Day: November 6, 2023

End of Systems Unit Fall 2023: ADST Game Project

Hello!

Final assignment for our first unit of the year! Report Cards are coming up fast for the end of term one!

Students will be put in groups to create a game to teach people how their personal choices are connected to the health of their body.

The game needs to:

  • Show your knowledge from the unit, so you need to use your binder and journal as a resource,
  • Teach someone in grade 3 or higher how they can make positive personal choices that help the interconnected system of the human body (we will play the games with our buddy class),
  • Be a board game or 3-dimensional game (try to avoid having a game with too many cards, as they take a long time to make — no games that are cards only, as this is an ADST project and needs to involve building),
  • Have a winner for the game after less than 30 minutes of play,
  • Be easy to explain and play right away, rather than having a ton of instructions,
  • Include a set of instructions and all playing pieces,
  • Be attractive and aesthetic so people will WANT to play the game (we will look at some examples in class), and
  • Be finished and ready to play by December 5th, Tuesday. 

Here are the steps to make the game:

Step One  Make up a theme for the game and think about how you will teach what we have learned in the unit about personal choices. We will brainstorm some themes together in class, so feel free to use one of those or make up your own.

Step Two  Create the rules of the game. Write them down as a draft in your journal, then someone in your group needs to type them up.

Step Three  Look at materials we have available, or what materials you could bring from home like cardboard and recyclables. Do not purchase anything to make the game. use existing materials. Think about how much time you have to build. Then, make a draft of what the game will look like in your drawing book and create a list of the materials you will need to gather. I can provide dice, timers, and some spinners, if needed, and we have a lot of items that can serve as play tokens, so again, no need to purchase anything new.

Step Four   Make the game. As you find issues with construction, don’t worry about changing your idea, but keep track of how much time you have to build so it is finished on time and meets criteria.

Step Five   Add playing pieces and think about how to store the game so pieces are not lost. Can you create an aesthetic way to store the game?

Step Six    Find someone to play the game with. Have them evaluate your game. Evaluate yourself on the rubric I provide for you. Turn the rubric in to Ms. D. Play the game with our Buddy Class.

Tips and Ideas:

  • Always remember simple is better. If a game is easy, it will be more fun to play.
  • Add a start and a finish space.
  • Borrow ideas from other games and make them better – don’t just copy, but do use ideas you have seen before and morph them into your own!
  • Add spaces where you have to draw a card, but do not make too many cards. This is one thing that generally takes too much time. What other ways can you communicate health information in the game, other than using cards and written facts?
  • Do a few test plays by yourself to see if it is too hard or needs adjustment.
  • Cut small figures out of paper to use as game pieces, or use Legos, etc.
  • Get ideas from other people. Creativity doesn’t just come from one person. The best ideas are ones that involve lots of ideas.
  • Make it colorful and eye-popping. Make it 3D! It doesn’t need to be too big, though. Think about the size of most board games we play.
  • Name it something appealing! Come up with something of your own – don’t use a name out of a movie or comic book.
  • You could have an objective or goal of the game, instead of a finish space to reach, such as find a golden nugget or land on the water fountain 10 times.
  • For the base of the game you can ask for a clean take out pizza box from a restaurant or find a box at home from Amazon. Any supplies from home are also okay, as long as Mom and Dad are okay with it! No need to purchase anything new.

A rubric will be provided to self-assess at the end of the project. The project is due by December 5th, Tuesday. No extensions due to report card timeline!!

Social Emotional Learning: Perfectionism and Doing Work Myself!

Creepy Crayon! image number 0Today we read the book Creepy Crayon by Aaron Reynolds, with illustrations by Peter Brown.

In the book, the main character, Jasper Rabbit, is struggling with school work, but then finds a perfect purple crayon that does all of the work for him! Jasper suddenly starts getting top marks on everything!

At first, it feels great, but then the crayon starts taking over Jasper’s life. The crayon even changes work Jasper was already proud of, coming behind him and re-doing everything so it is all in purple and perfect! Jasper feels badly about this, so he gets rid of the crayon and starts doing all of his own work. It isn’t perfect, but he feels much better about it being his own!

After reading the book, we discussed how there are many of us, as advanced learners, who really want all of our work to be perfect all the time. Sometimes as we strive for perfection, we look to outside resources to do the work for us. For example, we might use the internet or artificial intelligence, and ask it to do our work instead of doing our own writing. Or, we may ask others for help, and out of our worry to be perfect, we allow those people to change our work. This means the work becomes more “their work” and not representative of our own abilities.

It is okay to ask for help, but we also need to be willing to work on it by ourselves, because the struggle, the making of mistakes, is when we do our best learning!

I gave the class an example that was kind of silly. Ms. D does not feel “proficient” at soccer (mainly because it isn’t something I have put much thought into, really). But what if, rather than accepting my proficiency, I wanted to appear perfect. So, I hired a student who is amazing at soccer to wear my jersey and represent me on the field. They would do an amazing job, and then afterwards, I would take all the accolades and the trophy! This seemed ridiculous to everyone, and I agreed. If I want to get better at soccer, then I can certainly make some choices to develop my skills!

Also, being better doesn’t mean I need to be PERFECT at it. For example, if I want to be better at soccer, I don’t have to be a top soccer star on the field. I really just want some skills to be able to join friends in a game. So, I can be realistic about what I want in life. It isn’t possible to be top notch in everything. That is okay, because I am going to make the choice of where I want to put my time. I can play soccer with my friends without needing to always win or be the top player.

