The End of an Era

After nearly 220,000 hits, readers in every country on the planet, mentions in global media, nominations for awards and recognition from  teachers and students worldwide… 6SS@NIST is shutting down. The reasons behind this are to do with every class in the school having blogs that look the same and every class in the school having blogs with similar URL addresses. The 6SS blog can now be found here:
http://blogs.nist.ac.th/6ss/
.

This blog has had an amazing effect on my teaching over the past three years and it has led to some amazing experiences for my students and I:

• the students telling us about the fires, explosions, riots and general violence surrounding their homes two years ago:
  http://6ssatnist.wordpress.com/2010/05/19/what-has-your-day-been-like/
  
• the amazing philosophical thinking in the Sponge vs. Stone postings:
  http://6ssatnist.wordpress.com/?s=sponge+stone
  
• the “essays” that students wrote as comments in response to Angela Maier’s article about Mallory Fundora ( and Mallory’s comments herself)
  http://6ssatnist.wordpress.com/2012/03/13/homework-read-think-share/
  
  
• The students reactions to Robyn Treyvaud’s presentation about online safety and then Robyn’s reaction to their comments:
  http://6ssatnist.wordpress.com/2010/02/12/reacting-to-robyn-treyvaud/#comments
  
• The advice that 6SS students gave to students at Mt. Scopus Memorial College as they prepared for their first PYP Exhibition:
  http://6ssatnist.wordpress.com/2010/06/09/advice-for-other-year-6grade-5-students/
  

Blogging has helped my students and I by:

• Giving us a place to react to and think about things at any time, and from anywhere
• Allowing us to express ourselves without being interrupted or told we’re wrong
• Allowing us to develop our thinking in a way that was not really possible before
• Giving us a place to share our interests, our creativity and our ideas
• Giving us an audience of real people who would read and respond to our writing
• Connecting us with other people
• Giving us a way to make homework more fun and more connection to what we do in class
• Giving us the possibility to do “online learning” when it was not possible to come to school
• Helping us to stay in touch during holidays

What effect did 6SS@NIST have on you?

Wear House Shirts Tomorrow

Wear your house shirts tomorrow…OK?

Your homework is below this posting.

Homework: What does this mean

Read this quote and then make a comment to answer these questions:

• What does this quote mean to you?
• What “pebble” are you tossing into the world?
• How are you hoping to inspire people?

Children of the Forest

Here is a message from Ms. Teresa and Ms. Jennilea… both of whom could be your teachers next year!

“Thank you for joining us at the Y9 service fair for Children of the Forest last Friday. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did and that your students learned a bit more about the organization as well as had a bit of late Friday afternoon fun. Below is a video recapping the event if you’d like to share it with your students.”

Why is this a good presentation?

What makes this a good presentation? What does he do well? Could you do this?

PYP Exhibition: Checkpoint#1

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This afternoon was fantastic. You guys really nailed it, and your parents were an outstanding audience and brought so much knowledge and so many new perspectives and ideas into the Exhibition process. I am so glad that I had my Nikon camera with me today because I think it has helped me capture the atmosphere in the room this afternoon.

Share the photos with your parents, and if you want a high-quality copy of any of the photos you can download them from our Flickr account.

Stress in your lives at the moment

Ms. Ashley ran a session on stress with you today. What were the main things you got from it? What did it make you think about? What strategies did you pick up?

Walking the Talk

As I was leaving school today, I found Aryan collecting rubbish that people had left in the playground and oval.

This is a classic example of the kind of thing we are looking for in the PYP Exhibition – students finding a spark that is highly relevant to their lives, showing that they take it very seriously and taking action to try and do something about it.

Well done, Aryan.

Does anyone have any other examples of Year 6 students already starting to “walk the talk”?

Homework: The role of trust in your life

Write a comment to tell us about where trust fits into your life. In your comment, try and answer the following questions:

• Do you believe you are a trustworthy person?
• Who do you think really trusts you?
• How do you know that people trust you?
• How does being trusted have a positive impact on your life?
• How can you earn more trust from people?
• How can the PYP Exhibition effect the trust people have in you?

Homework: Connectors

The third circle in the diagram I made for Checkpoint #1 is all about making connections, all about finding out who else is interested in or taking action on issues related to your spark.

Your homework tonight is to do some in-depth research to find out:

• If anyone else in 6SS or in Year 6 has a spark that is similar to yours (Twitter/Facebook/Email/face-to-face)
• If anyone else in the school is interested in or taking action on issues related to your spark (Facebook/Email/face-to-face)
• If there are any individuals/ organizations in Bangkok that are working on issues related to your spark (Internet)
• If there are any individuals/organizations in Thailand that are working on issues related to your spark (Internet)
• If there are any individuals/organizations in Asia that are working on issues related to your spark (Internet)
• If there are any /individuals/organizations in the world that are working on issues related to your spark (Internet)