Grade 5 students at Heritage Glen PS created posters thanking healthcare and essential workers for keeping communities safe during the pandemic. These posters of inspiration are now hanging at Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital.
Over the last couple of weeks, two-dozen students in Andrea Moore’s Oakville class completed an assignment by creating a variety of colourful and emotional posters to support healthcare workers. Students were asked to write a letter to essential workers to say thank you, write about what it is like to be learning from home, and to create a poster.
“The students used Google Drive to work on their rough copies for the letters and the poster activity,” Moore explained. “Good copies of letters were all printed off by myself at my home. The posters were a bit more challenging. Once students had completed their posters, a picture was taken with each of them holding their poster by their family.”
Adhering to physical distancing, Moore arranged with several families to safely drop off the posters at various locations
“I felt it was important for students to begin to understand what was happening for the essential workers and exactly who they were,” Moore said. “I also wanted them to write about how their own lives have changed since the March Break and put some of their feelings down in writing. They were able to express and connect what was going on for them. The students were so excited and motivated by this assignment, and wanted to show their support and appreciation to our frontline workers.”
Students say they learned so much from this project. Grade 5 student Nik explained how he drew a maze in his poster to show the “complex and hazardous road that our health care professionals have to go through every day.”
“By making a poster, our appreciation of essential workers was made more visible so they could keep their spirits up.”
This poster/letter activity had many connections to the curriculum, Moore said, including language (letter writing, generating, gathering and organizing ideas and information), media, health (how choices and behaviours affect themselves and others) and visual art (creating posters to communicate ideas and messages).
Heritage Glen PS families were impressed by this effort by students.
“Our entire family admired these posters,” said Maya Khandelwal. “It appears that everyone worked very hard on these. Essential workers will enjoy looking at these as the messages are so personal.”
“Staff and physicians at OTMH appreciate the wonderful display of posters and letters that we received,” said Trish Carlton, Director, Communications & Public Affairs for Halton Healthcare. “They are currently on display in our main lobby and have been drawing the attention of everyone. It always makes people feel good when they are appreciated. To know these thoughts and sentiments came from Grade 5 students is truly inspiring.”
