Category Archives: Uncategorized

Building and Crafting, reading resources, Weekly Library Lessons

It’s Garden Week: May 25th – May 29th, 2020

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C’est la semaine “Dans le jardin”! “It’s In the Garden Week” week in the VIRTUAL library learning commons!  Click on image and read below to learn more:
A la bibliothèque for the week of May 25th – 29th, 2020.
 
This week’s theme is “In the Garden” or “Dans le jardin”.
Click on a book cover to access a link to online read alouds in French and in English.
Stories include:
  • Une si petite graine by Eric Carle
  • Creepy Carrots by Aaron Reynolds illustrations by Peter Brown
  • The Bad Seed by John Jory
  • Rose la graine by Benédicte Guettier
  • Graine d’arc-en-ciel by Benoît Charlat
  • and so many more!
Songs:
  • The Vegetable Song (I think the song is hilarious myself)
Activites:
  • Make a Creepy Carrot
  • Draw a Creepy Carrot with Mme Zibin
  • Draw The Bad Seed with Mme Zibin
  • Germinate Seeds activity
Videos:
  • Watch a bean seed sprout in time lapse – so cool!
  • How Does a Seed Grow into a Plant?
If your child has any work they would like to share, please send it to me by Friday morning. I adore seeing their work.  See “Submitting Work” page for more information.  
Have a great week!
🙂 Mme Zibin
Uncategorized

Photo Quote Challenge

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Today, get creative with a favourite book and a quote about reading!

Challenge Guidelines:

  1. You must somehow include your favourite book(s) in the photo
  2. Include a quote about reading – don’t forget the quotation marks and to credit the author of the quote.

What you need:

  • A camera; your phone or tablet will work wonderfully!
  • Your book(s)
  • Creativity

Steps:

  1.  To start, find a quote about reading that speaks to you.  If you google “Quotes about reading” you will have no problem finding many examples.   You will also notice under “Images” that there are a many examples of photo reading quotes already out there.
  2. Once you have a quote, gather your photo props.   For my example, I used our Grade 6/7 read aloud book “Bloom” for my prop and I found some vines outside to prop Bloom on.
  3.  Once you have your props, arrange them into a scene or vignette, making sure to leave enough bland space to add your quote***

***If you are using photo editing tools to digitally add your quote, such as Book Creator, Moldiv or Photo Editor, leave a blank space to add your text later:

***If you want to skip the digital tools, take a picture with the quote written on paper and include it in your photo, like so:

4.  Play around with taking your photo!  You can include whatever and whomever you like in your photo – let your creativity run wild!

Here I used my toilet paper roll characters in a reading quote: 

I used Book Creator to make the photo reading quotes above.  Book Creator is on all our iPads at school and a great tool to get to know for school projects and book making.  I didn’t meet one criteria of the photo challenge in my above examples though?  What am I missing?

Photo Editing

To add text on top of your photo, you can use many free digital photo editing tools.  Common Sense Media wrote this wonderful article on photo editing tools for children: 

My favourite photo editing tools are mentioned in the article an include:

And Book Creator works wonderfully too!  I use Book Creator and Photoshop Express often, as well as Canva.

Keeping it Simple: Using a Word Document

If you are not wanting to use photo editing tools for your photo quote challenge, you can also insert your photo into a Word document and use the tools in the program to write your text on top of your photo there.  Simply save as a document and you are done!

Here are some of my examples using different photo editing tools:

  1. Moldiv App 

2.  Book Creator App 

3.  Canva (2) 

I found Book Creator and Canva the easiest to use.  Canva comes with a bunch of free layout options and you just upload the photo and type your text.  You can change the font and colours of the text in Canva too.  I was using the free version of Canva that comes on all our school district iPads.

I can’t wait to see what you create!

🙂 Mme Zibin

 

Weekly Library Lessons, Weekly Read Aloud

Robo-Sauce

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From the duo who brought you, “Dragon’s Love Tacos“, today’s story, “Robo-Sauce” is, well, awesome-sauce and the perfect ingredient to kick off Robot Week!

Check out the funny book trailer from the author Adam Rubin and illustrator Daniel Salmieri:

Hilarious, right?

Tomorrow we design our robots for our robot builds on Thursday.  When reading “Robo-Sauce” today, look at all of the interesting robots included in the story.  See what type of robots give you ideas for your own robot design.

I sure enjoyed making the video and I’m happy to say I made our principal laugh when I showed him.  Success!  He thought the sound effects were funny too – robots make noises after all!

