Homework
Math 7 (no new homework) completion of the work that needs to be handed in- the students were provided with a list of what those assignments were
Math 6 nothing new
Novel Finish the novel (most have) and Reader Response #3 so we can really focus on the end of novel projects
Spelling test #7 Thursday
Reminders
Photo retakes Thursday
Popcorn Thursday
I'm taking the literary entries for competition to the Legion on my way home :) like now...
General Day
Daily French- today the students translated the daily French phrases which gave date, weather and a comment about the snow on the mountains
Spelling study 5 minutes
Guess what? Give up? the students have started to ask about when we are going to finish the spelling bee (Noooooooooooo!) I'll need to take care of that soon or I will never be forgiven- there are still 9 students in the running of Division 1 spelling champion.
Novel time- we are now finishing up the last few chapters of Who is Frances Rain? by Margaret Buffie, I read Ch 27 (my favourite) and the students generally had time to
- read the last few chapters
- complete the last Reader's Response (Ch 16-20)
- read the projects and see the samples from former students to help thenm choose two of their own
- start or continue work on the chosen projects
we followed up the assignment list from yesterday and I returned the redos of the Quiz #3 - we have improved the class pass/fail rate from 80%/20% to 96%/4% which is very encouraging indeed. 2 students still have to write the quiz but I am impressed with the seriousness of the learning that is taking place in our classroom.
My whole intention this year is to ensure the students understand the importance of being driven by their own goals and learning (not mine although I still have to plan and guide what that learning is). I have seen some proud faces when the quizzes are returned :)
That being said, division still proves to be challenging for a handful of students- just recently a colleague ,whose son is at the university of Victoria doing engineering, said that her son had mentioned that some of the university students in his class were experiencing difficulty with division! That makes me feel that the extra practice is worth the time and effort.
It is too easy to dismiss skills that students find difficult and make life easier by moving on sooner than we should.
We also began to look as a class at the method of converting decimals into fractions and fractions into decimals and percentages. The base skill for conversion is understanding the division process (HELLO!) of dividend (numerator) by the divisor (denominator) and , yes, one activity I distributed encourages the use of the calculator but I am feeling more confident that most students know what they are doing now with the division skills. Chapter 4
It was a great class.
Silent Reading
Students used some time to prepare their posters and poems for competition- mounting them on construction paper and affixing the competition details requested. We entered 5 posters and 8 poems from our class alone.
(P.S. I dropped the entries for our school off at the Legion on my way home tonight and Madeline Robertson and some of the other folks there had a great time flipping through them :)
Thank-you to Kelli and Jack for clearing the Remembrance Day bulletin Board at the front of the school
Thanks to Autumn and Manisha for doing the timed reading with grade four students
Thank-you to Roshni and Manisha for keeping the paper supply room tidy and organized
We appreciate your help and willingness to be of service in our school :) Merci
Oh yeah, students also READ (I can't believe how many are reading the Hunger Games series- it is the new "Harry Potter' of fiction methinks)
French, J'ai Faim- bandes designees- we began a picture book (cartoon) program which places high frequency words (in this case the words for food and vegetables) into short picture stories which are called 'authentic' or meaningful situations- for example in this story 4 friends are ordering food at the food court in a shopping mall in Montreal and they all have different food types.
It is a clever blend of high interest-high frequency vocabulary which has been proven to improve students' recognition of French vocabulary.
The students did well dealing with the new focus and understanding the French. We will be following up with written work for the story.
Phys Ed. Volleyball- good sportsmanship and team play- I got bonked on the head but I think it was an accident!! I still do not have a good serve but many of my students are very effective with theirs.
Art- time for a new focus- introduced the students to landscape type watercolours. We looked at shapes, moods and colours.
Tomorrow we will be taking clipboards out to find a spot and something from nature to sketch just in an around the school yard. The idea is to go from detailed or general observation to including the item (a leaf, tree, rock, mountain, shrub etc.) in a biggger landscape piece. Today we spent time looking at possibilites and resources- I'd like to have the students learn how to use watercolour pencils effectively.
I always encourage student to bring their own ideas for landscape(s) so if they have a picture or a special spot, he or she can use that as inspiration.
One thing I learned at camp many years ago was to carve aout a time and a place for 'solitude'. The best artistic work often comes from 'solitude'- it is a foreign concept to some of the children I teach- quietness and introspection is scary becuse they spend so much of their young lives wired and tuned in to technology. I remember a student telling me that his ears hurt from the class being too quiet!! The sad thing is that I understood what he meant! (maybe that's a good thing!)
We finished the day seeing how many of the French words from the story they could recognize- pretty good! You've never heard such 'excitement' from students shouting out words like "tomatoes", "mushrooms", "pickles"- I'm sure if you were in the hall you might have been worried about what on earth was going on..."peppers"
Dismissal after homework and tidy up. It was a productive day.
Look forward to another tomorow.
Mrs. J.
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