Dickens Annex Students Inspired to Help Victims of Typhoon Haiyan

In response to the tragedy of Typhoon Haiyan, the teachers at Dickens Annex collaborated to prepare a powerful language lesson using the wordless picture book The Flood written by Alvaro F. Villa.

Students used their critical thinking skills to ask questions, empathize with the characters in the book, and make connections to current events. 




The students made the connection to Typhoon Haiyan and deepened their understanding of the tragedy there by viewing and responding to photographs of typhoon victims. 

 As a result of this powerful lesson, students chose to take action by earning a toonie by doing chores at home to donate to the Red Cross. Students earned $257.

Three brothers in our school, Dylan, Jack and Charlie Devine, were inspired to continue fundraising over the weekend by holding a hot chocolate sale in their neighbourhood. The boys were overwhelmed by the response, which included many neighbours with family in the Philippines stopping to thank them for their efforts. The boys raised over $400.

With the government doubling these donations, Dickens Annex students will have contributed over $1300 to the Red Cross.

The teachers at the Annex were so excited to see a critical literacy lesson inspire social action, and felt so proud of their students!

Flood response

Response

Strong feelings evoked

Responding to powerful texts

Flood Response

Response to Flood

Group Language book

Scientist of the day

Meet Sienna, Scientist of the Week.   

This is part of our Star of the Week 

programme where on day 2 of their week,

the children choose a simple science 

experiment to perform for their classmates.  

Of course, one never knows when an 

experiment might go wrong so the 

scientist is always wearing appropriate 

safety equipment!

Goodnight Garden

Treasures from the garden

Planting bulbs

Raking leaves to protect the bulbs

Helping each other and finding joy!

Getting the bulbs for the garden

Working together

Today was a beautiful fall day and Dickens Annex said goodnight to the school garden with the help of parent volunteers Kate (Alex's mum) and Kelsey (Eleanor's mum) and Sarah, a garden expert who helped with Hello Harvest at Thanksgiving.  Division 4 enjoyed planting bulbs to beautify the garden next spring but what they enjoyed most, I think, was collecting lots of leaves to scatter over the bulbs to protect them from the winter frost.  They had so much fun in the garden and worked so well together.

Beautiful Poems inspired by that incredible fog Vancouver experienced

The Web

By Fynn

The glistening rain drop

looks like a silvery sea pearl

that settles on the silky thread that the spider creates

The silky web that glistens in the sunset

I love spider webs.

Shimmering Sparkle

By Elaine

Pretty web is shimmering.

Shimmering web, sparkle spider web.

Shimmering web sparkles in the sunlight.

Spider Webs

By Elliott

I love the way

the drops on the spider webs

look like diamonds,

It also looks like glimmering glass.

Spider Threads

By Jacob

Spider threads glisten in the sunlight

Watch what happens when sunset falls

Red and orange colours replace the white colour of the spider threads

The sunlight makes this happen like a colour dropper.

At night, it seems like it has no colour at all.

In the fog, it looks like Halloween.

Building 3-D maps of our bedrooms

Digging great holes

Working hard for our garden

Patterns are fun!

We've done lots of work with patterns.

Here is one student's work where she

states where her pattern starts, and how

it increases each time.  She also tells

you what manipulatives she used to

create her pattern.  I love the way she

used different coloured counters to show

us how the pattern was growing.

Help each other!

At the Annex, we expect our students to help each

other when adults are not available.  Here is a

beautiful example of an older student helping a

younger student sound out words during our writ-

ing time.  Sometimes kids need to be asked to help-

not in this case!

Foggy Fall

Fabulous Fog

I happened to be up on UBC campus today and

had to stop and take a picture of this amazing view. 

The fog has inspired division 4 to write some incred-

ible poems this week.  We took a break from class to 

sneak outside and study the fog's moisture clinging

to the many spider webs in the trees outside the school.

The webs are so delicate and intricate and as the wet

fog clings to each thread, it highlights these amazing

architectural feats of nature.  The poems need a little 

polishing before we publish them but it will be worth

the wait!  The students have been learning about using

"juicy, delicious" words and similes in their writing

and how using these devices in their writing can create 

vivid pictures in their readers' minds.  

Amazing Structure

Division 4 builds a newspaper Sukkah

Super Sukkah

Celebrating Sukkot in Division 4

Last week, Division 4 learned about the holiday called Sukkot, a cultural celebration to remember both the huts Jewish people built during the time of the harvest so that they could have shade at the sides of their fields and the 40 years of wandering in the desert after leaving Egypt.  Jennifer came in to our class and read us a story and then we both posed a challenge to the children-can you build a sukkah (a hut) out of nothing but newspapers and masking tape?  Well, not only did the students build an amazing creation, they also passed another challenge that Jennifer posed-will it survive the weight of 4 real branches?  It did!  Amidst much cheering, we served apple slices in the sukkah and every one of the children crawled in, enjoyed their apple, and left our sukkah standing.  It survived over night and then sadly, collapsed as we tried to move it to a new place in the classroom.  The most wonderful part of this event was watching all 23 of our kids work so beautifully together to create our structure.  They chatted while rolling their newspaper tubes.  They discovered that some of the tubes weren't strong enough and needed to be rolled more tightly.  They figured out that triangles are strong shapes.   They worked together to hold up sides and bottoms.  They discovered that a strong foundation was needed and so the big blocks were brought out to brace the bottom.  But best of all, they discovered that working as a team yields fantastic results.

Terry Fox in big blocks

Michelle and Chloe's Terry

Michelle and Chloe also worked very 

hard to represent Terry with the big

blocks.  Unfortunately I've cut off the

top of Terry's hair-they used 3 cones

to represent his hair.  Again, the team-

work and problem solving was lovely

to watch.  The girls started building and

then realized that their Terry wasn't

balancing very well on the carpet so they

decided that they needed something that

would provide a flat surface - they got

out more flat blocks and away they
went.

Terry Fox in big blocks

Terry Fox by Gabe, Christian, and Jayden

Gabe, Christian and Jayden built this amazing

structure to represent Terry Fox.  The teamwork

between the 3 boys along with the problem solv-

ing was lovely to witness.  Initially, the boys had

built Terry's 2 legs looking exactly alike.  When

I asked them how you could tell which leg was

his prosthetic leg, they started talking animatedly

about how they could do that.  Look carefully

and you can see how they solved their problem.

Terry Fox in paints

Terry Fox in plasticine

Terry Fox sculpture

Division 4: Representing Terry Fox

Division 4: Representing Terry Fox
Terry Fox was an amazing Canadian and it is an honour to teach about him and his accomplishments to our students each year.  I love the way we teach about Terry!  We gather all of our children together and share stories and DVD clips about his life.  We brainstorm ways that we can represent who he was and what he did.  And then they kids go off and create.  Their creations are extraordinary.  They paint, they draw, they colour, they build out of Lego and blocks and sculpt out of plasticine.

Representing Terry Fox

Sea crow

Sea crow

Sea crow

Sea crow

Sea crow

Our school does the most amazing field trip to start off the year.  We read a beautiful story, Sea Crow, by Vancouver author Shannon Stewart.  The book tells the story of Jessica who has many worries and how she deals with them.  With more and more children entering our school system with worries and anxieties, our staff felt that we needed to design some lessons that might help students deal with their worries.  After reading the book and designing our own sea crows on paper, we took the whole school to Spanish Banks beach to gather materials to build our own sea crows on the beach.  We then whispered our worries to the sculptures and let them blow away in the wind.  As one teacher told the children, "Sometimes it just helps to speak your worries out loud."