Wednesday, April 22, 2015

Girl Issues: Child Marriage

*Reminder: these posts are written by the class as a shared writing activity.  The words and sentence structures are their own thoughts.  (They impress me all the time.)

Girl Issues

We have been working on a big project for a teacher program called TakingITGlobal.  This project focus' on social justice.  As a class we decided to take action on a problem which is occurring in some parts of the world.  The problem we are addressing is child marriage.  Child marriage is when children, mostly girls, are married at a young age.  As a result girls are being made to drop out of school, and have babies when they are still children themselves.  Many girls die during childbirth or develop health problems such as Fistula. Fistula is a problem with your bladder.  See video below from becauseiamagirl.ca.


We are holding a pink lemon-aid fundraiser; the money raised will go to the Because I Am a Girl organization.  The assembly will inform the school about child marriage, and the fundraiser.  There is a group writing and producing a PSA (public service announcement) about this issue.  They are hoping to show it at our assembly, but are not sure it will be ready in time.  There is a group that has written a pitch for our action to share with teachers to inform them about what our class is doing and how our class is taking initiative.
Picture of our silence sense poetry

On April 16th we participated in the Free the Children Day of Silence.  We wrote sense poetry about silence, and posted them on a wall outside of our classroom.  In the afternoon we watched Girl Rising.  Two chapters in the film were about child marriage.  It really surprised some students how un-affectionate some parents could be to their daughters.

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

The Busy March


We have had a busy March.  It started with a trip to Kearney, and ended with our trip to Forest Valley.  The grade 4/5/6's all finish large and small science projects.  The grade 4's researched and designed a habitat for a Giant Sea Bass.  The grade 5's researched the effects of radiation on the body, and the grade 6's designed and built a waterfront area that meets the needs of the community and promotes biodiversity.

All month we worked on organizing our clothing drive.  We collected 2.5 bins worth of clothes.  We feel a bit disappointed because it did not meet our expectations.  We were hoping that we would get more donations from students and the neighbourhood.  We think that next time we try something like this, we might collect more if we make it a competition.  Although we did not collect as much as we wanted, we are glad that we were able to support Goodwill in a small way.


Upcoming Events:

  • Earth hour Saturday March 28th from 8:30-9:30 pm
  • EQAO Parent Information Night April 1st
  • International Day of Pink Wednesday April 8th
  • 'We are Silent' April 16th 
  • Science and STEM fair in May
  • EQAO is in the end of May
  • PanAm school event in June