Talmud Torah Grade 5/6 Class, Dec. 5-9, 2016

The Grade 5/6 class from Talmud Torah School 

begin their first day of their week at Edmonton Journal School.

The students have an opportunity to examine artifacts at JAHSENA.

The Grade 5/6 class is given some background 

information about the history of CKUA.

On a cold December morning, the grade ⅚ class explored the oldest radio station in Alberta. The CKUA radio station was formed in 1927. The class was given a tour around the wonderful, historic building and witnessed exquisite things all around. One of the interesting sights in the radio station was the library which was filled with thousands of CDs and playlists. The students even got to witness a record player from the 1900s in action. After touring the basement, the students went to the top floor where they explored the recording rooms and got to experiment with soundproof walls. They then met Marketing Mark at the recording studio where they got to record the CKUA station IDs. Finally, the students had an opportunity to engage Ken Regan in a press conference, held by the CKUA radio station. “We are only going to survive and grow if we work together”, Ken Regan explained to the students. At the end of the day the students got SWAG (Stuff We All Get) from the CKUA radio station.

Talmud Torah students have fun cartooning.

What do you think of when you hear the word cartoon? When we think of that word, we think of our amazing week at the Edmonton Journal taking part in the cartoon stations. It was one of our most memorable activities.

As a group, we learned a lot of facts about comics. We learned that Malcolm Mayes does all the editorial comics for the Edmonton Journal. When we learned about comics, we took part in stations such as: choosing comics to put in our journals and writing about them, looking at comics and guessing what their true meaning and examining editorial cartoons about sports and determining their meaning. We then had even more fun discussing with the class about those comics. We learned about sport comics and how some are goofy and some are serious. All the comics are well written and beautifully illustrated. There are usually series of comics and most people have personal favorites. On Saturdays they have four pages of comics.

The Grade 5/6 class enjoyed interviewing 

Ken Regan at the CKUA radio station.

Before we began our interviews EJ School facilitator, Sandy VanRiper gave us many tips to help us prepare for our interviews.  She planned twelve interesting professionals for us to interview. The people we interviewed were: Dani Uretsky, Paula Simons, Gaia Willis, Larry Wong, Elise Campbell, Anna Posteraro, Mark Suits, Mel Wyne, Jeff Samsonow, Collin Taylor and Ken Regan. We interviewed people at JAHSENA, CKUA and at the Edmonton Journal to get an idea of what different professionals do. Most of the people that we interviewed had a lot to say about their jobs and it was hard to write everything down. Interviewing people was a great activity because it was an amazing experience to see the different jobs and people. Many of the people we interviewed had very interesting backgrounds and really cool stories. Some of the people we interviewed had very different jobs and others had very similar jobs.

Before our week at the Edmonton Journal, we thought downtown was just a bunch of concrete buildings. It turns out there is a lot more history there than we thought. We learned about Thistle Rink and how it burned down. That is the reason why the Northlands Coliseum was built. On one of our walks we saw Edmonton’s first skyscraper. Now it is one of the smallest buildings in Edmonton. On our walk, we took a stop to look at the library that is in the process of being relocated to the old Bay building. We went inside and saw some of the paintings and art. Last but not least, we walked to the Oilers Hall Of Fame and saw the Wayne Gretzky statue. Then, we went to Rogers Place and admired the ‘Iron Foot’ mosaic, also known as the ‘Tsa Tsa Ke Ke’, by Alex Janvier. After that we saw the Oil Kings practicing in their practice rink. So in conclusion it was a lot of fun and we learned a lot on our downtown walks.   

The Grade 5/6 class posing with Wayne Gretzky next to Rogers Place.