Apprendre en Faisant

On Tuesday, April 21, the grade 9 French class had the opportunity to attend "Apprendre en Faisant" (Learning by Doing) hosted by MATF (Manitoba Association of Teachers of French). Students chose four activities and participated in them while using their additional language, French. The facilitators spoke only French to the students and encouraged them to do the same. Most of the students were really nervous about speaking French, but all students did a fantastic job trying to use French as much as possible and listening carefully to understand all the instructions. The activities the students participated in included yoga, hip hop dancing, magic, karate, chocolate making, African drumming, art activity (making their own bags and wallets out of duct tape!). Tout le monde dit que c'était une journée amusante et valable! Ils ont hâte de participer l'année prochaine.

The Human Influence

We've been talking about Climate Change in Geography class in preparation for our discussion about our global food system and agriculture in general.  While doing some other research on this topic, I came across this site with some striking photographs and quotes about the human influence on the Earth's natural resources and our new "landscapes" that have emerged with energy use, deforestation, agricultural patterns and resource development.  There's some photos representing some of the issues we talked about during our Resources unit as well. It's called overpopulation, overconsumption - in pictures and it's worth taking a look.

"Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans."                      Jacques-Yves Cousteau

Earth Day 2015

Earth Day is celebrated every Spring on April 22 - it is the largest environmental event in the world. This year it is the 25th anniversary of Earth Day Canada. While I believe that we should celebrate Earth Day on the designated day in some way, we really should make "Earth Day Every Day". This year's Earth Day Canada theme is Clean Your Commute. Canadians are encouraged to use active transportation as much as possible between April 22 and May 22 (and beyond, of course!). This site offers ways to help find alternative options to carbon intensive transportation. Please, find your way to recognize the Earth and its precious resources. #EarthDay2015

Water is Life

As a followup to my World Water Day post, The David Suzuki Foundation comes through again for the Geography side of my teaching life with another fantastic blog post: "Water is life: We can't afford to waste it." A good read!

I've started becoming a regular reader and follower of dailyinfographic.com and there's usually something that I can use based on what is being taught in my classes. During Spring Break the infographic Where's all the water going? was posted and it is right in line with what we talked about during the Water Resources topic and what we will be discussing in the Food from the Land unit next week. 

It's so important to recognize our water usage, especially considering the situation in California right now, yet another issue we will discussing in the coming weeks in class.

Tree Hugging

During Spring Break I came across a timely article about the features of Manitoba's Boreal forest and "celebrating the natural value of an intact landscape". We were just learning about forestry in Canada in Geography class so I just wanted to share these features of Manitoba's boreal forest.