Monday means mythology !!

Long , long overdue- oh, we had a few rehearsals but we haven't yet completed the mythology performances so today was the BIG day (kind of...)

Homework
complete the assignments now overdue (science, posters and your mythological improvements!!)
Novel -puuullllease finish reading it (pretty please?) Milkweed
UBC forms
Don Ross permission slips out (June 24th) apparently we (Squamish Elementary) have to dress up all in green- head to toe(!!) so they can identify who the baddies are (kidding!!) Each school has its own colour for an activity based afternoon- the students will be colourfully mixed together into teams- wonder if there are points for teacher participation?

General Day

vocab-u-lous 'J' vocabulary words- students did a great job especially those teams which pulled together to discuss the best choices of sentences for some crazy words like jejune, jabberwocky and jambalaya

We did a quick 'add the punctuation' activity which completely shows how well placed punctuation can change the meaning of a few words completely (I thought I'd better let them know that initially it might offend my female students and how after punctuation is added, it might offend the boys- equal opportunity offense :) They were intrigued...
try this:
a woman without her man is nothing (boo!! Hiss!! so not true Mrs J.)
challenge: add puntuation to show it is so not true...
ready:
a woman, without her; man is nothing (Taa Daa!!- the moral of the activity- always check the punctuation before you become offended OR of something offends you, try changing the punctuation-it may be enlightening what you create with a couple of well placed commas and semi-colons :)
congratulations to Matt who placed the punctuation in the right spots to offend all his male friends. Thanks for playing.

Socials our virtual trip to Greece has become EPIC and we need to get back home again before the summer holiday. Today we reviewed the slides and finished our tour of Olympia- next stop Mycenae. Tomorrow. King Agammenon here we come!!

French: I was so proud of the students- there is a rule that grandma had "if you eat your dinner, you can have dessert". We whipped through our French work (-er verb endings in sentences) with the bribe that the sooner it was complete the sooner we could have an early snack ! Wow- it was a record for a French activity. Impressive. Hopefully they can master it on their own tomorrow!!

Music with Mrs. McPhee

Math- Statistically speaaking... A review of the vocabulary and definitions of the main ideas of statistics MEAN, MEDIAN, MODE and RANGE (I call them the M&M's and a Reece's cup which the students tend to remember better than the original vocab)

DEAR time was a bit Monday manic- not really quiet at all but they all seemed to be busy (well most) doing something- just a hummmmmmm of humminess??( don't ask- I think my anti-biotics are kicking in now)

After a bit of last minute practice (& anxiety) we managed to get performances on the 'stage' in class and despite a bit of a squirrly audience behaviour (there are a few who cannot sit still) . We had Oprah's "Got the Greece" with Aphrodite, Hera, Athena and a guest appearance by Hercules (who was quite upset to discover that his father was Zeus- silly Oprah- she let it slip).
Apparently all the 'ladies' had some plastic (plaster) surgery to noses etc so their beauty might not be mythological after all!!
We also heard from a Newscast which featured the student winners of a mythology writing contest who all came to the studios to read their creative renditions based on or re-telling myths of great import- a lonely Pegasus gained a horse friend, an epic battle in which happiness, peace and protection win out, a re-telling of Prometheus' theft of fire and a story of mythical proportions about fleeting beauty.
[which reminds me of a quip from Judge Judy: "beauty fades but stupid is forever"]
The three assessment areas the students' requested were for
1. relevance to mythology topic 2. creativity and plausibility of story (character) 3. oral speaking and audience skills (tone, audibility, eye contact and ability to engage audience- for the audience, listening skills)
They did a fabulous job a dealt well with a bit of a difficult audience.

We used up our computer time and luckily no-one complained too vociferally SO I have promised to make up some computer time tomorrow morning...

We finished once we had cleaned up with a "Where in the world am I? " passage and the students who answered it correctly (Venice, Italy) were allowed to leave a minute or two early.
The others wanted me to re-read it!!! Guess who wasn't listening the first time ?????

Dismissal 3pm
have a wonderful evening- I need to find my desk it's in here somewhere....
Mrs. J.