We started our year learning about communication.  There are so many ways that people and animals communicate and so many things to learn about communicating effectively.  We learned about listening, speaking (in many languages), barriers to communication and how technology helps (and hinders) our ability to connect with others.  

One of our favourite parts of this unit was going on a field trip to the radio and television station.  Thank you to the team at Rogers who showed us how the magic of television and radio works.  A special thanks for giving a shout out to us on live radio! 

We also had a sign language interpreter come tell us about his job (thank you Matt).

To finish up our session, each student presented their own research project about an aspect of communication that interested him or her.  Guests on Presentation Day were challenged with a scavenger hunt quest to find interesting facts from each student.  Our topics included research about different languages (ASL, Russian, Italian, Ojibwe, and the alphabet), technology (morse code, the telephone, and space communication), and animal communication (dogs, cats, whales and Koko a gorilla who learned sign language).  We also learned from one student about Hellen Keller who overcame so many barriers to make the voices of deaf and blind individuals heard.

The children chose to learn "Speechless" from Disney's Aladin, for their music classes.  We thought the words of this song were so powerful!  It was especially moving to have the video recorded on Orange T-shirt Day, a day we remember the indiginous children and families effected by residential schools.