Very Short Fiction Writing

Brandon Stewart Beyond the Classroom, English and Humanities No Comments

At the Academy, students are taking on the challenge of Very Short Fiction Writing. A skill of concise writing to convey plot, theme, mood, and character in the shortest possible formats. Creating a cohesive storyline has its own set of challenges, developing powerful characters can be very tough, and building a theme and mood into a piece of literature is a difficult skill. Trying to do it all in a single page? Now that takes skill. The real challenge though: can you do it in only 6 words?

This is the question that was asked of the Grade 10 English class this Spring. They took on the task of creating meaningful stories in a single page, and the advanced mission of creating a story within the limit of only 6 words. The stories ranged from tragic, to comedic, to dramatic, to romantic.

What’s stopping you from testing your creativity? Try it out. You can use the examples created by the talented Grade 10 English Class to inspire you. 6-Word Stories, and Very Short Stories are a unique way to develop fictional narratives within hard limits.

The Future of Food in Human Geography

Brandon Stewart Beyond the Classroom, English and Humanities No Comments

 

Recently Academy Middle School students explored an important question facing our world: How will we feed a population of 10 Billion people, with less farmland than today, by the year 2050?

To answer this question, Grade 7 and 8 students brainstormed the factors that influence farming from increasing profits, to the types of machinery available, to the quality of soil, to the conditions of the climate. They then discussed what impacts farming has on the environment, communities, supply chains to cities, and our health.

As city-dwellers, the complicated lives and concerns of farmers around the world has been a distant thought, but the question of how to feed the world as populations grow will be important to everyone in the next 30 years.

To explore this question further, we journeyed through the next 30 years of farming in the online Farm Simulation Journey 2050

The simulation puts students in control of farms in Canada, India, and Kenya, with the ability to make decisions around watering fields, expanding into more farmland, developing fertilizers, infesting in new and innovative equipment, funding public programming, and helping to develop more sustainable communities. Each player’s choices impact sustainability factors from Water Protection and Habitat Preservation, to Job Creation and Health Promotion. The goal is to achieve the greatest level of sustainability that balances the needs of our planet, the economy, food production, and community development.

The game is challenging, informative and fun, and has given deeper insights into the challenges that will face our world, and food producers over the next three decades. As young people with bright ideas, the Academy Middle School Geography students will play a role in how food security develops between now and 2050. The game also includes a level where questions about skills, and interests lead to connections to and information about careers, and future opportunities. Students are matched with potential careers that could help them to build new understandings, innovations, and policies around future food security for a more sustainable world.

Pitching New Food in the Lunchroom!?

John Cuthbert Beyond the Classroom, Healthy Living No Comments

 

Learning at home means that students have lots of opportunities to learn more about the nutrition habits they and their families have. After learning about the big ideas from the new Canada Food Guide, how to use an Eat Well Plate to create and analyze healthy meals and researching nutritional information for specific foods, students demonstrated their learning by imagining that they were pitching a recommendation for a new food provided in the YMCA lunch room.

The products of this project ranged from posters, to slide shows and written reports; with one student even being featured in a corporate Instagram post on pizza-dough-making!

Virtual Worlds: The Great Wall Initiative

Andras Nagy Beyond the Classroom, Community No Comments

 

As of this week there is an abundance of personal homes, gardens, farms, mines, industrial areas, and road networks built by students. When we first created this virtual world we had disabled “monsters” or ‘mobs’ as they are called in the Minecraft community (A mob is a living, moving game entity. The term “mob” is short for “mobile”). These creatures offer an element of adventure and challenge but often can be overwhelming for new players as they have to learn both the building, creating and crafting aspect of the game, alongside survival and fighting off potential monsters and creatures in the wild.

Now that everyone is well situated, has a home, and equipment crafted for survival, hunting and protection several students in the community were advocating for mobs to be turned back on in the world for making adventures exciting and unpredictable as well as to be able to harvest rare materials needed for more advanced building. There were also those students that did not want Monsters enabled as they like having a sense of safety and not having to constantly be on guard and to put their creations at risk, etc.

Both positions had very valid points! After discussing the issue with the entire community last week, we all agreed to a compromise, and our first community project was born – The Great Wall Initiative. We agreed that before we re-enable mobs we will need to secure our communities, towns and homes, therefore we decided to build walls and gates around all areas we wish to be secured from Monsters.

This way we can achieve:

  • Community Safety inside the borders of towns
  • Adventure and Risk outside the borders.

Students have been coordinating how and where to build wall segments, different designs for walls, using different materials to keep out different creatures, (for example jumping spiders!)

Some excerpts from our Minecraft Google Classroom:

“I would really appreciate it if some of you would help me get some stone bricks for the village walls. Then put them in the chest that I made, so that I can use it to either start making the wall tonight or tomorrow. Depending on how much you guys help me, i could finish in 2-3 days. If you guys don’t help we might have to wait until next week for mobs since it is going to take a while to make the amount of stone brick I need for the wall.

Also, I know cobblestone would be easier, but I personally think that stone brick looks better.”
– Jack S.

“I and Oliver are offering to make walls around your houses so we can get mobs back easier, if you are interested, please leave a comment under this post about it.
You can also be specific of how big you want it to be”
– Fionn B.

As of today, many of the student built communities and houses have walls and gates protecting them from the wilderness, once we finish the entire project we will re-enable monsters in the world to create a new sense of excitement and adventure, as venturing outside the walls will now have an element of risk, where players will need to carefully think of supplies they will need, and rely on each other for safety.

Check back again next week to see how this new phase of our Virtual World has evolved!

Writing for Change: Advocacy Letters

Katie Freeland Beyond the Classroom, Community, English and Humanities No Comments

Students learning to write Advocacy letters during social distancing

Over the past years, Academy students have been known for making their voices heard in both the school and in the broader community. Whether it’s the Civics class organizing a walkout in support of a current, relevant health curriculum, or several students from our school speaking from the podium at Toronto’s first youth climate rally, they have shown themselves to be eager advocates for their communities, and for a better future.

Of course, there are fewer opportunities to get involved in community action under the circumstances, but students in the literacy skills class have been doing just this by writing thoughtful, persuasive advocacy letters to various leaders and decision-makers. This is not my first year assigning and preparing students for this task, and each time I love to learn what issues matter to them. There is always such a diversity of ideas! Here are just some of the (student-chosen) topics this year:

  • why we should do more to combat racism
  • homelessness and affordable housing in Toronto
  • neighbourhood traffic safety
  • the importance of art, music, and physical education in schools
  • funding for autism services
  • the need for more library branches

In writing their letters, students are learning not only to express and support their opinions in organized paragraphs, but also to write for a real, authentic audience. Moreover, they are learning that literacy skills are not just for school or for getting a job, but can be powerful tools for bringing about positive change. And especially right now, it’s my hope that we can equip them with more of these.