Annual Kiva Fair

Kiva provides microloans for people in need. You can research a large variety topics, countries, global issues and more. Students researched the global issues that spoke to them a launched a mini campaign to try to get other classes informed and asking for $1 donations.

Christmas Cards

This Christmas Charity Inquiry has by far been one of my all time favourite inquiries. I asked students to think of a way to raise funds for a charity of at need. The only limitations were we had no money and we had to get the whole school involved. 

After a lot of brainstorming and pitching ideas students decided we could have a Christmas Card Contest for each grade and feature the winners on cards that would then be sold back to the school.

Students divided into groups based on their talents. Some focused on writing to students and making posters/school announcements and a letter that would go home to inform everyone of the contest. Others wrote to parents convincing the to buy. And the third group researched, phoned/emailed businesses that printed cards for donations and prices. 

I want to thank Toronto Printing House with being so supportive and patient with our students as they learned how to write clear emails, perfected speaking on the phone and a million other real life skills. From start to finish the students in my class created this initiative and saw it through. Spending countless hours of recess, after school sales and more. The students were able to take the lead and worked through more math, language and Social Studies than I ever could have imagined.

By the end, they were able to raise funds that went to helping students in the Hospital over Christmas. The funds went directly to supporting Sick Kids.   

Christmas Baking (Art isn't just on paper)

I can bring creativity into almost any lesson you throw at me, but for some reason I have always struggled with teaching rich art lessons. I have some incredible artists in my life and circle of friends, but I just never feel I can do justice in my art lessons. 

I feel a large responsibility in making art meaningful for my students. Tt is not lost on me that one day I will encounter a student that has a great artistic ability in them, but that it be require encouraging. So many students have such great raw talent, but never see an application/purpose for their talents. If even one of my students leaves my class feeling empowered to make a career with their talents then I've done my job. We want to introduce students to as many diverse opportunities as we can, but we need to do the same in art. Hopefully, our Christmas baking/decorating lesson showed students a new way to apply their skills or even revealed a talent they didn't know they had.

Class Inquiry Project

As a culminating Task students were asked to use all the skills they gathered this year and create a meaningful and relevant project. These projects addressed students own learning and interests. They worked on and built this blog as a means of showing the world their fantastic project.

http://mrbutlersinquiries.blogspot.ca/ 

Be The Change

For over a month we have been studying Global Issues affecting Canada and the world. We have studied very heavy issues that have left students at times sad and frustrated about the world. Children are not content and complacent in the world; they spot the problems and challenge it.
Lately, we have been moving into a place of asking; we identify the problem and ask what is the world doing. We have been studying NGOs and looking at various not for profits. Going forward students will be creating their own mock charities based on an issue they are passionate for.

To make our learning real, we spent the morning google chatting Diana from Masaya Mission. She shared her inspiring story and the mission of Masaya Mission. The students asked great questions and learned a lot about the in and outs of running a charity. The most important thing we heard from Diana was to lead with your heart.

I want to Thank Diana for inspiring the students and sharing the morning with us.

We Refuse to be... voiceless, speechless, deaf to Global Issues

Students created beautiful art work showing what we've been learning about in Social Studies 

Student Conference Math

As part of our Student Conferences, I had students look back at their learning. All year students have been responsible for playing Prodigy Math, Reading texts of their choosing and using their agenda.
As part of their math this week students were working on mean, mode and median. As a class we created Google Sheets and shared it with everyone in the class. Students input their data for each area and then were responsible for determining the class mean, mode and median and then graphing all of it. This information was powerful in helping students discover their strengths and areas where they need help.