Find today’s reading of “Robo-Sauce” here:

Want to make your own Robo-Sauce?  Check out the recipe here at Forks & Folly to make your own:

From Forks & Folly

ACTIVATE ROBO-DAY BLAST – 

🙂 Mme Zibin

 

 

Uncategorized

Make Your Own Ishi

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Finding Your Ishi

I had so much fun prepping for today’s lesson.  For my rock hunt yesterday, I visited Osborne Bay regional Park.  I have never been there before and I had the entire beach to myself:

At the beach, we found sitting rocks and stacking rocks and even a wishing rock!  My dog Walter and I listened to seagulls and it was very meditative looking for rocks.

Most importantly, I found my Ishi rock:

My Ishi rock was waiting for me on the beach.

 

I made an ebook with embedded videos to help you though today’s lesson:

How to Make an Ishi Rock by Mme Zibin

In the ebook, you will find step-by-step photos to lead you through creating your Ishi, a reflection on how we feel with writing frames, and creating scenes for your Ishi.  For more information and examples, please visit: Be Like Ishi

Using Digital Tools to Draw Your Ishi Face

If you are using an iPhone or a tablet, you can take a picture of your Ishi rock BEFORE drawing the faces.  Watch the following video to see how to draw your Ishi faces digitally:

You can also add your writing on top of your photo in apps like Book Creator, Moldiv, or other photo editing apps.

You could also take a picture of your Ishi with your message sitting in front of your rock:

From https://docs.google.com/file/d/1jB3Q-HLkIxWiH9fdwFVNHMFEZrsnso-H6Y19F7__3wk/edit

 

Ishi encourages us to slow down and reflect on how we are feeling and to encourage us to see the positive.  To be happy.

I hope you are find yourself happy today,

🙂 Mme Zibin

 

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Today is Gallery Day

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Today is Gallery Day – when we show off all the amazing work you did this past week!  I have created a Student Gallery Page  on the home page of the blog.  You can find the tab for the page at the top right:

Student work will live there and I will add to the page every Friday, with new work posted in the afternoon.

Please see the Submitting Student Work page if you would like to submit your child’s or family’s work.  You can find the tab on the home page.

I really enjoyed my week and I loved the work I have received so far.  Your flowers made me smile.  It was one of the happiest parts of my week.  Merci!

🙂 Mme Zibin

Community Wellbeing, Weekly Library Lessons

A Sidewalk Flower Scavenger Hunt

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Grab a camera or a some paper and a pencil and take a walk around your neighbourhood!  Like the little girl Tally in our read aloud yesterday, see where you can find pops of colour and beauty in your community.  If you can, document your finds with a camera or take some time to sketch what you see with paper and a pencil.*

Be Considerate

Picking flowers are a lot of fun, however when you are out walking, know your flowers before picking them.  Refrain from picking any flowers native to our Island as many are endangered and a fragile part of our ecosystem.  That’s why taking pictures of your finds is such a great idea!  Picking dandelions, daisies and other introduced wild flowers is fine.  In consideration of your neighbours, never pick flowers from someone’s property.

Mme Zibin’s teeny bouquet of introduced wildflowers.
Mme Zibin’s Scavenger Hunt Finds

With more time, I have been walking a minimum of 6 kilometres every day.  I have found lots of unique flowers all around my neighbourhood and took lots of pictures.  Do you know any of the flowers pictured below?

Now when it comes to actual sidewalk flowers, I only found dandelions and that’s alright!  I am sad to say that I have lived in my neighbourhood for over 10 years and other than the daisies and the dandelions, I never noticed the other beautiful flowers in my community.  Many of the flowers I found are introduced, meaning they are not from or native to Vancouver Island.   However, many flowers I did find come from our beautiful island.    Can you guess which flowers are native flowers and which flowers are introduced?

I learned the names of the flowers I found using the app Seek:

Here are the flowers I found all around my neighbourhood:
  1.  Common Stork’s Bill: Introduced; Native to the Mediterranean
  2. Common Grape Hyacinth: Introduced; Native to Europe
  3. Red Dead Nettle: Introduced; Native to Europe and Asia
  4. Common Daisy: Introduced; Native to Europe
  5. Oregon Grape: Native to Vancouver Island
  6. Skunk Cabbage: Native to Vancouver Island
  7. Wood Forget-me-not: Introduced; Native to Europe
  8. Redwood Violet: Native to Vancouver Island
  9. Henderson’s Shooting Star: Native to Vancouver Island
  10. Dandelion: Introduced; Native to Europe

French:  Dandelion comes from the French term, “dent de lion“.  What does “dent de lion” mean in English?

I can’t wait to see what you and your family find on your scavenger hunt!  I hope you had fun and were inspired to get out more to see what else you may find on your walks in the future.  Flowers, just like everything else, change with the seasons!

