Wednesday Oct 7th, 2009

Hi everyone,

Bit delayed with the staff meeting tonight but here is tonight's homework

Homework

Nothing new but a few students with work activities overdue!!
spelling test tomorrow Unit 3 words - study
Novel read to end of Chapter 20 for Reader Response
complete poster for French Dans La Salle De Classe
work now overdue:
Reader Response #2 & #3
lifemaps
North America Map #8
Mathcross puzzles #1 & #2

Reminders to decide on photograph package & t-shirt orders

A few students still have some outstanding forms and payments which I will be following up in the coming weeks.

Day in general

We had a great class discussion during science when we were considering the depth and breadth of studying the unit called Earth Sciences because of it's interesting crossover intp socials ans science. The students were great watchers of the Discovery Channel and we came up with a list of things that they were both interested in and a little 'freaked out' by. Issues like global warming, meteor activity, black holes, predictions for the earth's demise were among a few topics that we threw around today.
I found a timely article on the Internet hat allowed us to follow up a recent activity we did on Stonehenge and the students started journalstic style paragraph about the information that is as recent as a month ago. Seemingly a five university scientific team from the UK discovered evidence that confirms Stonehenge was once a 'funeral site' where cremated remains were buried.
During Math I used a journal activity to improve student confidence in their ability to problem solve. It seemed to work well but I still need to read the student entries.
I have been impressed with the learning that we are doing as a class group and I am beginning to feel a little more cohesion with the students as a community of learners. That is not to say that we have no challenges!! However, I am finding the challenges are manageable and the students have enough maturity that they can handle themselves and some unexpected situations without a huge drama. We now need this to tranfer to the out of class times and activities!!
Thanks for reading.
Have a great evening. It is my turn to cook dinner tonight- got to run :)
Mrs. J.