Alberta Winter Celebrations
When introducing the concept of “la cabane à sucre/ le temps des sucres,” I like to begin by reading “The Sugaring-Off Party” by Jonathan London and Gilles Pelletier. “The Sugaring-Off Party” is a colourful and charming book about a French-Canadian grandmother who recounts her first sugaring-off party to her grandson. Vocabulary associated with sugaring-off parties is also presented throughout this story.
As a project for this unit, I had my students create Prezis about “la cabane à sucre” following the guidelines below. Prezi has really improved over the past year and now there are many templates and slides can be edited similarly to PowerPoint or Keynote. With Prezi, students require an account and login information. Check out Prezi and if is not your thing, you can also use more traditional presentations tools like PowerPoint and Keynote:
Presentation Guidelines:
1. Students must find at least 5 interesting pieces of information associated with “la cabane à sucre.”
2. The interesting pieces of information is completely at the discretion of the students. However, it must be relevant to “la cabane à sucre.”
3. Students should include a picture (or videoclip, which is very easy to insert in Prezi) for each slide that is applicable to the information that they have found.
4. Students must retrieve information from a minimum of 3 different sources.
5. Students work together in groups of 2-4 to find the information
6. ALL students MUST help to retrieve information, images and type.
7. Students must present to their classmates and demonstrate familiarity of the topic. Each group member must present some information that is decided amongst group members.
Below is a generic presentation tool rubric shown as a jpeg and downloadable as an Excel Spreadsheet. This rubric can be used when assessing the students Prezi presentations:
Below is a handout for students to organize and record their research about “la cabane à sucre” before creating their Prezis, along with a Prezi examplar Note: you should demonstrate how to retrieve and interpret credible information on the Internet before commencing this project:
A fun activity that relates to “la cabane à sucre” is to hold your own “sugaring off” party. Posted below is a link to a maple taffy recipe that you can use with your students at the party:
http://www.food.com/recipe/maple-taffy-on-snow-or-crushed-ice-137961