On Monday evening, I saw a tweet from @mrjarbenne asking for contributions to a collaborative video on Haiti.  I was away at a meeting all day on Tuesday, so I didn’t think too much about it, but when I checked my Twitter account on Tuesday night, I noticed that @mrjarbenne had tweeted me asking if my Grade 1’s would contribute to this video.

Since the disaster happened in Haiti, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about how I could discuss this world issue with my students.  I didn’t want to upset them, but I did want them to become aware of this terrible tragedy and let them know that there are ways that they can help too.  I thought that this video might be a good way to start this conversation.

After gym on Wednesday morning, I told my students that we were going to contribute to a collaborative video.  I asked my students if they heard what had happened in Haiti, and I was amazed by their responses.  Almost all of the children knew about what happened.  One child said that she heard about the earthquake on the radio.  She was listening to the radio on the way to school with her mom.  Another child said that he saw what happened in Haiti when watching the news with his parents.  He spoke about the fact that some people had died and other people were hurt.  Some children said that their parents told them about what happened, and that their parents were going to give money to help out the people of Haiti.  With the use of the SMART Board, we searched Haiti and viewed maps of Haiti.  Some students saw Cuba and The Dominican Republic on the maps, and spoke about going there before.  The Internet allowed the students to make a connection to Haiti and drove them to want to do something to help out the people of Haiti.

I read my students a letter that I had e-mailed out to parents letting them know what our school was doing to help raise money for Haiti.  The students then used the information in this letter and re-worded it in “kid friendly” language.  I wrote up what they said, and then we practiced reading our ideas as a class.  We then added these ideas to this collaborative video.  Due to some technical difficulties on my part, we had to add these ideas to the video again on Thursday, but my students were more than willing to try a second attempt.  I think that they were happy to know that they were doing something to help out people that needed it.

Here is a link to @mrjarbenne‘s amazing video.  Many thanks to you and your class for creating such a great way for us to come together as a global community and try to make a difference for those that need it!

Aviva