Indigenized Slam Poetry

Finally, we have finished the worldview assignment with students.  The assignment took far longer than we anticipated given the technology problems we had.  We will only share the first page of students worldview assignments due to the personal nature of the other pages. The students did an overview mind map (seen here) then went into further detail on the pages that followed. Moving forward we have begun our Origin Story unit where we hope to use iMovie Trailer to have the students accompany the Origin story they will write.

It is interesting that this months topic is on Technology as Kelly and I were surprised to discover that the technology piece is what seems to be causing our delays. The students are just finishing up their worldview mind maps using Canva .  This website allows students to create mind maps (as well as other documents).  One issue we are having with this website is that you cannot change the size of the canvas so students are having to do more than one canvas as they have typed so much!! The other app we have been using lots is Sketchbook.  Students have drawn a rough copy of their Coast Salish inspired art on paper, taken a picture on the iPads and then they are able to add a layer over their picture, trace their image and then delete the photo, leaving behind their drawing. Most students preferred to draw on paper before drawing on the ipad and we found they were often trying to replicate exactly what they did on paper, so tracing was great. One key to success here i...

Kelly and I had the opportunity to go see Shane Koyczan live this past Tuesday.  Shane is a powerful spoken word poet who is part of the inspiration for our synergy project.  Going to see his performance brought forward a few questions about the logistics of our own poetry slam we plan to hold as the community share out of our project.  With 60 students participating in our project, one of the main things we need to accommodate is the sheer amount of time it would take for students to present their poetry in front of an audience. One thought is to not have all students present, however, we feel presenting to an authentic audience is a key factor in our project that we are not wanting to give up.  Another proposed solution would be to have the students write their poetry in pairs.  With such a big project (the poem and the video) perhaps students could present together or one student could present while the other works on the video so both students would have own...

At this point in our project, students are moving along with their worldview mind maps. Students have brainstormed the things that influence their lives the most. They are choosing five of those influences to put in their mind maps. Each of the influences have to have a visual that goes along with them. As mentioned in our last meeting, one of those images needs to have Coast Salish influences. We hit a bit of a snag with the technology.  Students are using the ipads to create their Coast Salish visuals.  We also wanted them to complete their mind maps online.  We found a website that we wanted to use, however, the website does not have the ability to save and then re visit the mind map.  We had to come up with a creative solution.  The students were to draw up a rough copy or a plan before they are allowed to go onto the computer.  This way, we could ensure that students would not lose work. We took it one step further and asked students to type up ...

This week, we are fortunate enough to have the White Hatter come to our school for an assembly presentation to all the students on internet safety and digital citizenship.  During this presentation, Darren Lauer went over on-line use and misuse, focusing in on cyber bullying. You can visit his website at  https://www.thewhitehatter.ca/ to see more about what these inspiring presentations can offer.  As a follow up to his presentation, we will be discussing the nine elements of  digital citizenship  with students to collaborate on some ground rules for electronic use in the classroom, especially in our project.  When Kelly and I sat down to discuss which aspects of digital citizenship we wanted to focus on in our project, we agreed it was most important to discuss cultural appropriation.  As much of our project surrounds students creating art and visuals, we felt it was necessary to give a lesson on the difference between being i...

This blog is a collaborative effort between staff and students at Spencer Middle School in Langford, BC. Over the course of the next year, we will be using this blog as a way to document our journey of our project, titled using Using Multimodal Approaches to Explore Identity, History, Experience and Worldview. This project is a collaborative effort between the classroom teacher, Kelly, and the school's Aboriginal Education teacher, Kathleen. This project aims to have students use diverse texts and multimodal approaches (i.e. visual, oral, textual, digital) to explore their worldview and identity.  Working with local community partners (Aboriginal Elders and communities) students will have the opportunity to learn about, share, and create digital multimedia pieces that explore personal, cultural or historical events and experiences that relate and connect to the experiences of our local Nations.  These pieces will take a variety of forms and will be shared with the comm...