I shared with everyone this is why I also have them fill out rubrics for self-reflection before I give any feedback. The research shows, people are more likely to follow through on goals they make for themselves, or on their own self-reflection, more than they would follow up on what someone else tells them to do. For example, someone might tell you to clean your room a million times, and you may or may not choose to clean it (generally, I imagine, most of Division 5 doesn’t do this without supervision!) But, if you choose to have a cleaner room because you see the value of having a clean space to work and live and sleep in, well, you are more likely to work on the skills it takes to keep a clean room.

Finally, grade 4 and 5 are great practice years. We can make lots of mistakes because we are learning how to be independent self-managers. Developmentally, we are still working on personal awareness of one another, determining what our interests are, and learning how to make friends. Be willing to make mistakes! And, also know, none of the marks you receive at this point in your learning journey will stay with you when you move on to high school or college. And when you get to my age, no one cares about what you did in high school or college. With time, mistakes are just learning. We always move on from them.

I know, deep thinking for a Monday!  I hope everyone takes time to talk about these things at home. More to come on social-emotional thinking in future posts.

Kindly,

Ms. D

Assessment Reminders & Life Rubric Activity for Home

Hello Everyone,

Today, I would like to talk about assessment and the LIFE RUBRIC activity we did in class.

Some thoughts about assessment, as I shared in email to you all:

  • The goal is to get proficient; extending is reserved for going beyond criteria and grade-level expectations in specific ways.
  • To get a developing on anything does not mean a person is having trouble or needs any serious intervention at this time unless I contact you (because I would if it was needed). It means they are still developing and need special encouragement in that area.
  • Please review project rubrics you receive, then sign and return immediately to school. I track who has brought them in so I can be sure you have seen them. In this way we avoid surprises on the report card, and everyone gets communication about progress.
  • Projects involve more than one subject. As appropriate, depending on curricular competencies, I divide up the marks for a project between subjects, noted at the top of the rubric. For example, the Nutrition Poster involves language arts presentation and research documentation skills, socials research competencies, and science/health content from nutrition information.
  • All e-port marks contribute to language arts evaluation, as well as unit content in socials, science, and math.
  • You will note sometimes I indicate a mark with a slash. This means your child is between areas. I always note the stronger area of the proficiency scale first. For example, if I say PRF/EXT, it means the student was stronger on the proficient side, but they had some elements of extending.
  • For report cards I can only assign one proficiency scale mark per subject, so I gather information from all daily assignments, projects, and e-ports to make that decision. It is not an average of proficiency scale marks but based on the picture of child’s progress to date at the end of the term. I encourage you to read my feedback, report card comments, and student goals on the report, rather than just the marks, to get a better picture.
  • Please see your child’s e-ports and make comments if you have time. At the end of the term, I will be giving you a questionnaire to fill out about how you think your child is doing, so I can take your input into mind.
  • Binders have daily work that has been passed back with checks. Some students are also missing work. While I don’t have time to go through and chase every single learning assignment down, any student is welcome to ask me in class if they are missing something. Students will be asked to reflect at the end of term one how they have been doing on turning in assignments, as their input is also required for the report card.
  • A reminder that everyone responds better to hearing strengths first, and then 1-2 areas of feedback for next time. It is overwhelming to hear too much. This is especially true for advanced learners who frequently struggle with perfectionism and unrealistic expectations about performance. We can accidentally encourage their tendency to catastrophize about the importance of one mark by talking about an assignment or project for too long when it comes home. Everyone will have many more opportunities to practice and learn things they are still working on. One project is just one step in the journey.

Today, we reviewed the words associated with the proficiency rubric to ensure we all understand them.

I often say that the proficiency rubric is easier to understand, with its words of emerging/developing/applying (proficient)/extending if you create a LIFE RUBRIC.

Think of one thing that you do daily. We assigned the four parts to the four corners of our classroom. Then, Ms. D said an activity and students moved to the part of the rubric they thought they were in.

For example, where are you on “cleaning your room?”

EXTENDING — I can clean my room independently and use sophisticated skills, some of which I learned on my own time, such as feng shui arrangements, Marie Kondo folding, organizing boxes I created myself, to clean it. No one needs to tell me to clean my room. I could teach someone else how to clean a room, and I probably remind other people to “get to it!” I even developed my own personal schedule for cleaning and posted it on the fridge.

PROFICIENT — I can clean my room independently and use a complete set of skills I have been taught to organize it — for example, vacuuming, making my bed, and picking up materials to put into organizing buckets I have been given. No one needs to check in on me as I am cleaning my room. I feel confident doing it myself.

DEVELOPING — I can clean my room myself with some guidance. For example, someone might need to check in on me and say, stop reading and get to cleaning! Or, maybe I need help getting the vacuum out and turning it on. Maybe I need some advice on how to fold corners on the sheets. But, I have a partial understanding of what to do and can do some of it myself.

EMERGING — I either have never cleaned my room before, or I can clean my room with a lot of guidance, as I am beginning to learn how to do it. I might need assistance deciding when the room is dirty, staying on task and not making new messes while cleaning it up, or not shoving dirty laundry under the bed and instead putting it in the hamper. My parents are showing me how the vacuum works, as I haven’t done that before. My parents came in and modelled for me how to clean, talking about the steps as they helped me, so I can learn how to do it next time on my own.

**Try this at home as a discussion. Try something like — making your own lunch, making dinner for the family, riding a bicycle, coming up with a family activity, or playing with a sibling. It works best if BOTH parent and child identify some things they do on the LIFE RUBRIC, so everyone can see they aren’t alone in developing skills. We are all doing it, and it is a lifelong process.