Sharing in the 100 Word Challenge

In 6HU, we are habitual participants in the 100 Word Challenge, a global writing challenge that develops writing skills in students by asking them to respond to a stimulus in only 100 words. This is indeed a challenge sometimes, as it can be difficult to frame our ideas into such a small amount of words. Similarly, some students can find reaching 100 words without ‘waffling’ the real challenge.

Usually, the challenge stimulus is a picture or a phrase. These really allow the students to develop ideas around a theme and apply their writing skills to the task. Every week, we will frame our responses with whatever our focus has been in the classroom for writing or grammar. For example, we might all incorporate direct speech into our responses, or perhaps the focus will be on the use of adjectives. Some students like to try incorporating their spelling list words into their responses, while keeping the meaning of their writing relevant.

This week, the prompt was not a picture or a phrase, but rather an introduction to a concept. This concept was that of sharing, and can be seen here. The contrasting nature of the images brought to mind by an Ethiopian child with the description of the child’s actual reality was one that took some of us some time to get past. This boy did not seem to live in poverty, or want for food, but our preconceptions led us to assume that he would be. In fact, he was being held up as an example of the joy to be gained from sharing what we have with others. These mixed feelings that the prompt elicited in us, held us back as we began our writing.

Despite that fact we had been given the instruction of beginning our responses with “If we share…” a lot of us were unsure of what to write, as more often than not, our responses are narrative based and this seemed to require something quite different. Using a variation of a Y-Chart, we unpacked the concept of sharing, examining what it meant to share as well as some of the more abstract uses of the word; share a meal, share a decision, share an experience.

In the end, everyone was very pleased with what they came up with. We will not highlight any individual posts here, as we feel everyone did very well, so we are listing them all. We would really value your comments about how we have chosen to represent a concept through our writing.

Billy, Harry, Jack, Henri, Ellaina, Charlotte, Paris, DiHan, Chris, Thomas, Scott, Cooper, Emily, Nathan, Laura, Alyshia, Henry, Eva, Cody, Henny.

 

Building our understanding

Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

In 6HU, we are aware that learning is an ongoing process. It is not a case of the teacher telling us something, and us remembering it. We continually build on what we have discovered, creating our own meaning over time. We are showcasing this trait this week, by sharing our learning journey on the topic of cyberbullying. We reflected on a post we made last week, and expanded on those initial thoughts. Some of us chose to make this elaboration more meaningful by presenting using audio or video.

Here is a selection of links from our class:

Maggie

Ellaina

Billy

Chris

Henny

 

 

Fake Book

Your Humanities task this week is to make a ‘FakeBook‘ account for your ingenious thinker.

You will need to pick appropriate ‘events’ from your thinker’s life and make them the posts. How others reacted to these events will be comments for these posts.

Think about what sort of information your thinker would want to share with the world if they lived in an era of social networking. What would they keep secret? Who would they be friends with?

Have fun… and post the link to your post as a comment!

 

Creative Commons

We had a good discussion about copyright and creative commons from watching these videos…

and this one from the Creative Commons website.

Please write a post on your blog under the ‘Digital Citizenship’ category and post the link here. You need to describe what you understand by Creative Commons and include an appropriately sourced image.

Digital Citizenship Reflections – Geo Tagging

Access this site and explore. Consider the benefits and dangers of geo-tagging. Write a reflection on what you discover and post it on your blog. Comment on this post with the URL from your blog. Consider these questions when writing your review;

1. What have you learnt about Geo-tagging? Discuss the benefits ad dangers associated with geo-tagging.

2. Write a response to the Wise Up To It Video: Jeremy’s Friend. What lessons can be learnt from Jeremy’s experience?

3. In your reflection please consider any lessons we have had this week that have added to your understanding or our Unit of Inquiry “Digital Citizenship”.

Happy Blogging!

 

PS Please note this is a DIFFERENT task from the weekly individual inquiry posts based on this and Lauren’s Ordeal.