This week and next we will be reading through the Slinki Malinki series by Lynley Dodd. These books star a rascally and mischievous cat named Slinky Malinki.
Your activity this week: Listen to the three stories and then draw your own picture of Slinki getting into trouble or write your own short story about the mischief that Slinki gets into. Extra points if your story is rhyming like the books! If you want to share, send them to b.ruel@theojcs.ca
When you are given a topic (or subject) for a research paper, what’s the first place you look for information? How do you search?
HU if you have an answer!
Even though Google is really good at understanding what you are looking for when you type in or ask a long question, lots of websites you will search are not so good at dealing with a long sentence and too many words. Google and other sites do not need you type a long question in order to get the most specific information for your project. They just match the most important words in your search with the websites that best match those words. So the key to finding the information that will be really specific to what you are looking for is keywords. This is easy to remember, just think THE KEY IS KEYWORDS!
Keywords are the most important words in your search. Here is an example. I am doing a project on Tigers and I need to know how much they weigh. Instead of typing in the question; how much do tigers weigh? I can just type in the keywords.
How much do tigers weigh? — KEYWORDS: Tigers Weight
Here is another example.
How many teeth does an adult tiger have? — KEYWORDS: Tigers teeth
I get my results like magic!!
What if I just want a page of information all about Tigers? I would type in a very easy easy keyword: just TIGERS or TIGER FACTS.
We are all going to open up a new tab next to this meeting and try this out for ourselves using the following questions. Try and figure out how to run your search with just TWO important keywords per question.
Example 1: My dog is digging in the backyard. Why is it doing this?
Example 2: My friend just cheated at chess. What are the rules?
Example 3: Who is the author of the Amulet graphic novel series?
Now sometimes to get the best keywords we need to change a word around. For the next example, does anyone know what the word is for how much money someone makes in a year?
Example 4: How much money does Justin Trudeau make per year?
If your essential question for your research project is a bit longer, you will need extra keywords in your search. Here is an example of an essential question that my daughter came up with for her Genius Hour project. In order to get great results, she will need more than two keywords.
Example 5: How do professional photographers take such great portraits?
Her Keywords: tips for portrait photography OR professional photography tricks for portraits
Remember, sometimes it will take more than one try and sometimes it will take lots of searches with many different keywords to get the best results. The good thing is, you can try as many times as you need to until you find exactly what you are looking for!
Kid-Friendly Search Engines
We want to find information that is written for kids to use, not big long complicated websites that we struggle to understand. That is why there are some really excellent kid-friendly search engines that will get us the best results for our project.
Keeping Track of Your Sources
As you go, keep a list of the websites and books you use. This information could be the last page of your project. That page is called a BIBLIOGRAPHY. It lets your teacher know where you found your information. As you get older you will need to do this in a proper, structured way. But in earlier grades, keeping a simple list of books and websites you use is enough. If the webpage address is very long, it might be hard to type out, which is why we can use copy and paste to copy the URL (the address.)
Here is how you do it;
Double click on the webpage URL in the address bar.
Click ‘copy’
On your bibliography page click ‘paste’
Done!!
Now you have some basic research skill techniques that will make doing any research project easier!
Lower Grades Digital Citizenship Lesson for the week of June 1st
When friends or classmates are mean at school, we know what that looks like…
making fun of how you look or what you wear
not letting you play with them
spreading rumours or lies about you that aren’t true
sharing personal information about you (gossip) to hurt your feelings or embarass you
insult you for how good or not good you are at something
We also know how bad that kind of meanness makes us feel…
Even though the internet can be a super fun place to spend our time, the same kind of meanness and bullying can happen when we are there too. CYBERBULLYING is what you call bullying or meanness that is online.
The way it looks online is…
being mean to other players in a video game
posting rude comments on other people’s webpages, photos, or videos
posting and sharing embarrassing or mean photos of someone online
excluding someone from participating online
These things make us feel just like we did with real life bullying…
Sometimes people are meaner online than in real life, because if you were with the person in real life, they would be able to see how bad you felt about their behaviour. Online they aren’t seeing how you are reacting to what you they are saying (example crying), and that makes people think less about the impact of what they are doing.
Here is a short video that shows an example of cyberbullying and what you can do about it.
In the video the girl talks to her parents who talks to her teachers and they put an end to the cyberbullying. It is really important to tell a trusted adult about cyberbullying if it is happening to you. They can help you to figure out what to do about it and how to stop it.
Another way to be a great digital citizen online is to stand up to cyberbullying when you see it happening to someone else. This is called being an UPSTANDER. Tell your friend who is being bullied how great you think they are. Tell the bully that mean comments are unwelcome. Or tell a trusted adult about your friend being bullied.
