Monday, April 11th

Happy 44th  Birthday to my sister :) I'll call you.

Pleasant Monday today... students are excited about the rep soccer try-outs that start tonight in our community. This last weekend was the soccer season wind-up and now they are getting all wound up about starting it allover again!! We are very fortunate in our community to have a very active and well organized soccer organization- check it out at http://www.squamishsoccer.ca/ and see for yourself.

Homework
The weekend Math booklet (lines and transversals) has still to be turned in by 7 students- I'll check again tomorrow
Still waiting for some Ch 1-5 Novel work (most are moving on though)
Science booklet (Ch 4)
Reminder that there will be no band tomorrow due to our trip to HSSS to see their production of The Outsiders at 10am

General Day

Language Arts activities Vocab-U-Lous - I found these alphabetical vocabulary worksheets on Education World's website and have used them differently each year. This year for vocabulary enhancement I am using a team work method to encourage students to work together and use a dictionary. With 30 students 6 teams of five each get an Oxford dictionary and the class Intermediate dictionaries (which aren't great). Each student gets an activity sheet BUT only one gets turned in with all team names on it. The students are each responsible for two words and work together to complete the correct placement of 10 words. Today the first group completed the task in 10 minutes which blew the 'pants off' the second finishers who needed 22 minutes. Everyone was completed in 30 minutes. Only one team really struggled due to lack of good team work and task management. It also reminded me what a skill it is to actually use a dictionary correctly!
The time needed will improve with better execution of the task. I'll keep you posted!

Still on language Arts Taking the FOG out of your Writing activity had students expanding very simple sentence statements to more descriptive and specific complex sentences. I provided 44 sentence kernels and each day the students will choose three to practice. Here's a very neat example
kernel: The horse galloped.
Re-write: The black stallion celebrated its freedom and galloped wildly across the open plain.

Novel time next. Students seemed to enjoy the time to be quiet and just read (still a couple of students really struggling to settle. My boys are more 'giggly' than my girl's!)

Math- today we actually 'backed up the bus' to recognise and ID different types of angles and triangles before trying again to determine missing angles given one measurement. I think (hope) the majority of students now have a better concept of the constant angles that are equal, complementary or supplementary.

DEAR reading time (giggly boys again!!)
sometimes I silently wish they would grow up but then I wouldn't be able to quietly smile at their silly giggles which were happening because one had placed a fake mustache over his eyes looking like he had a ginormous unibrow! What's not to laugh at?

Science
Mystery Materials activity see science text p101. 5 teams worked together to determine from only weight and sound of shaking materials in a film canister- they ranked them from lightest to heaviest and tried to successfully infer the contents. Results were really good- one team 100% two other teams 80% and the other 2 teams 40%. The intent of the activity was to show how we use our senses and implicit knowledge to infer reasonable answers. We completed Ch 4 today with a final consideration of qualitative components of materials in recording our observations for science.

This took us nearly an hour which I though was a bit too long as we had some silly interruptions but if the students take away something that they have learned then I need to concede that it was worth the time. I need to come up with a quick 'tell me what you learned' method to check- perhaps just a strip of paper with a chance to tell me what they 'took away' from this activity. Next time- although maybe I can still ask tomorrow (Will time interfere with recall? Would it then be a memory test? Does it matter?)

Finished with Phys. Ed. - I gave the students a choice and the majority of the class voted for more line hockey- I do understand as we have their league games after school this week on Tuesday and Thursday.
Good job- nice to see the teamwork and skill play improve. Couple of lines still a little 'wild'- need to 'slow' the play to actually connect with the speed of team mates otherwise it is just constant turnover and wild whacks back down the court.

3pm dismissal
Have a good evening and good luck with the try-outs everyone. Remember if you do well to be gracious to those teammates who may not. Also consider the commintment to a travel team- it is not 'house' soccer anymore and you must commit for the whole 2011-2012 season including practice, travel arrangements and teamwork. Maybe see you there.
Mrs. J.