Tuesday April 26th Welcome Back

Happy Birthday to my brother :)

Welcome back - hope everyone had a nice long weekend- ours was very family oriented- dinner, a shopping trip and a day in which we all just vegged out and ate some Easter chocolate. It was nice to see the sun on Friday and Saturday and get the 'teaser' promise of better weather to come.

Had a meeting after school tonight with the Gr 8 counsellor and vice principal regarding the grade sevens and their transition to grade eight this fall. High school preparation is underway.

Homework
Watch the Chicago vs Canucks hockey game !!!! (optional of course :))
Whoever wins, wins (I could hardly watch the last game so if my students watch it, that's good enough for me!)
Novel  - assignments for students who are behind on assignments - you should be working on Ch 11-15 this week!
Math- last page of the booklet on finding the circumference of circles when the diameter and radius are known
Reminders
Hot Lunch $$ due Friday April 29th
Scholastic Book Fair April 29th- May 5th
Thursday 'Honours' Band Trip to BES please return forms

General Day
Today was challenging! Students were vibrating on chocolate maybe? Four days off,  four days on are nice but sometimes it takes a while to get 'back on track'.
For Housekeeping I shared the new seating plan with them but the difficulty is that in a class like ours there really is no such thing as an ideal seating arrangement. C'est la vie.

Writing Sample for the high school- I asked the students to write on a topic that is near and dear to them: what they are looking forward to in junior high, what are their concerns. I read some very articulate responses and was pleasantly surprised that there were few concerns.

BAND class

Math- follow up to the finding circumference lesson last Thursday. I hope I did a better job but honestly today was very challenging. The students didn't pay as much attention as I thought they should to the instruction. I find that the students who complain vociferously about math being difficult are the same students who 'zone-out' or become unltra social during math class! One of my eternal challenges is getting them all on the same page at the same time- even if the work is done together on the board, not all students copy it as asked with all the working- some just put the answer and that drives me to distraction- how can you review method and repeat the formula when all you have is the answer? What if it is the wrong answer?

DEAR time - today my students were like that game at the fair called Whack-a-Mole (you have a big soft hammer and the moles pop up so you can knock 'em back down) They were very busy doing everything but reading (although maybe five students managed to ignore everything and me too and read their books). Thanks to them :)

Socials Ancient Greeece
Day 1 of our virtual tour- I asked the students to get creative and write a journal travelogue about what it was like to fly from YVR (Vancouver) to Toronto and then through the night to Athens. We (I tried) discussed what it might be like using the pictures I had kept from the airport when I made this trip with a group of high school students (1993) and brainstroming from sample virtual travel entries made by former students.
Still, quite a few had real difficulty with the creative part. It was painful...
I don't want to go on this trip; it's so fake (LOL)
What am I supposed to write?
Are we going for real?
This is stupid if were not actually going!
Why do we have to go overnight? (good question BUT it had already been addressed- $$$ and time for the trip so that we could get there to have a 2nd full day touring in Athens!)
SILENT SCREAM (AAhhhhhhhhhhhh) I thought it was a good idea at the time- maybe I need to do something completely different this time around! I'll give it a couple more classes and see if there is more buy in.It is really funny-weird how some ideas work so well with certain groups of students and then bomb with others.

Phys Ed. Line soccer- they're still whining. I'm calling on reserves of patience because I have a lot going on after school today!

Back in class - had 15 minutes to distribute hot lunch forms, Scholastic forms, pack up and go over homework and make some decisions about the seating plan.
Thanks for helping with the final arrangement.

3pm Dismissal
Articulation meeting with Don Ross Secondary
Meeting with Mrs Paxton and the District Superintendent. We have decided not to go ahead with filming the documentary in the classroom due to the possibility of losing 'proxy parental' control over what students may say and possible repercussions. I am disappointed but support the final decision made, I believe, in the best interest of our students.
Hve a good evening.
When does the hockey game start?
Mrs J.