Civilizations
This week the Rebels listened to the story of Remus and Romulus, twin brothers who survived banishment from their kingdom in childhood. The great king of their time, Numitor, had a younger brother who took over and sent the twins in a basket down the river with the hope that they wouldn’t grow up and take his power. The twins grew up anyway, raised with wolves, and one day returned to their homeland and developed a city at the foot of seven hills. Unfortunately, the brothers struggled with who would rule the new city, and Romulus killed Remus and then named the city after himself: Rome! The Rebels discussed ethics and power dynamics, considering which actions in the story were the least ethical and which type of power is more important when building an empire: money, leadership, or technology?
Reader/Writer
We began this week's Reader/Writer sessions with an overview of speed, projection, intonation, and posture. Our warm-up had us cracking up as each Rebel received either an improv topic or a sentence to repeat at a given speed. From lightning-fast to slow as a sloth, the learners all gave it their best shot! It was then time for Readers' Theatre! Learners divided up the characters and read through three different short stories from Wayside School by Louis Sachar. After the first read-through, we reread it to emphasize specific parts and use what we know about the characters' personalities. The Rebels did an incredible job improving their intonation, rate, and projection with the second reading! Draw and Anchor Rebels also had the opportunity to spend the last fifteen minutes on a Night Zookeeper challenge.
In this session, we have two different read alouds during DEAR. On Tuesdays, we are reading the Start-Up Squad by Brian Weisfeld, and on Thursdays, the selection is Billy Sure Entrepreneur by Luke Sharpe. We hope these two entrepreneurial reads will inspire the Rebels throughout this session!
Math Lab
The Draw and Anchor Rebels focused on using tally marks this week to keep track of sales. Using their tallies, they also wrote equations to represent combinations of products and look for trends on different days of the week. Another critical focus was for these Rebel managers to receive and confirm shipments from vendors, representing orders as pictures, repeated addition statements, and multiplication statements. We had a good conversation about connecting context to the factors in the multiplication statement. For example, if you receive five boxes, each with eight bags of coffee, you can write 5 x 8 or 8 x 5, but you should only draw five boxes, not eight. We will build on this understanding more throughout the session.
Aim and Release Rebels concentrated their lab time on balancing a bank account based on a list of expenses and income during a two-week period. We discussed what it means to be overdrawn or have an account with overdraft protection and how to treat numbers as integers to ensure the proper balance shows after each transaction. The essential skill here was to ensure they correctly aligned the decimals when setting up the addition or subtraction algorithm and regroup or "borrow" when needed. The key understanding that began to emerge was when to add or subtract. For instance, if you have a negative balance but then get paid, which operation would you use to determine the new balance?
Quest
What is a brand, anyway? The Rebels have considered this question deeply this week as they explored image, brand, slogan, and logo ideas in relation to their individual businesses. On Monday, we began with a taste test, considering two variations of similar chocolate and evaluating product quality vs. brand name. The Rebels then worked on a team challenge with their BIA to explore several commercials from big brands and consider the effectiveness of each. On Tuesday, they outlined their business details, developing a brand with a catchy phrase and choosing colours for a striking logo. Within the BIA, the Rebels had two more team challenges to tackle on Wednesday. In the first challenge, they had to consider an ethical competition-based dilemma regarding costs vs. product quality vs. healthy and safety. The second challenge asked the Rebels to consider a series of design choices for their business fair booth, including lettering, table organization, and decor. On Thursday, if they were all caught up, they had an opportunity to play financial literacy-based games on the Everfi platform. In Vault, Rebels have to make intelligent choices to manage resources by balancing needs and wants to make it home from an alternate universe where they start with no money. In Futuresmart, Rebels take on the role of mayor and have to advise business owners on how to improve their revenue.
Physical Development
On Monday, Rebels went outside to play in the snow or play "Dragon's Treasure" in the gym after doing five different Rebel-led stretches. Wednesday, the Rebels had the option to play Bordenball in the gym, led by one of the Exploration Rebels. They had to work collaboratively with their team to make a series of three passes before attempting to score (kind of like Sabakiball). However, the gym was set up with goalie creases, and the Rebels played in quick shifts (like hockey). Players bounced the ball towards a marked height on the wall (similar to basketball) to score. This high-energy game did not disappoint!
Additional Highlights
Thank you to everyone who has visited our most recent round of Rebel / Grown-Up / Guide meetings. It has been awesome to watch the Rebels share their progress and long-term goals for the end of the year. We are looking forward to continuing these next week!
Thursday at Closing, the Rebels voted in a Battle Cry to help them intimidate the monsters of distraction, victimhood, and resistance. We have this powerful phrase posted in our Launch space to pump us up each day: "GO REBELS!!"