*If you would like to share your pictures, please see the “Submitting Student Work Tab” on the blog main page.   Email your submissions to me at dzibin@sd79.bc.ca

 

Community Wellbeing, Social and Emotional Learning

A message to Our School Community – We Miss You!

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We miss our students.  We miss their smiles, their funny anecdotes, their brilliant ideas and the laughs we share together.  To show our students and their families how much we miss them, our staff created a video message to offer encouragement during this time.

We hope our students know that their social and emotional needs are most important to their teachers.  We hope we make them smile.

🙂 Mme Zibin

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Lifelong Learning and Stop Motion

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Today I made a thing:

One of the reasons I became a teacher is because I truly love learning.  As a teacher, my goal is to instill a love of lifelong learning in my students.

Today I taught myself basic stop motion animation.  I’m sure a ton of my students are able to create more sophisticated videos than what I made today, but I’m still super proud of my work!

Why?

I wanted to create a little introduction to start off my videos for when I read stories aloud online.  Over the years I’ve amassed a large collection of vintage school supplies, saving them for who knows what — a pandemic, I guess?  I chose to use my 100 year old anagram letters and a vintage chalkboard as manipulatives for my introduction video.  Since I’m working from home, I have more time to explore techniques and tech and so I decided to create a stop motion video with my vintage supplies.

I didn’t have a Q so I had to paint in a little yellow tail on an O.
Platform

I chose to use the Stop Motion Studio app our school district recommends:

I found the app incredibly straightforward and easy to use.  I made the video entirely on my iPad, taking only 30 minutes to complete.

In Stop Motion Studio, pictures are taken one by one to make the video.
Music

When you create a stop motion video in the Stop Motion Studio app, it is soundless.  You can add an audio voiceover, but I chose to save the app to my camera roll.  Next, I downloaded the song, “Library” by The Little Bandits from iTunes (there may be a TikToc video coming soon using that song…) and added a sound clip to my stop motion video in the Splice app. I could have used iMovie but I find it’s glitchy and doesn’t work well for me.  I prefer to use Splice and find it easy to use.

Editing the stop motion video in the Splice app.
Final product and Reflection

Reflection is hard for students to do after a project is complete.  Reflection is one of the most important tools one can practice to improve future work.  From looking at my video, I’m very happy with my first effort but it’s by no means perfect.  Where could I improve?

BC Core Competencies: Critical and Reflective Thinking.
  1.  The video is not level.  I could not get my iPad to straighten parallel to my work surface.  As a result, the off-kilter angle bothers me.   I will need to come up with a better solution for my next attempt.
  2. My lighting is a bit dark.   I like the look of natural light;  the dark shadows of artificial light bother me.   When I chose to start filming, it was overcast outside, darkening my video.
  3. The picture quality is a bit grainy.  The video is slightly out of focus.  My iPad is school district issued, three years old and well used; all quality issues I cannot change at the moment.  So for now, I will have to deal.
  4. I don’t like the start or end of my video.  I should have added in clips of a blank chalkboard, allowing the music to play out a bit at either end.
Next Steps and New Learnings

I will reshoot the video tomorrow, using my reflections to improve the overall quality.

I’m also really interested in TikTok.  I haven’t been able to get into SnapChat but I definitely see the draw of TikTok.  I love a good lip sync and I have been practicing a library-related song to share with students soon.

What new learnings have come your way lately?  I’d love to hear.  Please comment below.

🙂 Mme Zibin

 

 

 

 

Uncategorized

Bonjour; I’ve missed you!

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Welcome to the École Library Learning Commons webpage!

I have made this webpage to reach as many EMP families as possible as a result of the early closure of our school due to the Covid19 pandemic.   For parents who are unaware, I also post regularly on my École Mount Prevost Library Learning Commons Facebook page and our EMP webpage has an LLC tab as well that links to online digital resources offered by our district.

The reason I have created this new website is to be able to post videos and lessons for your children during our absence from school.  I cannot post these resources as easily on our district LLC page.  In the near future, I will begin posting read alouds and reading response lessons for your children to participate in if your family chooses to do so.  I will continue to post these lessons to the LLC page on Facebook as well, however not all families are on Facebook and able to access the lessons there.

By the end of this week, I will post a schedule of read alouds and themes for the month of April, as well as a list of optional activities to accompany the read alouds.   If your child(ren) choose to participate in the optional activites, I would love for you to send me photos of her/his/their work for me to post here and on the Facebook LLC to share with other families in our school community, with your permission, of course!

Questions?  Please feel free to email me at dzibin@sd79.bc.ca

Stay safe and healthy, and I look forward to connecting with you and your family soon!

🙂 Mme Zibin