Trading Card #1: Dance

            For my first trading card, I decided to focus on dance, and more specifically the signature exercise we did in class.  There were a number of words that came into my mind surrounding the ideas of dance and the exercise that we did in class. I decided to display these words in the shape of a foot because while doing the signature exercise, the last body part that I used to sign my name was with my foot, which linked nicely with the importance of our feet when we dance.    

            I decided to use Tagxedo to create this image on my trading card.  I found that by doing this, I could include the main words that came to my mind, and have them displayed in the shape of a foot.  Dance and signature immediately came to my mind as words to include because of the activity that we did in class.  I also thought of body because we used our body to sign our name, expression because it was through our own freedom of how we signed our names,  creative because each person signed their names in original ways, movement because we were active, personality because as I signed my name I could see that my personality was reflected in it, and enjoyment because of the smiles and laughter that was shared all around the classroom during this activity.  The word, dance is written in a form of handwriting to resemble the activity as well.   

            I found that this related to a grade one PLO in the English Language Arts Integrated Resource Package:

C10 - Use some features and conventions of language to express meaning in their writing and representing, including capital letters at the beginning of people’s names and of sentences and capitalize the pronoun “I”, words from their oral language vocabulary as well as less familiar words from class-displayed lists, and legible printing from left to right of all uppercase and lowercase letters.   

This signature exercise could certainly help students when they are trying to remember to use capital letters at the beginning of a person’s name.  Students could spell out the names of their fellow classmates using the signature exercise, while the teacher reminds and emphasizes the importance of beginning with a capital letter.  This exercise could also be used to become more familiar with their oral language vocabulary words by spelling out different words using the different stages of the exercise.  Practicing the process of printing from left to right could also be practiced during this signature exercise, as well as repeating individual letters from the alphabet in both uppercase and lowercase forms.  There are many ways that this signature exercise fits with this PLO, as it would provide an additional method for students to practice their writing in an enjoyable way that builds confidence.