Alberta One Room Country School Christmas

"Of prime importance was the Christmas concert, an annual event in which all students participated. No effort was spared to render a well-acclaimed presentation. In front of the traditional spruce,wrapped in ribbons and occasionally lit up, the children proudly demonstrated their talents, singing around the Christmas manger or acting in a play ...all of this filling both parents and teacher with pride. School festivals also required a great deal of preparation... "

Exerpt from page 93 Faith and Tenacity: A History of Morinville can be viewed Online @ http://www.town.morinville.ab.ca/Community/FACTS/index.htm).

See Rose Valley School Christmas Concerts for a more detailed account of country school Christmas concerts.

St.Albert Christmas (History Book Project Instructions)

This is a four phase collaborative project to select, rank and index excerpts, on Christmas, from A Black Robe's Vision : a history of St. Albert & district. Volumes 1 & 2, St. Albert Historical Society, as found on http://www.ourroots.ca/ as follows:

Phase One: Commenting - Finding out what each page says about Christmas (suggested for students in grades 4-12).

1. Each person participating in this project will be assigned a page from A Black Robe's Vision history book (see links below).
2. Click on the link to read the page to find the word "Christmas" using the large image size.
3. Make a comment on what this page says about Christmas and how useful it is to readers and what grades it might be useful for. Some pages just mention the word Christmas but don't say anything about it. For example, "it didn't snow until Christmas". Just quote what is said and if possible put the year that it happened. If it says more than a sentence then summarize what it says.
4. Put a link to the page in the URL part for your name (put the page in the name field it is optional to put you name after the page number ask your teacher what you should do)

Links to pages on to Christmas from A Black Robe's Vision:

Volume 1 Pages: 94 , 107 , 167 , 168 , 176 , 181 , 182 , 187 , 207 , 231 , 236 , 238 , 242 , 288 , 300 , 306 , 360 , 363 , 372 , 378 , 386 , 387 , 405 , 406

Volume 2 Pages: 421 , 422 , 426 , 429 , 432 , 437 , 441 , 443 , 457 , 476 , 494 , 497 , 531 , 547 , 549 , 563 , 568 , 570 , 580 , 594 , 598 , 607 , 611 , 628 , 645 , 663 , 721 , 726 , 729 , 732 , 737 , 738 , 739

Phase Two: Review - Editing comments and ranking stories (suggested for students in grades 7-12).

1. Once 3 or 4 persons have commented on each page - search the post to find the comments for a specific page.
   
2. Based on the comments and your own review, make a title for the post (on http://sachristmas.blogspot.com/) that reflects the content of your selection (see example posts).
3. Next copy the link to the page number and blank outline (see below) into your post.
   
4. If the story has a specific date put that in the brackets if not put an estimated date or time period and put "estimated by reviewer"
5. Use the Usefulness Rating below to rate how useful your selection is to people looking for information on the history of Christmas in St. Albert (put the number in the brackets) and summarize the comments made by others and yourself to support your rating (see example posts):
   CIN (Collaborative Information Networks) Usefulness Rating Scale
   (9) - ESSENTIAL (Everyone interested in St. Albert Christmas should read this)
   (7) - VERY USEFUL (Almost everyone would find it useful)
   (5) - USEFUL (Most people would find it useful)
   (3) - INTERESTING (Of interest to some people but not very useful for others)
   (1) - MARGINAL (Mentions Christmas but not that useful)
   (0) - IRRELEVANT (Does not have any relevance to Christmas even though the word occurs)
   (n) - NOT ACCEPTABLE (Mentions Christmas but uses unacceptable language or mentions something else not acceptable to the general public)
   (2,4,6,8) Even numbers are used for ratings between the odd numbers.
   
6. Put your usefulness rating in brackets before the title (see example posts).
7. Use the Usefulness Rating above to rate how useful your selection for specific grades as follows:
1. Rate only the grades you have been in - leave the others blank.
   
