Conflict Resolution Workshop

This week, we started facilitating workshops for younger students to coach them on conflict resolution strategies. 

Markus, Fabiano, and Jose joined the learners in Grade 4 on Thursday. 

After sharing different ways to solve conflicts through a presentation, we invited the 4th Graders to act out the solutions through role play. 

Below is a video of the entire workshop! 

We also applied the skills we have been learning in Writers' Workshop by creating this pop-up book on the various choices which can be made when conflicts occur at a global level. 

As a concrete example, we especially made connections to the current war between Russia and Ukraine. 

What do you think is the best option and why?

Discussion About George by Alex Gino

 Hello everyone!

In Grades 5 and 6, we are several weeks into our unit on Who We Are with the following Central Idea: 

Our sexuality and experiences during puberty help us understand ourselves and others. 

We started to explore the idea of gender identity and have been reading a book called George written by Alex Gino - a story about a girl who was born in a boy's body. In other words, the protagonist is transgender as her gender identity does not match her biological sex. 

To prepare for this book club meeting, we each came up with open-ended questions which we then narrowed down by voting on which questions would lead to deeper learning. 

Here are the questions we chose:

• Why did George keep the fact that she is a girl a secret?
• If George tells people that she wants to be a girl, then what might happen?
• How might the other characters react when they find out George is a girl?

We used some of the following sentence starters as tools to help us be effective communicators. 

We had a discussion that lasted over twenty minutes with minimal support from our teacher. 

Click below to take a look!

TED Style Talks

 Last week, we became experts on a political idea or type of government. 

Then, we put together a presentation in the style of a TED talk and presented the information in front of the class. 

Listed below are the success criteria we came up with to give an effective presentation: 

• use pictures to enhance the presentation
• speak clearly and loudly with good pacing
• stand/move with confidence
• make eye contact

After each presentation, we supported our classmates to understand the ideas presented through a Q & A session and by meeting with groups. Take a look at the presentations!

Teacher's Introduction & Oligarchy

Autocracy/Dictatorship

Democracy

Communism #1

Communism #2

Socialism

We will continue exploring these topics to gain deeper understandings. 

We also did a simulation of what democracy was like in Athens, the most famous ancient Greek democratic city-state, that you can see below. 

Have a great spring break!