Monday December 6th

Will complete the Blog later as I have to be at an AGM at the other end of town by 3:45pm!!

Homework for tonight
Math new- complete the Reflections worksheet #10.2 started in class today
Math #10.1 (overdue) Translations worksheet
Please return the envelopes for report cards with the reflection sheets (my grand total so far sits at 6 reflections received) and 12 of 28 reports returned!!

Tonight is the Band instrument rental evening with the comapny called Tom Lee Music and they are here now setting up - they will be available from now until 7:30pm

That's it for now- gotta run

Okay, I'm back on-line to finish up the blog for today. 5:30pm.

General Day
Began our day by congratulating the boys' and girls' volleyball teams for their participation in the Friday volleyball tournaments mentioned last week.
The girls' won some games and had lots of stories about their experience and the boys' took first place in their tournament (our District) and came back as District Champions with a lovely trophy which is for now adorning our classroom.

 We continued by returning the Unit 10 spelling unit (and booklet) and prepped for the Unit11 test for Thursday. This will be the last spelling unit for the 2010 year as I'd rather not test students on a day after the big Christmas concert next Dec 15th. So we will do the next Unit in Jan 2011 (Unit 12). Approx. 5 or 6 students need to study (or re-study) for a Unit 10 redo. The intent behind the redo Unit tests is to offer students a chance to improve their original result but it doesn't work well if those students don't make the effort to study for an improvement!
The students got a bit of a break today because I had prepared a crossword puzzle for what I thought was unit 11 but it turned out to be Unit 13!! Don't ask- I don't know what I was thinking or why I would jump ahead to prepare a unit I had already decided would be done in January- Oh well at least I'm ready for the new year!! (not!!) I'm only ready for Unit 13!! lol

We completed a language worksheet on pronouns to practise agreements with the antecedent. I still have to mark it. A couple of students still have to hand it in- I'll catch up with them tomorrow.

SRA reading lab next. The intention is to provide an independent levelled reading selection which is self-assessed and recorded- once the students have three 100% results, the reading selections can increase by a level to provide independent challenge. I find most of the students' questions are not comprehension related as much as they are concerned with the language study exercises which focus on figurative language, prefix/suffix vocabulary and intended meaning of reading selection words. I think it is all good practice.
However, I think our next class novel will be Tuck Everlasting and I will ask the students what they think  but I'll be assigning it over the Christmas break for reading only!!

Math- I did an impromptu practice review of the students skills with Translations using the last four questions form the worksheet which was set for homework last Thrursday. Then we jumped with two feet into Reflections using coordinate graphing. Depending on the line of reflection, some of the reflection images can be tricky. We looked at it together using the overhead projector and using 'shadow' flips of the triangles that were to be reflected. Only a few finished in class- the rest are to complete it for homework.

DEAR good job- reading is calming and I think they enjoy a break from me!!

Personal Planning - as promised we had a class meeting to discuss some of the issues we are dealing with in class and on the playground. The students had some very reasonable, responsible things to say and some good ideas about how we can solve the more annoying issues of transitions and interruptions. Thank-you for participating.

Socials-  Ch 4. Today we started to become familiar with Mesopotamia- the geography, climate, farming crops and general achievements of the civilization. We will be covering all five of the ancient civilizations that have been assigned for the socials project so that everyone will have a basic understanding of the differences and similarities of each. I will be making resources available in class for each civilization Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, China and the ancient Mayan civilization of Mesoamerica. Each student has the project criteria and has been assigned a civilization to study in more depth using our text, resources and the web sites available. In class tomorrow I will be conducting some basic 'how to take notes' and  'how to research' lessons which will provide some graphic organizers for students to use.

Phys Ed. We had about 20 minutes and set up a game of benchball. It was interesting but not exactly sportsman/womanlike today- lots of tension!! The students helped set up for the Tom Lee Music company that arrived at the end of the day.
I guess that's where many of you are right now as I finish this from home. Tonight is the band instrument rental evening. See everyone tomorrow. I wonder how many of you will be listening tonight to the first strains of a music prodigy :) Enjoy!!
Mrs. J.