2. For LA consider is this an interesting story for this grade (It may not be easy to read but it is interesting).
   
3. For social keep in mind what they are studying in each of the following grades:
   
• Gr. 1 - How life has changed in our community.
• Gr. 2 - How our community has changed (buildings etc.)
• Gr. 3 - n/a
• Gr. 4 - Alberta History
• Gr. 5 - n/a
• Gr. 6 - n/a
• Gr. 7 - Canadian History
• Gr. 8 - World Views
• Gr. 9 - n/a
• Gr. 10 - Globalization
• Gr. 11 - n/a
• Gr. 12 - n/a
8. Label your post using "show all" to choose one of the following labels: Alberta Christmas, Family Christmas, Church Christmas, School Christmas, Community Christmas, Commercial Christmas, Other Christmas, Not Christmas (Used for selections that only mention the word Christmas but are not about Christmas).
9. Go into "Post Options" and change the month to 01, the day to 30, and the year to 70.
10. Optional crop the part of the page (image) that refers to Christmas and save the image (in your folder or someplace you can find it- if you don't have a image editing program to crop your image, see comment on using MS Word to do this). Upload the image(s) into a your post - see example below).
11. Save your post but do not publish it. Your teacher will edit it and mark you by how much editing is needed.
12. Once a post is published you can comment on the review or add comments about the story.

Blank Outline:

(Link to page in "A Black Robes Vision") Date of story ( ) Usefulness Rating ( )
Grade Ratings:

• Gr. 1 - [] LA [] Social
• Gr. 2 - [] LA [] Social
• Gr. 3 - [] LA
• Gr. 4 - [] LA [] Social
• Gr. 5 - [] LA
• Gr. 6 - [] LA
• Gr. 7 - [] LA [] Social
• Gr. 8 - [] LA [] Social
• Gr. 9 - [] LA
• Gr. 10 - [] LA [] Social
• Gr. 11 - [] LA
• Gr. 12 - [] LA

Phase Three: Editing - (suggested for students in grades 7-12 with good Language Arts skills)

1. Once you have 3 or 4 people have commented about each post, then have a group of 3 or 4 people (editors) look at all the comments and ratings for the post and edit it to reflect the consensus of the commenters and the editors. Keeping the original comments as reference.
   
2. If the post is rated 2 or less then copy the post and comments to one of the following posts.

• Other Events that happened at Christmas
  
• References to Christmas Concerts
  
• Other references to Christmas
• Christmas is mentioned but not relevant to Christmas

1. For all other posts related to a specific page go into "Post Options" and change the year to the year of the story for years earlier than 1971 change the year to 70 (blogger does not allow dates earlier than 1970) and the month and day to reflect the year of the of the story as follows
• 01 -reserved for special purposes
• 02 -Years before 1801
• 03 -1801-1850
• 04 -1851-1880
• 05 -1881-1900
• 06 -1901-1910
• 07 -1911-1920
• 08 -1921-1930
• 09 -1931-1940
• 10 -1941-1950
• 11 -1951-1960
• 12 -1961-1970
• The days of the month and times of day can be used to rank stories or for more specific dates.
2. If the reviewer did not crop the part of the page (image) that refers to Christmas then do so as follows: save the image (in your folder or someplace you can find it- if you don't have a image editing program to crop your image, see comment on using MS Word to do this). Upload the image(s) into the post - see example below).
3. Save your post but do not publish it. Your teacher will edit it and mark you by how much editing is needed.
4. Links to posts about stories that would be "very useful" for all of Alberta could be recommended by making comments with links to Alberta Christmas Network Development post - indicate why you think it is very useful.

Phase Four: Publishing - Final check before a blog is published

1. In a classroom, this is usually done by a teacher. The teacher could use the instructions as a marking rubric with following all instructions and using proper English being 100% and 1% deducted for each minor mistake and 5% for each major mistake.
2. If comments need to sent to the reviewer the post could be copied into a word document and comments made or made on a paper copy.
   
3. Once making and comments are made then the teacher could either edit the post and publish it or have the student edit the post before the teacher publishes it.

*An example of a standard post can be found here.

Phase Five: Enhancing Posts

1. Pictures, links etc. can be added based on research related to a post. see Christmas Eve at the St. Albert Cathedral was Celebrated by Both Protestants and Catholics