Ferris HEART

For the 2024/2025 school year, Mrs. Martens and the Ferris library have embarked on “Project HEART”, a focus on the Ferris HEART matrix with a cross-curricular approach in the library. In consultation with Marnie Flores, our area counsellor, Mrs. Martens developed a plan for investigating HEART through stories and activities at each grade level. Together they also lead the HEART Committee, collecting staff members together to develop a community-wide approach to each of the HEART letters. Below is an exploration of the work being done in the library and plans for the remaining school year.

Our youngest learners, the kindergarteners, have spent their first term learning about reading basics, library routines and book care. They got to know “Elephant and Piggie”, two characters from Mo Willems’ delightful series, who guided them through understanding stories, friendship troubles, and showing HEART in the Ferris Library. In the secondterm, kindergarteners will be using loose parts (small, miscellaneous materials) to explore concepts of
seasons, patterns, letters, family, and music. All of the loose parts learning is approached through a lens of showing HEART, guided by a promise we say at the beginning of each lesson, reminding students and adults alike of how we can be successful together in community.

The primary learners, those in grades 1 to 3, are working on HEART booklets that emphasize achievable actions that
students can independently implement throughout their school day. Each page focuses on a different letter of HEART. For example, through a short series of lessons, students heard stories about being empathetic, defined empathy, brainstormed empathetic actions and recorded one empathetic action for themselves in both pictures and words in their books. Classroom teachers have been able to mirror or extend these lessons in their classrooms and the ideas that students are sharing have been inspiring and staff members are seeing direct results in the library and around the school! We are so proud of their hard work.

Students in grades 3 to 5 are blending their love of comics with HEART themes! These students have explored HEART through their previous years at Ferris and have taken their
experiences to the next level by creating

single-panel comics to show an action that reflects one of the HEART letters. We began our learning by exploring visual thinking and how we can communicate in images as

well as words. It has been hard work to consolidate such big ideas and concepts down to a single panel, but these students are doing a great job!

Our grade 5/6 and 6/7 classes have taken a different approach to their HEART learning this term. These students are most comfortable and confident when it comes to explaining

HEART and giving examples, so we took their understanding beyond examples and looked deeper at how we are able to show HEART and when that can be challenging. We have focused on emotional learning and the elements of art to personify a specific emotion. Exploring Disney’s in-depth work on Inside Out, we began to understand and be able to name different emotions and think about how we can communicate them through the elements of art. Each student has been given one statement from Tina Oziewicz’s award-winning book, What Feelings Do When No One’s Looking, and are working to illustrate the statement, personifying their given emotion. How would you draw loneliness? Can you sketch nostalgia? What would joy wear if joy were a person? These are just some of the questions students have to ask themselves while working on this project. We are inspired by the book pages they are drafting thus far and are looking forward to showcasing their work in hallway displays.

Outside of the library, the HEART Committee has been working hard as well! This group of dedicated staff give up time outside of school hours to plan and implement school-wide initiatives that support our HEART learning. Some of these initiatives have included an assembly focused on being safe (particularly when celebrating Halloween!), and a food drive focused on empathy in regards to food security. This year, we are also hosting several “playdates”. These are times when the whole school community is outside to play! Teachers lead stations of simple outdoor games and activities and while we enjoy the time to play together, our focus is on noticing, naming, and nurturing when students show HEART. By explicitly highlighting positive behaviour in play, we are solidifying the learning about HEART we have been doing in the classroom, the library and beyond!