We also had a great time at lunch on Friday, chowing down on pizza to celebrate 415 Khan percentages earned in Session 3 and 4 combined - phenomenal job!
Exploration Studio
Launches
Rebels listened to Mme Marie's read-aloud of Briser la Glace at Monday's launch to celebrate International Women's Day. The book is about Manon Rhéaume, the first and only woman to play in the NHL. Many of the remaining launches this week were centred around marketing and advertising. On Tuesday, we discussed the Carl Sagan quote, "The visions we offer our children shape their future." The learners shared their perspectives on the passage's meaning before introducing the specific lens of advertising. The learners shared what ads they see and how they think it impacts them. We also talked about how ads try to make us into consumers. Ads can provide us with a solution to a problem we didn't even know we had. On Wednesday, we focused our study of advertising on false advertisement. We looked at food commercial hacks that take bleh-looking fast food and, using standard craft supplies, turns it into looking scrumptious. We looked at Canada's false advertising laws and debated whether or not fast food companies commit false advertising. On Thursday, we played a game of "fortunately, unfortunately." In this game, someone names something fortunate "fortunately, the sun is shining." Then the next person says something unfortunate about what the previous person said, "unfortunately, it is too bright with all the snow," and back and forth between fortunately and unfortunately. We then watched a video about how our brains default to seeing the negative in something and that we need to have practices like gratitude and reframing to see the positive in the world. Each learner was challenged to see the positive in their day and we talked about how it can be done. Friday, we spoke about whistleblowers. We looked at the story of the current Facebook scandal and tried to make connections between being a whistleblower in a company and the studio. Learners were encouraged to bring concerns to a trusted person if there is a problem weighing them down. We also discussed that everything you say could become public knowledge, so we must be very kind with our words.
Mindfulness
Deagan introduced the learners to three mindfulness strategies to use throughout the week. The first strategy was "labelling our thoughts." The learners noticed their thoughts and put them into the categories of either movie brain, judgement brain, wondering brain, or planning brain. The second strategy was a visualization technique to practice noticing and letting go of your thoughts. We pretended we had a big helium tank filled with our thoughts. Whenever we had an idea, we would fill a balloon with that thought and watch it float away. The final strategy was "54321," for our five senses. This strategy aims to ground ourselves in our surroundings of the present moment. In this activity, you name five things you see, four things you hear, three things you touch, two things you smell, and one thing you taste. The order can be adjusted based on circumstances (i.e. if you are at a meal, focus on smell and taste).
Math Lab
This week in Math Lab, we learned about revenue and the opportunities a subscription model provides. The first problem learners tackled was whether or not the young entrepreneurs should charge a higher flat rate for their wristband with free access to the app or a lower initial price for the wristband and then an additional charge per month for access to the app. When is Plan A better than Plan B, When is Plan B better than Plan A, and when are they equal? Rebels were also asked which pricing model they would go with if it was their company and had to defend their reasoning based on the math and understanding of the business. It was exciting watching all of the different strategies learners used to solve the problem! We then completed a second problem where learners graphed three algebraic equations on a coordinate plane to compare earnings over a given period. Lastly, Rebels brainstormed the various pros and cons for a one-time sales model vs. a subscription model.
Documentary
Last week learners received feedback from their peers on their documentary progress. As they continued to work on their films this week, the learners decided not to have an extensive feedback discussion at the end of this session but rather schedule one-on-one sessions with other groups to ask questions and get feedback. Ask your learner to see their documentary for more details!
French
After designing their storefronts, Rebels are now working on creating their clothing collections and writing inventory descriptions. We began the week with a series of Nearpod games to review previous material and introduce new vocabulary. Then, Rebels worked on their inventory individually or in small groups. On Wednesday, we all met together for a couple of rounds of "J'ai…Qui a?" before another self-directed work session.
Health
During Health this week, we finished our study on why we study Sexual Education using a research-based approach. Over the past two weeks, the learners made their way through three different documents that covered the topics of unwanted pregnancies, STDs, and reducing the stigma of sexuality. The documents the learners read introduced the issues, and the learners had to stop and ask guiding questions to gauge understanding. Deagan was very impressed with the learners' maturity in dealing with big ideas and topics.
Quest
We began Quest on Monday by reflecting on the previous week's Hot Chocolate Stand-Off. The learners started off the period by writing a 10-minute free write on what they learned from the experience. We preempted that activity by discussing the different lenses from which you can view a task like a food stand and the additional learning you can take away from it. The learners then got in their hot chocolate groups and did a reflection game. Each learner would roll a die, and the number they landed on would guide them to a different category of question: Knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and evaluation. After asking those questions, we got together as a studio and shared our most significant learning from the previous week. On Tuesday, the learners explored the different types of businesses, whether primary through tertiary, private or public, social enterprise or charity, and many more. They then completed sorting activities where they saw different companies represented and had to think about what type of company each was. On Thursday, we started the Quest period by discussing what skill set an entrepreneur needs to succeed. Many different aptitudes came up, one of them being research. The learners then spent Thursday and Friday developing their research skills as they chose a business-related question they were curious about and spent the subsequent day learning and preparing to share their knowledge with their squad.
