Thursday Sept 22nd

Bit later today with the Blog - I had a visit from some former students now at high school :) I'm all up to date with the gossip now ;)
Today was our first indoor lunch due to the inclement weather- thanks to the girls who braved 'sitting' with the primary students- great job. Thanks also to Mr.P who supervised floor hockey in the gym.

Homework and Reminders
 No new homework set for the long weekend
However, students who need to get caught up with missed assignments would be wise to use the extra day this weekend to get up to date.
Reminders
No school Friday (tomorrow)
Monday is Band instrument rental night 3-6pm
Verification forms are due back Earthquake kits for emergency situations

General Day
As a group we checked over the Class Charter and found a couple of omissions- I'll sort them out and Monday we will sign our class agreement. A copy will also be sent to Mrs. Sorban in band and to Mrs. Paxton. I will post our Charter wording on the Blog Monday next week FYI.

Daily French is becoming more familiar with the students and they are recognizing the repeated phrases and vocbulary words which we read, pronounce and translate every morning. It also helps that we do exposure to French in our morning announcements. Today for example:
C'est le dernier jour de la semaine de l'ecole et il n'y a pas de l'ecole demain

Today we read (I read to them) Ch 2 of the class novel, Who is Frances Rain?, after reading we had a partner/group discussion about the main developments in the chapter and I introduced the concept of the Plot Graph (also called a Story Graph or story grammar) which 'plots' the main components of a well told story.
In their journals the students wrote a paragraph (min. 5 sentences) about their personal reaction to the events of the chapter. Some struggled to write four sentences so as a base line I accepted what each student was able to produce.

Math 7 follow up on the Divisibility Rules and showed the students some multiplication tricks for different times tables...like writng the numbers down the page 0,1,2,3,4 in ascending order to 9 then starting at 9, and writing from the bottom to the top the numbers in ascending order starting at 0,1,2,3...
When complete, the 9 times table is done without any memory stress 18,27,36,45...

We played some number reading games with a multiplication chart that is complete up to the 20 times table and we managed to do pretty quick multiplication and division skills using the chart reading it forward and back. My intention today was to have students grasp the opposite of multiplication is division and the opposite of division is multiplication- this will be so helpful when we start algebra equations.
We also managed to fit in a puzzle using the consecutive numbers of the 12 times table to form a maze or path through a sheet of numbers- I think the students enjoyed it and we certainly found that it wasn't quite as easy as it sounded :)
No homework

Silent reading- was not as silent as it could be!!
We are working towards SILENT as everyone needs a break from the daily din of classroom procedures and whiny peers and teachers!! I don't want to be the 'reading police' BUT I also want to encourage the reading time to be used wisely. [not for throwing eraser bits, making monkey faces at each other or watching me watching you!!] lol

French/Art double dip activity
Les mois et La Meteo- l'affiches (Months and Weather Poster)
We reviewed (the students did a great job) the months of the year en francais and created a poster that depicted the weather for each month using les phrases (sentences) that answers the question Quel temps fait-il? It from one of my favourite resources called Lisez, Dessinez et Coloriez (read, draw and colour)

Physical Education- well, we managed to get one round of the new game completed and they did enjoy it BUT once again we are struggling to manage the time wisely- some management and listening challenges are really eating up our time and I do hope that as we practivce more and the new games become more familiar there will be more activity time and less management :) It will come to pass. I just need to be patient and my students need to follow through with some concentrated listening before doing skills. Sheesh.

Student left at 2:45pm. with Mrs. Paxton for Cross Country running in Valleycliffe

We finished the day with the art/French poster activity. Kelli drew us a character on the blackboard in her style of Manga (Sonic) and connected it to the class motto. I tried to take a picture but got a lot of flashback from the blackboard- I'll try to put it on this Blog this weekend from my home computer.

Planners, reminders, organization for dismissal.
Have a great long weekend, everyone.
Mrs. J.