PreK students at South ended their week with some yoga. Great way to work on gross motor and to learn how to have fun while doing it!
Students at OSE have returned from break demonstrating they are ready to Be Kind, Safe, and Ready to Learn for second semester! We had an out of the blue celebration last week and the crab cart came out today! Friday we will be having an all school dance party to celebrate the full treasure chest of golden tickets.
Check out the new motivational mural in our cafeteria!
Wikipedia.org is where millions of people stop first for information. Tools like it are what make the internet so valuable. But they also teach an important lesson, one you can start teaching your kids now: don’t believe everything you read.
Family Tip Sheet: bit.ly/OlyNMFR2
Website Update: The sites are now up and running! If you experience a warning page when navigating to your building's site, you can safely proceed past it. That issue will also be resolved soon. Thank you for your patience and we hope you find the new site beneficial!
Website down @ 12:00 PM.
We are doing a visual refresh of our website at noon today. There will be some downtime, but we should be up and running before long! If you would like a sneak peak and a tour of the new layout, checkout this video:
https://youtu.be/FTG2kREb3Cw
Fearless Fact Finding!
Check out this list of trustworthy resources to help you learn what's true (and what is not!) on the web. You can even use one of them to look back in time and what was on a website in the past!
Fake News & Media Messages Tip #5: Choose a Variety of Sources.
Show your children how you get news and information from different places, and explain how you make your choices. Use words like "credible," "trustworthy," "respected," and "fair." Ask them where they get their information, and if they think about those same words when choosing. As kids get older, introduce the ideas of bias, satire, and clickbait.
If a picture's worth a thousand words, do the words always tell a true story? One way to find out is through a reverse image search. Search with an image instead of a keyword and see what you discover!
Fake News & Media Messages Tip #4: Discuss Fact vs. Opinion
Play around with ideas and decide which are facts and which are opinions. Ask: How tall are you? What's the best food in the world? Do rocks sink or float? Do you like dogs? Point out that both facts and opinions show up in the news, but opinion is usually labeled.
Pay close attention to those news articles and be a Deceptive Detective!
Fake News & Media Messages Tip #3: Explore Different Sides of a Story!
Use real-life examples to help kids understand how people can view the same situation with totally different perspectives. One child might experience a game on the playground as fun, while another might feel like the rules are unfair. Sibling conflict can be a great example of how two people can have wildly different opinions about the same event. With older children, talk through controversial subjects and take turns arguing for different sides to help kids understand various viewpoints.
Kids find and read news in lots of different ways. But studies show they're not very good at interpreting what they see. How can we help them get better? Teaching your students about the structure of online news articles is an important place to start.
Video: bit.ly/OlyNMV1
Family Activity: bit.ly/OlyNMFR1
Fake news is nothing new. Check out this timeline to learn about some ways it has been utilized throughout history to influence society. Ask your family about other examples that you know of and why they were used!
Fake News & Media Messages Tip #2: Play "Spot The Ad"
When you see advertising on TV or on a billboard, ask your children to figure out what the ad is selling. Sometimes it's obvious, and sometimes it's not. Help them explore why certain pictures, sounds, or words are used to sell certain products.
Filter Bubble Trouble!
When we get news from our social media feeds, it often only tells us part of the story. Our friends -- and the website's algorithms -- tend to feed us perspectives we already agree with. Show students ways to escape the filter bubble and make sure their ideas about the world are being challenged.
https://youtu.be/mh1dLvGe06Y - BBC
Fake News & Media Messages Tip #1: Encourage Healthy Skepticism
Help your children analyze the messages around them -- from toy packaging to Instagram posts to news headlines -- and question the purpose of the words and images they see. Teach kids how to use fact-checking tools like Snopes and FactCheck.org.
Video: bit.ly/OlyNMV2
All media comes with an author and an agenda. Help kids think critically about any media they view with critical questions that dig below the surface. And to really empower kids, have them create their own media with these same questions in mind.
With so much media and information coming at us through the television, phones, social media, and more, it's more important than ever for kids to understand the basics of media literacy. When kids can identify different types of news and media and the methods and meanings behind them, they're on their way to being critical thinkers and smart consumers.
Throughout the month, we will be sharing a set of five tips to help your children become critical thinkers of news and media. Here is a short video to get those conversations started!
bit.ly/OlyNMV5
Make sure to check out your Skyward Family Access Wall for the updated return to learn metrics and a letter from Dr. O'Donnell.
Check out this short video for your elementary kiddos around what a digital footprint really means. We already have K-5 students posting and interacting online, so let's start some good habits early!
bit.ly/OlyDFV2
