Monday October, 26th, 2009

It turned out to be such a beautiful afternoon after the dreary rain of the morning- it's so nice to be able to see the Chief instead of feeling hemmed in by it!!

Homework tonight

Math: Divisibility worksheet in booklet - follows up todays instruction on the tips and tricks to determining if a number is divisible by another (1 page only)
Novel project- today we discussed the various options for a creative independent project for the novel, Who is Frances Rain?, tomorrow students need to be sure about which 4 (four) assignments they would like to do for the novel (2 creative and 2 written)
DUE DATE: November 9th, 2009 (Monday)
overdue work
for some assignments, time has run out but I will accept work from students for partial marks
Reminders
a newsletter about Thursday's Carnival went home to parents

Day in general

• spelling Unit 5 returned and Unit 6 prepared for Thursday test (Oct 29)
• returned language and spelling worksheets- a few students are still are not putting their name on work and assignments. I have a NO Name Claim centre on a classroom bulletin board to reunite students with their work!!
• students received back their Reader's response #4 and the journalistic style paragraph about Stonehenge and recent discoveries there. We discussed some writing issues not the least of which is the habit students seem to have picked up from being casual with language- gonna, wanna, kinda etc.
• We read and discussed the options for the independent novel project for our class novel, Who is Frances Rain? The students are to chose four activities from those available on the class handout (or discuss their own ideas with me). Their are 10 options for creative assignments which involve posters, art and music and another 10 options for written assignments which focus more on story or literary elements and writing in the author's style. They cover many different areas of displaying comprehension. If students have their own ideas they are welcome to discuss them with me. Already a couple of students have come to ask and their ideas are great. Time will be made available in class EVERY DAY and students will have 15 days (including weekends) to complete the assignments. We discussed the due date as a class and decided that it would be due on Monday November 9th. I look forward to see each student's creative contribution. There has to be committment to being productive in class or it will be a lot of work at home (at the last minute?)
• In French, Halloween holiday words were reviewed and materials were provided for the students to create their very own Maison Hauntee (Haunted house). This gives us an opportunity to review the parts of a house vocabulaire aussi :) The students were very productive and I am impressed at the art- I have suggested we 'double dip' for an art and a French mark- they liked that.
• Divisibility rules for math today - I realized that some students are having difficulty with multiples and factors so I though that some instruction and hints and tips about knowing divisibility might be useful.
• After DEAR reading we took the opportunity to visit our school library for the first time as a class this year!!!
• In Socials we considered the features that allowed the development of the first ancient river civilization in Mesopotamia (Middle East) and discovered that without river flooding the concept of farming and agriculture might never have been viable. Interesting that today we consider flooding such an inconvenience.
• Haunted House design took up the last 20 minutes of the day- I must say some are looking very scary.

More tomorrow.

Mrs. J.