Happy Easter and Happy April Fool's Day! I don't have the energy or inspiration to create a fake post (although I'm sure there will be plenty online; save them if you want to teach about lateral reading and verifying information).
The topic for today's post is based on how I've noticed some additions have crept into my schedule. "Crept" probably isn't the right verb to describe it, as I'm the one that's inserted them.
There are only three months left in this school year and I am about to launch several new spring clubs. A couple of other clubs are relatively new as well. I peeked at my blog and saw that I ran similar clubs in 2019 before the pandemic blew everything out of the water.
Here's a list of the clubs that are just about to start:
1) Ukulele Club
My first attempt to run Ukulele Club was last year. I'm not an expert by any means. I was fortunate last year to have several Grade 8 students with a lot of ukulele experience and they helped a lot. This year, we have a smaller number of students signed up but I'll have a second adult with me - the kind and talented Mrs. Thess Isidro. She is self-taught, thanks to YouTube videos, and she even owns her own ukulele! We will see if we learn enough to compile a song for the spring concert in May.
2) Rubik's Cube Club
I have never run Rubik's Cube Club ever before, and for good reasons - I have no clue how to solve a Rubik's Cube! However, I offered to organize and supervise it as long as I had help from a fantastic fan. Andy graduated last year from our school. He is in Grade 9 at the local high school and told me that he'd be willing to help students learn about the techniques for solving this puzzle cube. We had 34 students indicate interest and 12 bring back their permission forms. Andy and any of his high school friends that he brings to assist will earn volunteer hours for their time and effort.
These are the clubs that just started recently that I'm involved with:
1) Board Game Club
I love playing board games. When I ran a version of this club in 2018, each group only had a month (or four sessions) to gather and play. Heck, staff members enjoy playing games too! This time around, this club was formed by invitation-only, for reasons related to our Specialist Teacher Professional Learning Community focus for the year. My partner in crime Renee Keberer and I co-run it with ten participants in the junior division. We've met twice so far. During our first session, we played The Game of Things. In our second session, we played Imagine. Here are some photos from our recent Imagine game. I was really impressed by the players. One is of the topic "Jobs" and the other is "Art and Literature". Can you guess what the visuals are supposed to represent?
(The answers are "plumber" and "Moby Dick". Yes, some of our students know about Moby Dick.)
2) Primary Robotics Club
Matthew Malisani and I started this club in February. He deserves all the credit for what goes on during these Mondays at lunch. I offer the space and support. He brings the robots and plans the activities. We average about a dozen regulars from Grades 2-3 who have built their own joystick controllers with Makey Makey circuit boards and programmed with Dash robots. Take a look at some of these photos that I took of our little engineers in action!
These are the clubs that I have not yet started but will begin once I'm done with all of my Forest of Reading chats. (For the record, I conducted 65 chats in January 2024, 91 chats in February 2024, and 64 chats in March 2024. I want to try and exceed my "score" from 2023, when I held 239 chats in total. I beat my January and February numbers, and fell short of my March 2023 number by 3. I'll need to keep up my chat count if I want to surpass last year, as April 2023 was my highest figure.)
1) Forest of Reading Quiz Bowl
We already have nine schools signed up and a location selected! My school won the non-fiction competition last year, so they are eager to try and make it two in a row.
2) Red Maple Marketing Team
A team from my school also won this event last year as well. Two of the Grade 8s have already read over 30 of the titles from this year's Forest of Reading roster, so until we launch the Red Maple competition, they are helping to do some chats (under supervision, so they aren't handing out signatures on Forest of Reading passports too freely).
Why is there such a plethora of new clubs? I can suggest a few reasons. The end of the year is within sight, and many of us want to squeeze in some extra opportunities for our students before the school year ends. As I alluded to earlier, our Specialist Teacher PLC is focused on how extra curricular clubs and teams can benefit our students. We are forming some of these clubs with specific goals in mind. The primary and junior division students do not have as much clubs available for them to join as the intermediate division students do. Part of my efforts is to alter this inequity. For reasons I won't elaborate on here, fewer staff members are able to run clubs at our school. Some of the educators who do run clubs regularly have very time-intensive clubs they operate, so it's hard for them to add to their plates. (Some of the other clubs that occur at our school include, but are not limited to: Crochet Club, the Huddle Up Crew, Eco-Club, Recycling Team, Student Council, Fitness Club, and the Swifties Club.) It's important to remember that clubs are optional for teachers to run. It's not part of our designated duties. (I like the quote I saw online recently that said something like "Teaching is the only profession that if you do exactly what you are contracted to do, that counts as job action.") Whatever the reasons, whatever the clubs ... I hope students enjoy these offerings coming up!
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