Monday May 11th

Hi all- oops- I stayed late on Friday to re-do the classroom seating and I guess I forgot to go back and do the blog!! Sorry if it was an inconvenience.

Hope everyone had a great mother's day this weekend. Congratulations to Sarah D. who competed to a second place finish in the triathlon and to Rayleen W. who ballet danced to a silver with her group in Vancouver last Thurs/Fri. I am proud of your accomplishments and more importantly hope they are proud of their efforts.
Welcome back to Xeyus who has returned to class after an extended trip :)
Only one student away today - yeah!!

This next couple of weeks are four day weeks. This Friday May 15th is a staff development day and Monday May 18th is the May long weekend. On Wednesday 13th, we will be visiting the high school at 10am for a tour and presentation and in the afternoon we will be welcoming a guest speaker Maureen Mackell from the Howe Sound Women's Centre who will be conducting a workshop called VIP (Violence is Preventable).

We welcomed Jackie Dickinson today for the 5th session in our drug and alcohol program- we watched part of a CBC documentary which focused on the Downtown East side looking at the effects of addiction and the devastation it brings to individuals and families. We really had to dig deep to show her the respect that was necessary to watch such a moving film as there were some initial concerns about attention and stereotypical labels that made her feel that maybe today was not the best day to view it!! I am happy to say that all students did manage to settle and watch the film with the attention it needed to be meaningful. A newsletter was sent home and provides a very interesting link to a web site for more info.
www.freevibe.com

The social studies Greek brochures are due Thursday this week- in Math we will be looking at the methods of calculating angles in triangles and quadrilaterals culminating with a venture into the proofs of Pythagorus Theorum (it's all Greek you know!!)

In language arts I am encouraging students to use patterns from peotry to write their own versions- last week we looked at Greatness by Alden Nolan- this week it is Bruce Lansky's Dumb and Dumber and the classic, This is Just to Say... by William Carlos Williams. Creativity is key

For French - affiches (posters) for doing sports (faire les sports) were introduced today and will be underway Tuesday. The goal is to have the students use the verb faire and write some simple sentences to explain what sports the people in their posters are doing/playing.

I hope that students will make better choices at lunch time as this afternoon was extremely uncomfortable for the 12-15 who chose to lie in puddles and get soaked through!! It was a long afternoon for some.

Hope everyone has a good evening. Keep dry and warm.
More fun and excitement tomorrow.