Thursday April 21st

Another after school meeting...

Homework
I have only requested that the novel work that some students are behind on be completed this weekend

Enjoy your Easter long weekend- see you all Tuesday April 26th

General Day
Started with a follow up French lesson on the endings for the regular -er, -ir and -re verbs.
Each student was provided with a chart of verb endings for different tenses. I explained that there was more information on the chart than we would be using this year but that they should attach the chart to the work we did previously with avior and etre as it will be useful for now and next year in Gr 8.
I tried some aural sentences asking the students to listen and chose the correct form of the verb but that was too challenging - they do need at this point to see the language in front of them so I need to prepare worksheets with the sentences.

Novel time- I made an effort to meet with the students whom I missed yesterday to discuss their novel work progress on an individual basis but I ran out of time (I will continue at DEAR time this afternoon)

Band class

Math - thought we all needed a change from the lines and angles unit SO today we looked at the relationship of 3.14 (pi) to the formula for finding the circumference of circles. I thought I had it all planned BUT as I made the error of having the students round up their circumference answers (which had the effect of NOT showing the relationship to 'pi' as 3.14 because we were off by a few points i.e. a circumference of 10cm divided by diameter of 3.2cm = 3.125 not 3.14 so we actually had to leave the circumference as10.048cm before dividing by 3.2 to get the correct answer of 3.14
MY BAD- it was so difficult back tracking with the students! I will need to find a better way to teach the realtionship. I lost the students from that point on: some followed the changes, some couldn't follow (their charts were already completed) and some wondered what had happened and who to follow!!
The best laid plans of mice and men.....indeed!

DEAR was better today- more settled :) I visited the remaining students for novel assignments.

Class Seating Plan experiment- the students are always at me to change the seating and as soon as I do they want another change so today before the long weekend I asked them to work together and negotiate a seating plan that might work and with which everyone was in agreement. To cut a long story short (30 minutes) it was an unsuccessful venture. Three things happened...
1. small groups banded together excluding others
2. some students felt that they'd rather sit alone!- this is difficult with 30 students and science experiment group work that needs students to work together (some feel excluded- like no-one likes them)
3. some of the groupings were of friends who are typically overly social together
We tried fives, threes and twos (although there is not really enough room) nope, nada, not happening...
guess what I'll be doing this long weekend?

I tried a follow up lesson for personal planning from the book Respect Yourself but had to abandon it due to the wrong atmosphere in the room after the previous activity. I should have known better.

Art
the band posters are getting a bit 'long in the tooth' to be honest. Some have started the 'calendar' activity and hopefully next week we can have everyone doing the same activity at the same time as I need to review the various patterns for the calendar pictures (some are weaving, some geometric patterning and some interlocking two different scenes together in strips.

Challenging afternoon!

3pm dismissal after clean up.
Good luck to the floor hockey teams- enjoy your last games tonight. See you Tuesday.

Hope everyone has a good and relaxing Easter Break
Mrs. J.