We have an invitation!

Thanks so much to the kids in 5A for the exhibition invitation. The design was bright and colorful and gave all of the information in English and in Spanish. Well done everyone! I've already had lots of people say how much they enjoyed seeing the invitation!

Miss Jessica

We have a title!

Well, you all did a great job voting! We had more than half the grade level give their vote for the title and "It's Right to be Us" won! Great job everyone!

Now that we have a title, who is ready to make an eye catching invitation to send to our guests?!

I'm looking forward to seeing the invitations!

Miss Jessica

Guest Speaker Workshops

We are so grateful to all of the parents and mentors who have helped us find even more guest speakers to come and help us find information for our inquiries about Children's Rights.

This week we have three workshops planned with guest speakers on specific topics related to inquiry groups in each of the classrooms.

Monday we had a psychologist come and discuss the affects on children when their rights are denied. In particular he focused on what happens when children are abused or discriminated against and what causes the abuse to occur.

On Wednesday we are going to have a judge come and discuss the effects on people when the rights of children are violated. She will be discussing laws that are already passed as well as ideas for laws that Chile needs to adopted to further the development of Children's Rights here in this country.

On Thursday we will have a visit from a representative from UNICEF who will speak with us regarding the role of UNICEF in general as well as here in Chile. He will focus on what his organisation does to preserve Children's Rights as well as ideas that they have to continue to educate others about Children's Rights in the future.

I encourage you to discuss what will be happening this week with your friends and family and develop some questions that you would like to ask these speakers. You can either ask the questions yourself if you are going to the workshop, or pass your questions to a student who is attending the workshop for your class.

Lastly, please feel free to leave any comments that you have about these speakers and their workshops. In particular, were they helpful? Why or why not? What could we do next year to make these workshops even more useful? Would you like more workshops or more whole level guest speakers? Who was the most helpful?

Looking forward to your comments!
Miss Jessica

Fantastic Guest Speakers!

Wow! What a week we had last week! We had three guest speakers visit us over the last week and a half. We have certainly been learning a lot about Children's Rights and the many ways they impact our lives.

We started with a visit from Saúl Schkolnik, author of a children's book on children's rights. Mr. Schkolnik entertained us with many different stories about when he was younger and writing his books as well as answered many questions that we had about why he wrote his books. Mr. Schkolnik reminded us to care about many things around us, children, the world, the environment, etc. It was great to meet such an important Chilean author!

Our second visitor was Maria Jose Lemaitre who works for the Ministry of Education. Ms. Lemaitre shared many different numbers and statistics about the state of education here in Chile. Most importantly, she highlighted the various requirements that schools have with respect to children's rights to education. It was great to gain a deeper understanding about our topic from the perspective of the government. We look forward to gathering more information from Ms. Lemaitre!

Our third visitor last week was Sergio Rodrígues Tramolao from the organisation called Opción. He gave a general overview of children's rights and connected that information to what has been happnening here in Chile since the adoption of the rights 20 years ago. In his discussion he highlighted what has been done in Chile and gave suggestions on what still needs to happen here to fulfill the goal of children's rights for all children in the country. He ended his presentation with a slide show with many different statistics about children in Chile and invited all the students to go to his organisation's website (http://www.opcion.cl) and enter or vote for the question that they are most interested in regarding children's rights. Voting on these questions is one way that students will be able to have a "voice" in the government because the results of the survey will be presented to the government at a later date. We are really looking forward to seeing Mr. Tramolao again this week for a special student workshop on children's rights and violence.

Please view the slideshow on the right for all of the pictures from our guest speakers!

I look forward to hearing your comments about our guest speakers and everything you learned during their presentations!

Miss Jessica

Guest Speakers this week!

Wow! We have two guest speakers coming this week to help you as you continue to focus your group on exactly what it is that you are interested in investigating for your exhibition project.

Tomorrow, we have Maria Jose Lemaitre, from the ministry of Education coming to talk briefly about the general idea of children's rights and specifically about the children's right to education here in Chile. To be prepared for this talk, take a few minutes to review the rights about education for children and think of some questions that you might like to ask. She will be visiting us first thing in the morning.

