Wednesday February 23rd

I'm hoping to do a real quick update tonight just before I run out to a fitness class.

Day just sailed by ...busy...busy...Lunchtime Pink Day dance, long service recognition luncheon with the trustrees at lunch (I've held it together for 20 years!!), important choir practice for tomorrow's performance...
Never a dull moment at Squamish Elementary!!

Homework
Nothing new
Unit 19 spelling test tomorrow (also overdue activities)
Lots of students now caught up with science :) - keep the booklets coming in :) good stuff
If you have been away choose a couple of assignments to do tonight so you are not behind (French, mapping and spelling activities)

General Day
French avoir: to have
Working on identifying the personal pronun in order to use the correct part of the verb in sentences (this is really good for their English sense of sentence too) Sounds easy but it is the recognition that needs practice.

Ch 7 of DGC, class novel. Violet and Phobe finally get together and write a letter to Mr. George Clooney on behalf of her mom!!! It is now in the mail!! She is really not giving up on trying to find a 'suitable' boyfriend for he mom!

Mapping: North America- the countries, oceans and islands. Discussed the geographic importance of the Pananma Canal and the once land bridge called the Bering Straight (talking of Pangea)

Computer Lab for time to check out the links for the Ch8 on the Earth's Crust
Plate Tectonics and Earthquake activity. I sent the satudents in search of the answer to how scientists can approximate the volume of water in the oceans at 236 million trillion!!
There are some very cool internet activities to check out:
http://www.savethesea.org/
http://www.windows2universe.org/
http://www.mcgrawhill.ca/   (BC Science 7, Chapter 8 student resources) Click onto Elementary schools or just search for BC Science 7. One of the reasons I chose this text is becuse of the extension of learning out of the text on-line. It is very cool. You can track recent earthquakes in Canada to the hour on a Canada Resources website. The most recent earthquake in BC which was 'felt' was in Duncan (February 15th) with a magnitude of 2.9!!


DEAR time- pretty good- they needed a rest after the dance :)

Personal Planning -Personal Health - the virus Mononeucleosis- article from Sunday's Province about the spread of the virus and how to mitigate it. The students were attentive once the drama died down!! I see my students share drink bottles and straws every day, they share lipsaver and the girls are liberal with their lip gloss. We talked a bit about the cold sore virus and the virus spreading vias contamination from saliva. If you would like a copy of the article I have extra.

Brief re-visit to computer lab. This time we went to two more websites that I want my students to know are there and that have lots of great info. One was the school web site for Don Ross  because I wanted to share the blogs of the teachers teaching the grade eight courses currently.
The other was for Personal Planning and is called http://www.iwannaknow.org/ it is an adolescent website which has excellent information on health, relationships and sexual development.

Phy. Ed. only a few had to drop and give me some push ups today. Changed the game. Instead of line basketball, we played a scoring basket skill game in which one member of each team dribbles to the basket with a basketball each and first to score gets a point for the team. I find some of their play when throwing a basket id very wild and this way it helps them slow down- there is no offense/defense needed. Score was 11-9 so teams were very even and its just time wasted that is the big issue.

3pm Dismissal
Have a good evening
Mrs. J.