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, Weekly Library Lessons

Monday Read Aloud: Sidewalk Flowers by JonArno Lawson

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Bonjour mes amis!

Weekly Library Lessons at a Glance

Welcome to our very first library lesson!  Before we begin, I just wanted to explain two important points:

  1. The password for Monday read alouds — or any read alouds for that matter – will always be the same.  The password was emailed to parents by our school principal in a newsletter home Friday, April 10th.  The password is also available on our school Library Learning Commons Facebook page.  If you are still having trouble locating the password, please feel free to email Mme Zibin at dzibin@sd79.bc.ca.
  2. If you would like to skip the daily lesson preamble or find the weekly lessons quickly, please visit the “Weekly Library Lessons” tab in the top right hand side of the main page.  If you are on your iPad, you will have to turn the iPad to landscape to see the tabs.
How to locate the Weekly Library Lessons tab

Now let’s begin!

This week’s read aloud is the lovely story “Sidewalk Flowers” by author and award-winning poet JonArno Lawson.  “Sidewalk Flowers” is a wordless picture book beautifully illustrated by artist Sydney Smith.  Wordless?  Don’t worry; I added my own story to share with you all!

Designed like a graphic novel, the story appears in panels.  I had to read the illustrations really carefully to come up with the story!    I also had the help of Melissa Rabbe, a student who did a project on the book and published her version on YouTube.  I want to thank her for giving me direction for my version of the story.

From the back of the picture book:

“A little girl collects wildflowers while on a walk with her distracted father.  Each flower becomes a gift, and whether the gift is noticed or ignored, both giver and recipient are transformed by their encounter.   [Beautifully] brought to life by illustrator Sydney Smith, Sidewalk Flowers is an ode to the importance of small things, small people and small gestures.”

Questions to think about before, during and after the story:
  1. How do Tally’s gestures of kindness make the recipient feel afterwards?  Why do you think this?
  2. How do Tally’s gestures of kindness make her feel afterwards?  Why do you think this?
  3. Making Connections:  Have you ever surprised someone with a kind gesture?  Why? Explain.
Find my reading of the story here:

Epic Books

If you would like to read “Sidewalk Flowers” on your own, there is a copy available on the reading platform Epic Books.  If you would like your child to have a free Epic Books account until the end of June, please email me and I will send you an invite and add your child to my class.  Epic Books also has a ton of French at different reading levels!

Mme Zibin’s page on Epic Books
Tomorrow’s Activity

Tomorrow join me for a Neighbourhood Scavenger Hunt!  What flowers will you find around you?  How can we share the colour and beauty with others?

À demain!

🙂 Mme Zibin

 

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

Weekly Library Lessons

New Library Lessons: April 13th – 17th, 2020

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I’m very excited to share with EMP families our first week of online library learning commons lessons!  The theme of our first week is “Sharing the Beauty in Our World”.

Week of April 13 – 17th, 2020

On Monday, April 13th at 9 am, I will post a password-protected video of me reading the Canadian story, “Sidewalk Flowers” by author JonArno Lawson, illustrated by Sydney Smith.

The password will be shared on our Library Learning Commons Facebook page and our principal will be sharing the password in an email home to all families this coming week.  The password will stay the same for all future online story readings.   Online readings are allowed by certain book publishers as long as the videos are private and password protected.  All videos will be taken down at the end of June 2020.

Each day at 9 am, I will publish a new video of me sharing the daily activities.  Please note:

  • Activities can be done in any order, on any day of the week.
  • Activities are optional and just suggestions.  If you and your child(ren) have other ideas or are inspired in another way, please follow your heart!
  • Your child(ren) can participate in one activity, two activities or none.  Just listening to the story is fine!
  • If you and your child(ren) are interested in sending me your work – please do!  I would love to see what you’ve made.  Please see the “Submissions” tab at the top right hand side of my blog for more information.  Submissions can be sent to dzibin@sd79.bc.ca
  • If you and your child(ren) choose to share work with our EMP community, please let me know in the email.  I will publish all submissions on the blog by noon on Fridays in a gallery style format.  If you have any comments or anecdotes to share along with the images, please do so!
  • Stories and activities will change weekly.
  • All ages are welcome to participate.  I will be creating separate programming for Grades 4-7 for the week.
On Fridays I will share student submissions on the blog.

 

Sidewalk dandelions I discovered in the parking lot at École Mount Prevost yesterday.

 

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

Looking forward to seeing your responses to our shared readings!

🙂 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

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