Additional Highlights
Some of our Exploration Rebels chose to take the Canadian Geographic Challenge test this week! As there was a tie in our Level 1, there will be a tie-breaker test next week for that age group. The winner from our Level 1 and Level 2 Rebels will then compete at the next level!
Launchpad
Science & Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science
This week was all about preparation and experimentation! After completing their experimental design, one learner baked four different batches of pancakes, increasing the amount of baking soda each time. She recorded the changes in pH, colour, fluffiness, and taste to determine the recipe for the best stack. Another learner meanwhile tested various methods for creating a coffee-infused whipped cream, testing viscosity and taste. Once the Rebels completed their experiments and data collection they began to complete their final lab report. It was a very delicious week!
WorkspaceSky Pilot
Our Workspace Sky workshops began this week! In our Socratic Seminar group, all of the teens introduced themselves, and we went over the course expectations and created our Rules of Engagement. It's a great group from California, Texas, and New York, and we're looking forward to taking part in some passionate discussions over the next several weeks. One of our learners also took their first Notion (project management and note-taking software designed to coordinate deadlines) course, an Animating Characters class, and took part in a conversational Spanish Club! Another highlight was the WorkspaceSky "Speed Friending" hour on Thursday afternoon, where learners got to know the other teen participants even better!
Shakespeare Study
On Monday, we began studying and reading, Much Ado About Nothing! We learned more about inverted syntax, Iambic Pentameter and when it is employed, and the difference between "Thou" and "You." Tuesday, we read Act 1, Scene 1 aloud, noting themes and characterization. Learners who have read Shakespeare in the past and struggled with the language were surprised to discover that reading it as a group out loud made the bard easier to understand. We finished reading Act 1 on Wednesday, identified various literary devices, including simile, metaphor, and allusion, and worked on filling in our characterization pages. After reading Act 2 on Thursday and Friday, we took a closer look at the song in Scene 3, "Sigh No More," to better understand the meaning behind the lyrics and purpose in the scene. For comparison, we looked at Christopher Marlow's poem, "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," and Sir Walter Raleigh's "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd," written in response to Marlow's poem. Rebels were then offered the opportunity to write a song in response to "Sigh No More" from a woman's perspective.
Canadian History
This week we finished our study of the Great Depression. We continued developing our historical thinking skills by decoding photography through interpretation and analysis. We read more about the politics of protest and global politics, including the increase in communism due to some distrust in the capitalist system. Learners then were asked to put themselves in someone else's shoes and write a letter to Prime Minister Bennett with their ideas on the cause of the Great Depression, the consequences of the Depression on their family and how they plan to vote on Election Day, October 14th, 1935 and why. One learner wrote from the perspective of a Chinese immigrant living in Vancouver, while another was an ex-military ordnance worker.
Independent Projects
With the application deadline fast approaching, our LP learner coordinating the Ottawa Childrens' Business Fair reached out to potential mentors for the event and began the process of application approvals! Our other Rebel continued to work on their historical dress designs, beginning their second creation for the collection.
Potential Discussion Ideas or Questions to Ask your Rebel:
Spark:
How much is each coin and bill worth?
Can you tell me about the story of Mr. Guy?
French: Now that you've finished your alphabet book, what are you most excited about learning in French class?
Discovery:
As an entrepreneur, which is more important to you: developing a solid product or service or investing in good marketing?
The rise of Rome: Which is more impressive for the leader of an empire: to expand and conquer more territories or to do a good job of maintaining what they already have? Which do you think is more challenging?
French: Which item from your clothing store is your favourite? Can you describe it in French?
Exploration:
Would you go with a subscription model or a flat initial price if you were the young entrepreneurs who invented the safety wristwatch? Why?
French: Which item from your clothing store is your favourite? Can you describe it in French?
Launchpad:
Which Workspace Sky pilot workshops, events, or elements are you most excited about? Why?
How is your final lab for chemistry progressing?
Who is your favourite character so far in Much Ado About Nothing? Why? (And how do you pronounce “Yea” when reading aloud!)
Dates of Interest
March 13th - Official deadline for Ottawa Children's Business Fair applications (Rebels have a couple of extra weeks however booths are not guaranteed)
March 14th - March Mammal Madness brackets are due and Pi Day!!!
Session 5 Exhibitions
Exploration Studio: Tuesday, April 5 at 4:30 pm
Spark Studio: Wednesday, April 6th at 4:15 pm
Discovery Studio: Thursday, April 7th at 4:30 pm