And finally, there are buttons on websites that say BLOCK and REPORT ABUSE.
BLOCK means that you have the ability to block somebody from being able to see or comment on your account.
REPORT ABUSE is a way to tell the website or game owner that someone is misbehaving on the site.
Never use these buttons as a joke because they are permanent and can’t be undone.
Now you know how you can stand up to cyberbullying and be a great digital citizen.
YOUR ASSIGNMENT:
In the comments on this page, write about a time that you experienced cyberbullying or saw it happen to someone else. If you haven’t seen examples of this, write about one thing you will do if it happens to you or to a friend.
This game turns you into a pizza delivering superstar. You will need to use empty pizza boxes or regular empty boxes you can pretend are pizza boxes. You can draw and cut out some paper pizzas to put in the box just to make it extra special. Get a parent or sibling to time you. You will only have 5 minutes to deliver a pizza box to each room in your house! If that is too easy, reduce the amount of time to just a few minutes. Race the clock to deliver the pizzas. Your dolls or stuffies could be your customers. To make this a money game, you could even make change for your customers with play money to make it a bit of a math challenge.
Charli D’Amelio needs no introduction and in this video she talks about a huge issue of concern to everyone, cyberbullying. We are online more now than ever. And with new social media apps and games, comes more and more opportunity to comment on strangers videos and posts and even send them DMs. Opening up our ability to communicate with new people around the world brings with it a lot of responsibility. The types of comments we are posting online say much more about us than they do about the person we are commenting on.
Cyberbullying can take many forms. A few of them are;
Trolling – The kind of bullying Charli and Dixie talk about in the video is getting hateful comments. This is called trolling. Trolls often target the same people over and over. It is important to report and block trolls when you notice them becoming a problem.
Masquerading – Someone sets up a fake profile just so that they can bully others anonymously. This is an extremely cowardly kind of bullying that makes the bully harder to catch and report.
Outing or doxing – sharing private or personal information about someone else without that person’s permission and usually to cause humiliation and shame. This can include information about or private photos and videos of that person.
Exclusion – leaving a person out of online groups or hangouts, or intentionally posting comments or photos in which a friend is excluded. This can seem like a passive form of bullying but has serious consequences on self-esteem.
Dissing – Everyone now knows about the popularity of diss tracks. But by supporting diss tracks and other forms of dissing, you are supporting bullying and spreading hate. Dissing is an attempt to ruin another person’s reputation and is often founded on false information or deliberate lies about a person.
Cyberbullying is a difficult and mostly unavoidable aspect of living a good part of our lives online. Building resilience (or a thick skin) is one way of coping with this problem. Knowing that it isn’t about YOU, it is about the person trying to hurt you. They can be feeling jealous, they may have a bad home life, they may be trying to win followers through meanness, they might be insecure. It is not that there is something wrong with you personally. And always talk about this issue with a trusted relative or teacher if things are bad. They can help you figure out some next steps.
Watch this video and post in the comments if you’ve used any of these ways to stop a cyberbully before.
In a superhero movie, you often see the superhero killing or hurting the bad guys and you feel happy about it. Your good guy is winning the fight or saving the world, right? But if the movie was real life, what would happen if a good guy hurt or killed a bunch of people (even if they were bad!) Would the good guy get arrested? Would he have to go to court? Maybe go to jail? How would he feel about what he had done?
Movies, tv shows, and video games do a really good job of helping us to forget about the real world for a little while by telling us an exciting story. But it is easy to forget that the way violence happens in the media isn’t the way violence happens in real life. In real life, the consequences of violence are very serious!!
In school, if we pretend to be Spider-man and punch our friend because we are pretending he is Venom, what would happen to us? How much trouble would we be in, from our parents and our teachers?
QUESTIONS – Choose just ONE to answer in the comments on this blog page
1.In video games you are often shooting or fighting other players to try to defeat them. This is how you win the game.
What would happen if you used violence to win something in real life?
2. Every action movie seems to have have a crazy car chase, car explosion, or car crash scene.
In real life what would happen if there was a big crash like this on the road or highway?
3. In superhero movies the hero always kills a whole lot of villains and bad guys.
In real life what would happen to someone who did these things?
4. In video games and movies when people get shot or injured they bounce right back and keep fighting.
In real life what happens if you get seriously hurt?
Part 2 – Violence and Our Feelings
Here is a very violent scene from a movie you’ve all probably seen, Beauty and the Beast.