On Thursday, we have another guest speaker, Sergio Rodrígues Tramolao, from Opción which is a group dedicated to teaching others about children's rights here in Chile. This year, Opción is focusing specifically on violence against children and how we can all work together to stop it from continuing in the future. To prepare for this guest speaker, visit their website www.opcion.cl and find out more about the organisation and how they are trying to help. In addition, next week they are having a country wide poll where students are encouraged to submit and vote for questions about children's rights. After the poll closes, the questions that were most popular will be taken to the government on behalf of the children in Chile for discussion. What a great opportunity to be involved in something so important to kids your age! Please take a look with your family and discuss what you think. Be sure to post any comments that you have below!

Wow...I'm looking forward to hearing what you think about the guest speakers and posting some pictures on this site as well!

Miss Jessica

Title for Exhibition

Well...after reading a few comments from students we have a suggestion for a title for exhibition. There has been a request to consider the following as our title: It's Right to be Us!

What do you think? Is this what you would like us to use as the title for exhibition? If not, post your suggestion below!

Looking forward to your ideas,
Miss Jessica

We got it started!

Yesterday was the official opening to the exhibition! All the students went to the Little Gym to hear a welcome message from Miss Isabel and watch videos of the exhibition from the years 2007 and 2008. Two students from sixth grade also came to the assembly to answer questions from this year's grade five students. The questions were great and the sixth grade students really showed exactly how powerful and successful the exhibition is in their learning. It was a great assembly and everyone left excited and ready....to get it started!

Take a look at the slideshow of the pictures on the right hand side of the blog!

Miss Jessica

starting off!!!!

Nosotros nos sentimos muy nerviosos por hacer la exhibición porque podemos aprender muchas cosas nuevas y ver como viven otros niños, menos afortunados pero también estamos emocionados y motivados a seguir adelante en este proyecto.
5°B :).....

Online Resources for Children's Rights

Welcome back from winter vacations, everyone! Now that we're back, the real fun with exhibition starts! We are going to start investigating the topic more and more and really dig into what each of you finds the most interesting about Children's Rights and how you can take action on this topic.

To get started, there are lots of websites listed on the right hand side of the blog. I wanted to make sure you looked at two really good ones, however. The first is this website from the Chilean government which is really student friendly and uses cartoons to explain the rights of children here in Chile. Take a look by clicking here: Consejo Zona Niños

The second site is this great website from UNICEF which showcases cartoons that were made about each of the various children's rights that were agreed upon by the UN. They are great to watch and really explain what each right is all about. I posted one earlier about education when we first chose our topic. Here's another preview to get you interested:



Take a look at all of them by clicking here: UNICEF Cartoons ***This will link you to the UNICEF site on You Tube so please be sure to ask permission from your parents before you go out onto the web***

What did you think about them? I would love to hear if you liked them and what questions you have now that you have seen them.

Looking forward to your comments,
Miss Jessica

A Guest Speaker is Coming!

Yes, that's right!  We've found a guest speaker to come and discuss the topic of Children's Rights with the whole grade level.  We've organised for Saúl Schkolnik, a children's book author, to come and discuss the topic with you.  Mr. Schkolnik has written a book of stories about the rights of children.  (Click on the title of this post above to go to a link about his book.)

Below is some information about Mr. Schkolnik from the following website: http://www.biblioredes.cl/BiblioRed/Nosotros+en+Internet/escritores+de+san+felipe/SAÚL+SCHKOLNIK  

Saul Schkolnik

Nacido en 1929. Cuentista. Diversos premios. Sus obras han sido publicadas en España y Latinoamérica. Miembro de la IBBY-Chile. Está radicado en la zona de Aconcagua, hace varios años. Ejerce como profesor de Filosofía en el Colegio Alemán de San Felipe y Cervantino de Putaendo. Hace algunos años se ha transformado en vecino de Aconcagua.

He will be coming to speak to the grade level on Thursday 30 July at 2:00 pm.  To get ready for this guest speaker, visit the links above and think about some questions that you might like to ask him.  Some questions to think about are:  Why did he pick children's rights?  Where did he get the inspiration for each of the stories about the rights?  Does he think that children can make a difference at their young age?

I look forward to hearing your questions and meeting the author with you!

