Wednesday Oct 13th

Sorry so late AGAIN! I had to leave school because the computer in my classroom completely froze- not sure what happened!! Ain't technology grand?

After school on Wednesdays I take part in a fitness class for an hour and it was at that class that I have determined a plan for dealing with our class malaise in Phys. Ed. classes. The students will be incorporating more fitness and circuit training into our classes in the coming weeks. Tomorrow I intend to provide the students with information about the accumulative participation points in Phys. Ed classes so far this year and ask for their feedback about whether they think they would like to improve them :)

It took me a good hour this evening to deal with the aftermath of the afternoon. It was a messy one and I will bring it to the attention of all but especially the messiest of the messy !! It is frustrating when you think you've set students up for success only to find the 'lair' of their desks- I did a spot 'visit' to five desks tonight. There may be five surprised students tomorrow!!
Our new seating plan is in place- a few were a little sulky about their new spot but I'll monitor for workability over the next couple of days.

Tonight's Homework
The Giver There are a few (maybe 5) students who NEED to take the responsibility to finish the notes for their novel to Chapter 10 (word to the wise - that won't happen if your novel is still; in your desk and you're at home!!!!! Last day for that assignment is this Friday (Oct 15th)
For the three students who are to hand in the science booklet- one more evening
Math- powers and scientific notation- complete the worksheet (again to do that YOU HAVE TO TAKE IT HOME!!!)- most did it in class but quite a few left it in class tonight

You can lead a horse to water.....

It looks like the overwhelming majority of parents chose Oct 27th for a parent meeting and now because I am at home I can't remember the preferred time- more tomorrow on the Blog- I'll send a newsletter home on Friday.

General Day
Great discussion about the trapped (and being freed as we spoke) miners in Chile. What a miracle! Today after a good deal of sharing and discussion (Tamara's family is Chilean) we turned to our learning journals for a writing assignment. The title Miner Miracle - create a newspaper report answering the five w's and H (Who?, What,? Why?, Where?, When? and How?). For those students struggling with the concept of a 'report', the assignment was adapted to answering the six questions in sentence format.
It is such an inspiring story.
Next we turned our attention to Math- I still need to finish the problem solving poster marks from Tuesday...so today we be looked at powers of ten and writing large numbers in scientific notation (which means expressing- writing- a number as a decimal multiplied by a power of ten) I.E.
290 000 000 = 2.9 x 10 to the power of eight
For the novel we did a class look at the complete lack of freedom that is coming to focus in our novel The Giver - this is a set up to guide the students for the next novel activity which is a visual-verbal poster for Ch 11-15. They will work with partners. For the last half hour before lunch the students were given time to complete their Reader Response activity for Ch 6-10.
Mrs. Kurki worked in class with a small group of students who are behind in the assignment.

DEAR time was rather noisy today- I gave out the TRC (Teen Reading Club) flyer and it caused a great deal of pointing and chatting!! My bad?
French follow up to yesterday's review lesson on the vocabulary and phrases we have been using for the last six weeks. Today we did a quiz of 15 words which they had to write in English. I'm not sure how they did- there was a lot of peeking at their neighbours papers!
Brain Activity next- students were becoming very restless and difficult to direct!! Even a movement activity caused many of them to become silly and not take part appropriately- some were unable to stand up others couldn't stop behaving for the entertainment of their friends!!! It was rather interesting and increasingly frustrating to say the least. I will follow up the brain activity because if the students can understand how their brains work, they will be able to be in much more control of their personal learning and behaviour. (In an ideal world...)
Anyway, Computer time this afternoon was for final completion of socials webs and reader responses- I had some help from our class volunteer Mrs. P. Today I learned that a nice touch and helpful presentation trick is to have the students do header and footer including their name on every sheet and a count of their papers when they all print at once! She is so helpful and patient and has lots of good ideas being a specialist in the computer area that I am very grateful for her visits!

To end the day, We tried a class of Phys Ed. out in the beautiful sunshine (I have never seen so many boys afraid of bees in all my years of teaching!)- such drama! I tried to revisit a simple game of tail tag (using pinnies) but once again much time was wasted by the students generally not listening to directions, not following the directions that they didn't listen to and (sorry but mostly boys) running around and being silly with each other. There was only 10 minutes of time left to play the game!

I have decided after my frustrating class outdoors that
a) we will be conducting classes in the gym from now on
b) Phys. Ed. will become more structured (fitness circuits, drills and set skills)
c) students will need to come prepared to take part (no skinny jeans and baggy pants), proper shoes and shorts or pants that will stretch and
d) students who cannot control their behaviour will be removed from the Phys. Ed. activity
Sound harsh but I worry about the 20 students who are trying hard to participate in our Phys. Ed. classes to the best of their ability.

Hope the blog isn't too late to be helpful. Some days are like that...
Have a nice what's left of the evening and maybe talk to your son or daughter about today's classes and find out what they are thinking. Until tomorrow...
Mrs J.