June 1st, 2009 Monday

Hot one today- classroom is a bit of a sauna.

This morning we had a chance to provide feedback to each other and the camp staff and it gave us a perfect opportunity to discuss our camp experiences and get the chatter out of our systems. Over the weekend I managed to get my pictures onto a CD and showed it in class. Unfortunately I had limited sapce on my digital camera and had no pictures after Thursday evening. I am hoping to link up the other pictures to make a collage CD of all our pictures from our camp trip. It seems that everyone enjoyed the experience. We shared some funny moments and shared our favourite parts of the experience. The food was up there pretty high :)

Chapter 7 of the novel (Word to Caesar) was read today and a half hour of 'putting our math skills all together' in a worksheet of math problems focusing on perimeter and related word problems. Some time was provided to progress on the face card (playing card) transformation art project- some are looking very detailed and are beautifully coloured- great job.

This afternoon Jackie Dickinson led us through lesson 7 (of 8) regarding the drugs that are synthetic and that sadly plaugue our community. In my experience of teaching high school seniors I would have to say that synthetic drugs like crystal meth have caused the most damage to some of my ex-students. These drugs are easy to consume accidentally and are very available at parties and social gatherings. They are also highly addictive and inexpensive. Jackie went over a couple of different scenarios about what students would and could do for themselves or a friend if in a situation where they might think something has been consumed. For some students it is difficult to imagine that something like this can happen to them but I feel that they should know what's out there and make good safe choices.
Our next and last session is next Wednesday June 10th.

We finished our day with a short assembly in which we recognised the track and field students and congratulated them on their District Meet results and we learned about Mrs. Mah's Spring Break trip to Cuba. She went with the BCTF to assist and teach teachers in Cuba. She showed some very interesting pictures and among other things we learned that women in Cuba do not play baseball so a contingent of Canadian female teachers playing baseball was quite an entertaining draw for the local men!! She showed us some pictures of interesting wildlife and the biggest cochroaches I have ever seen (yuk!) The car styles are still 1950's. One of the most unusual was the tree phone - the community phone is perched in a tree!! Mrs. Mah said the Cubans were very friendly, music-loving people.

Only math needed to be finished tonight if it was not completed in class. I didn't work them too hard today. See everyone tomorrow. Hope the forest fires are able to be brought under control.