 

Miss Jessica 

We did it! We wrote our Central Idea!

Yesterday the students discussed with their class the concepts and knowledge that were found within the exhibition topic of children's rights. After their discussions, the students were encouraged to complete the application form in their journals to be part of the central idea writing team. Today the teachers chose 2-3 students from those who submitted applications to represent their class and sent them to the PYP coordinator to work on writing the central idea for the exhibition this year.

The students started writing the central idea by discussing the "big concepts" that were included under the topic of children's rights. This included ideas such as basic needs, education, freedom of expression, freedom of religion, happiness as a child, safety, etc. After gathering everyone's ideas, the students worked together to combine all of the important concepts into one broad statement that would be the central idea. They also discussed and debated the transdisciplinary theme that best fit the topic and central idea and agreed that Who We Are is the theme that was most appropriate this year. They felt very strongly that this was the best theme because the whole exhibition is going to be about them as children, which is what they are.

After writing the central idea the students worked together to rate it using a checklist for central ideas. When the central idea was checked and approved by everyone they copied it into their Exhibition Journals as the "official" central idea for the 2009 exhibition!

Central Idea

All children have the right to happiness, basic needs, and opportunities which need to be respected responsibly by families, communities, and governments.

The students did a great job and I was so impressed with their ideas and discussions. I can tell that this is going to be a GREAT exhibition with lots of really deep questioning and thinking this year!

What are your thoughts on the new central idea? Does it bring any questions to mind? How do you see yourself investigating this central idea?

Have a great winter break and I can't wait to investigate this further in two weeks!

Miss Jessica

Exhibition Topic Chosen!

Well, the wait is over! The grade five students picked their exhibition topic and it is Children's Rights. There are so many various ideas and actions that the students can follow! I think it is going to be a great topic and one that is going to be interesting and relevant to all the students of the grade level.

To start exploring this topic, view the videos with this post. These are two videos to get you thinking about Children's Rights and what might be included in this topic.





In addition, there are a few more links on the right hand side that you may want to explore about our new topic.

As always, have fun exploring, talk to others about what you are learning, and be sure to share what you're thinking through reflections and comments on this site.

Miss Jessica

exibition

Today we chose the Exhibiton topic for our level, our classe's was DISCRIMINATION. We voted and all the level chose Children's Rights that was 5D topic. We were upset that our topic didn't win but we are very exited to start EXHIBITION. 5B :)

Level Presentation of or Global issues and Exhibition vote

Today we chose the exhibition global issue. The exhibitin topic that we chose was children´s rights. We will be researching about this issue for the next 7 weeks. It wasn´t our class favorite global issue, but we will try to make an effort to motivate ourselves and show enthusiasm and work hard in our exhibition 2009.

Class 5A

Choosing our class topic

In this class we chose our class topic.The topics that you could choose were Animal Rights, Health (obesity, aids) ,Economy Crisis and Rasism.The topic who won was Health.We had a lot of fun this class !




Super 5A

Student interest discussions begin

Over this long weekend, students have been asked to look for and discuss local and global issues that are interesting to them. Students have already seen one website, facing the future, in class and there are two more on the right side of the blog for students to explore. (United Nations for kids and Global Issues for English Learners)

Remember, the most important part of looking for a topic that interests you is to discuss it with other people. Through your discussions you will see other people's points of view as well as develop your own opinions. Be sure to investigate many ideas, even those that may not seem interesting to you at first. You never know what you will find!

If you find something really interesting and want to share it with others...post a comment!

Have fun looking and exploring!

Miss Jessica

Parent Information Meeting

Today was the first meeting about the exhibition for 2009. We invited all the parents to come to a meeting about the exhibition and ask any questions that they had about the process for their child. There were about 25 parents at the meeting and we had great feedback from the parents who attended. Since the parents said that the information was useful, we are also posting the PowerPoint that we showed at the meeting on the school website. Click above on the title of this post to view PowerPoint from the Santiago College website.

I would like to take this moment to thank all of the parents for coming to the meeting and Miss Isabel, Lower School Principal, for her help in translating the workshop.

I think it is going to be a great exhibition this year and I look forward to working with all of the parents, students, and teachers!

Miss Jessica