Letter Writing Pen Pal Project

 Two groups of 7th grade English students have been working very closely with the LRC on their letter-writing project, in which they explored the craft of letter writing and correspondence by traditional snail mail systems.  The paper was carefully prepared to make it look older, by staining it with a coffee wash and burning the edges (teachers did that!) with care.  Next, the students transferred their writing from the edited drafts to the prepared paper. They also constructed envelopes for their letters and even decorated them in some cases.

The next task was for students to design their own stamps to seal their envelopes with wax.  They spent a lesson in the LRC doing so using Tinkercad. The designs were then printed off using the LRC 3D printers. 

This was a great project which brought together writing, a look at some of the history of communication, 3D design, papercraft,3D printing and introduced students to the craft of using wax seals. The next task is to mail off the package of letters to our partner school in the UK and await the responses. Communication through snail mail is a bit of a foreign concept to our students so it should be an interesting experience for them to eventually receive their very own letters. 

Here is a short video that contains some of the highlights of the project. We have also uploaded a great many photos to our Flickr album for the project which we hope you will enjoy. 

The Letter Project

6th Grade Discovers Audio Books

Last school year I began purchasing playaway audio books for the LRC. We had a nice cabinet put together for them, introduced students to them in assemblies and orientation lessons and then waited for the demand to become greater than the supply. It didn't happen quite that way, Some of the audio books became very popular and a certain number of students did use them often, but it wasn't the explosion we had expected.

Schools are busy places and initiatives, while important, can often get waylaid temporarily at certain crunch times. It doesn't mean they are forgotten and it is not necessarily a bad thing. Often we need to step back and rethink an initiative, weigh things a bit and decide on a new plan of action.

Just this week I was approached by a teacher in the English Dept. who wanted to broaden her students' awareness of the variety of resources we have on offer. Sometimes it makes sense to listen to a book, sometimes reading it is a better fit. For reluctant readers an audio book can provide a enjoyable respite, in which they can experience the story through an audio rendition, pick up new vocabulary, visit new destinations and live amazing experiences all through the eyes of the characters in the book.

We set up two lessons with the 6th grade today in which we sat down and explored the Playaways, as well as the other digital book collections we have been curating over the last few years. Everyone enjoyed this special reading/listening time.  We are hopeful that word will continue to spread,  and that our students will continue to use these great resources.

When the new audio books come in we will invite teachers to bring the students down and explore them as well as our online collections in the Useful Resources Section of the Learning Resources Centre Website.

Here is a small collection of images from the visits. For a more complete collection please visit the LRC Facebook page.
 

SketchUp Walk Through Videos in ICT and English

Each year our students work on a piece of writing in English lessons in which they describe a character's mind as a room. Once they are done the recreate these rooms in SketchUp as models, creating some of the components as well, and record a walk through video. This year they worked on rooms for the characters from William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet as well as S.E. Hinton's The Outsiders.  

The following playlist contains walk through videos from the last 3 years, starting with those which were done in 2013. We hope you  enjoy them.