It's 9pm and I have just remembered that I need to get back into the habit of completing a classroom blog- after school. I remembered before I had a meeting after school and then I completely forgot about it until now- I hope I can remember our day!!! I tried to keep a vacation journal too but it is not completed either (yet)!!
Homework
no new homework tonight BUT please finish the class novel Dragon Keeper
It was really good to get back to school today and I was most surprised by the students welcoming hugs :) They were all as happy to see me as I was to see them and that makes the day so much easier not to mention how it lightens my heart. Thanks everyone.
Wow, what a couple of weeks we have all had. It is one of the strangest times we have ever had a spring break. The super Olympic results are truly something that everyone can be proud of... so much adrenalin pumping that I am sure soon there might be a national hangover of the physical sort!!
Day's activities
I decided that the students really needed to catch up with one another so we did some partner and group directed topics for discussing the events and activities of the last two weeks - we chatted about our memories, what we will remember, what we did, saw and experienced and thought about the moments that made us feel proud or sad or just want to holler out loud with excitement. I shared the feelings of leaving Hawaii just as the sirens were sounding for Tsunami alert as a result of the earthquake in Chile on Saturday.
We then channelled our discussion into a journal entry (the first since December!!) and I was very encouraged that the students were able to turn to writing their ideas from the mornings chatter. Some wrote almost three pages and others will improve their stamina as we write more often (which is my goal for term three).
Next we analysed the Unit 18 spelling words and looked in detail about why they would be on a list of most often misspelled words. We did a quick review of parts of speech and the conventions of spelling - many of the words this week have double letters or sound the same (homonyms) as others.
music with Mrs. McPhee
Math: multiplying integers- an introduction- I am planning a time change to math classes as I find the half hour before lunch to be troublesome for attention!!
I was very encouraged by the students reading time during DEAR- my boy's seem to have discovered novel series' that they are enjoying in the trilogy of the Dragon Keeper by Carole Wilkinson and the Percy Jackson and the Olympians by Rick Riordan (now at 5 books). It is very impressive and sometimes I feel mean by stopping them and moving into another lesson! I love it- seeing them read is so powerful and you can hear a pin drop in class- if someone talks the students themselves shut it down with great big "SHHHHH's" :) Priceless.
I decided to do some science next given the weekend events in Chile and the fact that we had to cover the chapter 9 Earth 's Crust chapter on Earthquakes and Tsunamis- how convenient! We talked some and used the text to read the chapter information in among answering questions and trying to quell fear. I do find that I have to be careful not to fuel imagination and to correct the Hollywood versions of how things happen. I always find that this topic has students really concerned about experiencing an earthquake right here.
For computers today we used the on-line learning quizzes which are part of the textual resources. It is so neat to be able to read and discuss it in class and then go on-line and have the students test their understanding on the computer related text quizzes. There are also cool things to see and do and connections to current information like the site that we used to discover that in the past month there have been 5 earthquakes in Canada and four of them have been "felt' meaning 3.9-4 on the Richter scale. The latest was in Quebec but their have also been two in BC (Princeton and Victoria) one in New Brunswick and another in Yukon Territory. If you would like to check it out for yourselves go to www.mcgrawhill.ca/links/BCscience7
but be careful as it is addictive.
Time for pack up and dismissal. The day just disappeared...I even forgot to hand out my souvenir gifts to the students- tomorrow for sure.
March will be very busy- we have filedtrips (sledge hockey at UBC) and fundraising for camp (information coming tomorrow) and meetings with the high school- the first of which will be with the parents on the evening of March 8th (see letter tomorrow for details). We have booked Hip Hop dance lessons and lacrosse lessons. Reports cards are not too far away and then it will be inteviews and Easter!! Oh my...I need to get some sleep now!!
see everyone tomorrow- the blog will not be so late
Mrs. J.
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