Blue Sky School

We have had an amazing experience this year to have at least one guest speaker come into our school each week. One of the incredible guest speakers that have come into our school is Anya. Anya works for a charitable organization called Ausome. Ausome is an incredible organization that makes sure that children on the autism spectrum have the opportunity to participate in group sport activities that they would not normally be able to participate in due to sensory/anxiety issues. Every session they experience a new sport to try to find a sport that the children will excel in and enjoy. Since Ausome is a charitable organization they rely heavily on volunteers, to volunteer with their organisation all you need to commit to is volunteering to at least one session a month and be at least over the age of 15.  That was our amazing time with Anya from Ausome! “ This was so inspiring, I have always wondered how children on the autism spectrum play sports and now I know how!”-anony...

Happy Hallowe'en Blue Sky! This Thursday, the 31st, Blue Sky will be executing some fun Hallowe'en activities, including the following: Special effects makeup,  Murder mystery  Some spookily fun baking In terms of costumes, students are not allowed to bring any type of weapon. We hope you all  have a spooky Halloween! Our “Hallowe’enies” learner team has organized a day of Hallowe’en adventure Learners may wear costumes to school, please note that masks and makeup are OK, but weapons of any kind are a no-no Learners who would like to wear a costume, but are having trouble coming up with an idea can join a theme that a few learners have created - “Proud Canadians”: wear your Canada, hockey or plaid clothes and have your face painted at school! Special events: 9-10 a.m. - as learners arrive, they will join in with several rounds of Werewolf 10-11:30 - Deagan and B are planning a spooky and sweet Culinary Science 11:30-12 - Lunch ...

Top Ten Best Moments(Part 1) “Grace and Will at the thing” https://tedxottawa.ca/speakers-2019/ Intro I think I can speak for both Grace and I when I say that we had an amazing time at TEDx Ottawa. But before we get into that we should talk about how we were invited. We were invited because of our participation in a program at our school called Eloquent Ottawa which was created by the, you guessed it Canadian Institute of Mass Communications(Or CIMC). The CIMC just so happened to be a sponsor of TEDx Ottawa. With that out of the way time for the story of getting there. After school on the big day we jumped into Karen’s car and went straight to Pita Pit  to fuel up. Then we hit the open road and drove to the Tunney’s Pasture LRT station. We rode to Rideau and then set off on an adventure to find the NAC. We walked in the direction we thought it was for a few minutes until we were on some bridge. That’s when we admitted that we had no idea where it was. So we broke out...

Numeracy Groups - by Michael This week we started math groups. The coaches had noticed that some people where not accomplishing their math goals independently, so they had everyone sit at tables with people at a similar math level to them. Deagan works with a group of mathematicians! Numeracy Tutorial Videos - by #charlotteworldwide This week, all Blue Sky learners made a priority to make a Numeracy tutorial video teaching a  specific math trick or strategy relating to operations. In some groups, we presented our tutorials and asked for stars and planets afterwards. This feedback was also recorded and sent to learners through email, They are soooo excited to watch their own faces talk! 

On the 23rd Monday of September 2019 we had our first session with Alex from Eloquent Ottawa , where we learn how to be boss public speakers!  We first discussed what to get out of these sessions. Pretty much, each learner in the program will pick a topic of their choice, and write a speech about it that's five minutes long. The end result would be to present our speeches to the Blue Sky community, so stay tuned for some lit speeches!  Then, we got into doing an activity called “People of Paris.” The purpose of this activity was to confront our public speaking fears. Each of us had to get up, turn to the audience and say “People of Paris, ... and then they would add their own phrase to say to everyone. Then, we had to do it again but this time as a character of the audience choosing. For example, we picked a President, a Unicorn, a Tourist, Mr Clean, and the Queen to name a few. This really helped us feel more safe with the rest of the learners in the program. This has,...

One day, a normal day at Blue Sky, Emi and I used the secret garden passageway again. It was so messed up from the tornado and was forgotten. Anyone who didn't know the way would get lost in there for sure. As Emi and I slowly wormed our way in and out of there, we both started thinking about what this place would be if it was clean. Then it hit us, we could start an activity with us and whoever wanted to help clean up the secret garden! The next day, we started right away moving trees, pulling out weeds and fixing it up. Now today, we are going to send an email the school to see what they think and if they want to help out. Bye! See you in the next post.

There was a lot of talk about climate change in the past few weeks with Greta Thunberg, the climate strike, and the Canadian English debate. Students of Blue Sky School took part in the strike happening around the world. Climate change was also a large topic, one of the five main topics in the English language debate that took place in the Canadian history museum in Gatineau. It is pretty clear to me that climate change is a disaster that is almost imminent and anyone who doesn’t think that can go soak their head. Or they can get more credible info. “Climate action is important!” said Will. I feel personally that climate action and enlightening yourself about the emergency is the best thing you can do. I did not attend the Ottawa climate strike yet I feel like it was needed to help convince some people. People who have the power or run large companies seem to not care about as long as the dollars keep rolling in. The streets of downtown Ottawa were PACKED with ...