Tricky Tuesday

It's gonna be a long week...even with a Friday Sports Day!

Homework
Once again students (they know who they are) with missing assignments and redo work have been advised that they have until Friday to get the work in for inclusion in the Term 3 assessment data- there simply is no more time
FYI some have said they 'honestly, don't care', some are trying to care- taking it home (although it needs to come back from home too to be included!!) or trying to complete in our class quiet time and the rest are pretty much completed!!
Still looking for UBC forms, DRSS forms and money for pictures and hoodies!!

It's getting down to the wire (my patience too!!)

General Day
housekeeping - getting things set up and underway (took longer than I thought)
9:30-10:20pm
I unleashed my idea for a different kind of vocabulary activity on the students today- see yesterday's entry! Each group had one worksheet for words beginning with L,M.N.O and P- each group was responsible to complete their specific letter (one of the five) and post it for others in the class to check out. It actually started out well but I wouldn't say that it was a great activity for building vocabulary accurately. It turned out to be a real group work and strtegy activity and I can tell you one thing- I would not like to be competing against these students in any Survivor-like situation- they are 'brutal'.
After I ensured every group had equal access to the good dictionaries and an even number for team members. I let them fly at it...wow...
It was a very interesting activity for me to observe and while I did provide clues for different groups I found that of the 5 groups, a couple of groups worked together cohesively and had a strategy for checking, another couple of groups had 'fringe members' who were not really involved in the team effort- or they worked more independently and them 'pooled' answers. The fifth team was quite negative from the outset and fared the least successful although a couple of members tried to hold it together- what was really interesting is that this is the team which did some underhanded cheating and visited other groups instead of being focussed on the task.

Tomorrow- we will analyze and see what (if anything) the students might have learned- I have all the worksheets and I'll look them over tonight.
In my opinion the activity went on too long for sustained interest, if the goal was to learn new words, I'm not sure it was successful and finally it is not something I'll try again this school year- maybe refine it for the future? Maybe not.
I'll let you know what the students thought about it tomorrow- by the way every member of the group will get the same mark from their group's assessment according to the results on the vocabulary sheets.
early snack- due to family groups
recess
Family groups after recess - Sports Day cheers (Go Green Team)

Last part of the morning - provided time for completion of incoplete work including a bit more team time for those who wished to use it for the vocabulary assignment.

Lunch- some real 'pent' up energy- hopefully a break and some physical movement will help!!

Physical Education with Mr. Parker

DEAR time- oh my... some are really struggling now to keep it together... put a stop to some mean and hurtful comments that were becoming more than disruptive. After that things settled for a while.

Personal Planning- follow up of the activity that went so poorly on Friday- better results this time around :) and I was impressed that the majority of the students managed to put the processes of male and female reproduction in the correct order. I shared some fabulous highly magnified pictures (Life Magazine) of a sperm burrowing into an ovum and a look at the process of cell division as the fertilized egg nestles into the uterine lining. Great way to finish the day- they were rather quiet! lol

Time to mark those vocabulary papers... stay tuned

Have a nice evening. Hopefully, I won't be up until 2am waiting for my 'lost' kitty who took off out the back door when we had some company last night- now I know what is like to sit up waiting for someone!!!
Mrs. J.