Last Movie Post

Here is the last post for the Grade 8 students on their Inquiry Project 2 Minutes to Make a Difference. It is posted at the Mathzone. The movies will be posted on a youtube channel and hopefully at itunes.


The last stages of your 2 Minutes to Make a Difference are almost over. You should be making your movie as we speak. The final deadline for your movie will be on May 20. On that day I need access to your movie, you can burn it to a cd or use a flash drive.

Your movie projects will be marked on the following criteria, Length of movie, script, do you make a difference, production quality, direction and credits. Here is the rubric that will be used to mark your movie.

The final part of the movie will be a day where we will watch all of the movies as a grade. On June 15 we will use periods 2 and 3 to screen the movies. You will have a chance to vote on the ones you liked the best. Following the screening you will be served lunch and we will have an awards ceremony during period 4.

Red Carpet by jeffbalke

This will be a great way to get ready for your math exam which will be on June 16th!! Be sure to study!!!!!

You have had many months to create these masterpieces. Please take time to finish them to a standard of excellence that will make you proud. Following the ceremony we will unveil your iTunes channel and youtube channel. You will be able to

Lesson Plan

For many of you being evaluated is part of being a teacher. This year I am being evaluated. For regular readers of this blog you know that I work in a very special place. I love my job and love my school. I work in a building where people look after each other, respect each other and work harder than the average Joe. We do this because we respect the two women who run the ship. My principal and vice principal are amazing. They are energetic, ontop of current trends and rarely say no to my crazy ideas. Instead of handing in a "formal" lesson plan for this evaluation I am composing this post with a bit of interactive fun to show what happened in the class ......

When I was evaluated!!

Sargent Park is lucky enough to have over 140 grade 8 students. I teach all of them math. I also dabble my toes into teaching the students Media Literacy and weave technology into my classes.

The Grade 8 students this year are working on a project called 2 Minutes to Make a Difference. Each student can be in a group of 4 and will create a 2 minute movie on a topic that is important to them. The project started off with the grade 8 leadership students creating presentations for the rest of the school during the pre-Christmas season. All students created posters and pamphlets for the school and a few leadership students created presentations to be used at assemblies. These students were taught how to make a powerpoint (or google presentation) and to use pictures instead of text to weave a story. It was very successful. The students raised more charitable donations than usual.

Following their return to school in January the students chose groups to work in for their 2 Minutes to Make a Difference. A website was created to give them access to different topic that they might choose. The students were then given a google form to fill in to show the assisting teacher their groups and topics.

This now brings us to the lesson that was used for my assessment. Imagine if you will a room filled with 70 students watching the smartboard. All students have a piece of looseleaf and a sheet that describe Debono's 6 Thinking Hat strategy for creative thinking . To set this up I created a google presentation that described the different types of questions and the "different hat" thinking that would be needed.

First Day's Activity (Thursday February 5)


Second Day's Activity (Monday February 9)


The great thing about using google is that I was able to harness the power of the student's google accounts. All students had an account. Before the afternoon sessions I got all the students to become collaborators with these presentations. Following the movie the students were then able to simultaniously enter their data on these presentations using the lab at the back of my room. For those students who were unable to get access to a computer they could work at home or write their questions on chart paper.

The movie was excellent. The students did an excellent job in watching the video and trying to understand why 300 million children world wide are forced to work instead of going to school or being a child.

During the movie when some important information would be discussed I would stop the video, reexplain the message and allow for students to discuss with one another. With the movie being 83 minutes long the students needed a chance to stretch their vocal chords and refocus their attention.



During these breaks the students would start to look at their notes and create questions that would fit into Debono's Thinking Hat Strategy.

This brings us to where we are going next. The timeline for the project has been mapped out for the next few weeks. Students will be working or questioning and essay work.

Following the movie the students are expected to fill in this google form. It will display their topics and questions. In the weeks that follow students will continue to work on their google presentation and start to gather first hand evidence to make their movie spectacular.

So I was evaluated. In reflecting on what happened in class the 2 days that the students participated I can say that they were great. They listened, collaborated and helped each other out. My lab had some problems but we overcame the technical glitches by allowing the students to do work at home. In April when the movies are done they will be wonderful expressions of student intrinsically motivated learning. A true inquiry based project!!

I love my job. Thanks for bringing me into the Sargent Park Team.

Communication is Amazing

I showed a movie in class last week. Mankind is no Island. It was created by Jason VanGenderen and won the NYC Tropfest Competition. This movie is so powerful because it was created on a cellphone. I loved showing it to the students because Jason used powerful music and images of words on street signs interwoven with action shots to talk about problems in NYC and Sydney. I went to show the video to one of my classes and saw that it had been made private. After a bit of searching and a frantic email to Jason he responded (almost immediately).

He had entered the movie into another competition and needed to make it private. The video will be made public again soon. He did offer to send me a copy of the video. He sent a link to a site and I was able to download a copy to my laptop. Not only was this video great... it was of higher quality when showing it on the smartboard.

I love it when people share. Thank you Jason for allowing me to use your wonderful film with my students.

2 Minutes to Make a Difference

This is a cross post from my Sargent Park Mathzone. I am hoping that the students get passionate about learning and making a difference. We started this project with the 4 Charities Project before Christmas. During Christmas we asked the students to Pay it Forward. It will be interesting to see what the students decide to do for projects.

2 Minutes to Make a Difference

Welcome to your new project. Even though it seems like there is tons of time there isn't. Your project is to create a movie that makes a difference. You need to choose a topic that you can become passionate about. In your two minutes you will need to enlighten an audience of your peers and others around the world about the topic that is your passion.



Remember, you will be getting marks for completing parts of this project on time. Each subject Math, Language Arts, Science and Social Studies will be giving you a mark. This Project is an important part of your third term mark. Please take it seriously.

Here is the site that will be your home base. 2 Minutes to Make a Difference. On the side you will see many topics that can be chosen for this project. These are not the "ONLY" topics but are some interesting topics that you can choose for this project.


You need to complete this form to start the project,


The project runs from January 19th to April 9th (The Monday after Spring Break).
Please use the tag 2minutes when creating posts about the Movie Project.

Enjoy and be creative when you are learning.