Watch this scene and then pay close attention to how it makes you FEEL. Does it make your chest get tight? Your heart race fast? Your stomach turn? Did you close your eyes? All of these feelings and reactions are your body feeling stress from what you are seeing, and it is important that we learn to notice these kinds of feelings. I know that watching things that are violent make me nervous and it’s hard for me to sleep at night when I watch them, so I avoid them. That is an easy solution. Another solution is to remember that what we are seeing in movies, tv, and video games is not real. That can be very reassuring to remember. The people are actors. Writers have written everything that happens in the story. In this clip Gaston and the Beast are just drawings made by artists.
If something that you’ve seen really bothers you, always talk to your parents about it. They can have helpful advice for handling those feelings.
Next time you notice violence in media, remember that it is made to entertain people but is a far cry from how things are done or should be done in the real world. It is important that we always use our words and not our fists to solve problems in the real world.
Hilde Cracks The Case – Hero Dog by Hilde and Matthew Lysiak, illustrated by Joanne Lew-Vriethoff
Your assignment
After the last chapter of the book I explain how you would write your own short news article. Try your hand at it. It could be about anything that is ‘newsworthy’ at your house or in your neighbourhood. I am attaching a template you can print and use if you want something that looks even more like a real newspaper page. Or you can create a Google Doc of your article. Share your finished doc or a photo of the printed news page with me at b.ruel@theojcs.ca
Whenever you visit a new site, you will most often get a message notifying you that the site uses cookies. Sometimes it will give you an option to choose to continue with cookies or not. You may have felt very confused about what a cookie was… is it a good thing or a bad thing? Could it harm my computer or device?
Or maybe you were talking about something with your device near at hand, and then noticed an ad for something connected to what you were talking about an hour later. Coincidence? Not at all. This video explains how and why this happens, and what exactly a cookie is.
Your Assignment:
After watching the video, I want you to pair up with a friend who you share often with on social media. Imagine you are trying to collect data from each other’s information to target them with ads. What can you find out about your friend that would help you target products to them? Example: I notice that my friend is always posting photos of her dog online. If I were an advertiser, I would target her with ads for fancy dog toys, furniture, and biscuits. She often comments about how much she misses her family in Israel. I would target her with ads for chat products like Houseparty, Zoom, etc… See how many you can come up with. Write them in a Google Doc and submit to b.ruel@theojcs.ca
By now you are all amazing digital citizens when you’re online; you protect your private information, you don’t post mean comments on other people’s blogs, photos, or videos. You are careful about the websites you visit and you balance your time online. Now let me ask you this…
Do you remember to be a good digital citizen while you’re gaming?
What I mean by that is, when you are playing a game online like Roblox, Fortnite, or other games where you interact with other players online, are you remembering your online safety and digital citizenship rules?
Scenario 1:
You are playing a game in which players can chat with one another and you make a new friend. This friend starts asking you personal questions like ‘what school do you go to?’ and ‘what’s your address?’
What do you do?
Answer: It is great to make new friends online, but we still need to make sure and always protect our personal information. Don’t tell strangers where you live, what school you go to, personal passwords, your full name, etc… It is never safe to share this kind of information online.
Scenario 2:
During a game you notice one character won’t leave you alone. They are continuously attacking your player or making rude comments to you in chat. You really want to be mean back but you are afraid to get reported and blocked.
What do you do?
Answer: Don’t retaliate (i.e. be rude back.) Just report the players behaviour to the game and show your parents or teachers. These kind of players will end up getting blocked (kicked-out permanently) from the game. Better them and not you. After reporting them, log out for a while and try again later.
Scenario 3:
You have been playing a game for over an hour and you still can’t beat a certain level. You notice your anger level spiking really high. Your little brother keeps coming in your room and distracting you and you want to yell at him because it’s his fault you can’t beat the level.
What do you do?
Answer: It is important that we notice how our emotions are being affected by the games we are playing. If we are starting to feel angry, frustrated, rageful, and irritated, that is an indication that you have played long enough. That is your body’s way of telling you you’ve had enough screen time. Turn off the device and go outside to play if you can. Nothing clears away those bad feelings faster than fresh air. And bring your little brother with you to play! He was only bothering you because he wanted a bit of attention too! When next you play the game you will be playing with a clear head and have a much better chance of beating that level.
Here is a video where you can see some of these online scenarios in play.
Your assignment:
Play a video game (Yes, you heard right. Make sure you have permission of course!) While you play, notice and write down a few examples of some of the positive and some of the negative interactions you have with other players. If your game doesn’t involve other players online, just write down some positive or negative feelings you experience while playing (having fun, getting frustrated, fighting with your brother etc…) Then you will post your observations in the comments on this page. It will be interesting to see what we all experience.
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