Great to have most of my class back again. Today we were only missing two!!
We started our day with a very energetic and creative music presentation by a group called SAM 2 (Scrap Arts Music) - they played everything from the bottom of pot lids to PVC piping- they find and recycle various scrap metals and building materials and with great creativity, lots of skill and some practice they transform the items into musical instruments that are far from traditional. A very funny performance was made of blowing up balloons and creating 'music' from the different ways of releasing the air until finally they popped the balloons to finish. Very interesting and quite amazing.
That had us talking in class about music and we played with the question "what is music?"
The students came up with some excellent ideas and images
Music is...
passion, religion, on my i-pod, catchy, my safe place, everywhere...
This led nicely into my plan to teach metaphor and imagery for poetry. We read Alden Nowlen's poem Greatness and I asked the students to think about using the pattern of the poem to create a Greatness poem of their own. We just got them started.
In Math we covered a booklet which I hope can serve as a reference for the remainder of the geometry unit. We identified lines and angles created with parallel and bisecting lines.
Corresponding, alternate, interior, exterior, transversal and angle properties of complementary and supplementary angles. It was a bit of a slog but once these angles can be identified the ability to recognize and find angles which are the same size becomes much easier and from there finding the size of any missing angle is more about pattern than mathematics. It is very cool but...
After lunch the students worked hard in Physical Education- I could tell from the red faces :)
Some reading (bit more of our novel) and personal planning rounded out the day. We had a bit of an awkward presentation about STI's (sexually transmitted infection) it gave us a bit of a chance to discuss the H1N1 virus and how infection spreads. It was amazing to see how many of our young people don't think there is any thing wrong with sharing a drink from a pop bottle or using one another's lip saver. Just the simple act of hand washing is not always second nature to our students. So we discussed basic healthy practices and discussed the possibilities of infection being spread once contact became more sexual. I think we were all grateful for 3pm!!
A letter requesting payment for Camp and another list of what to bring was distributed tonight- hope to have more information soon about our finalized travel plans.
See everyone tomorrow.
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