Wednesday, November 23rd

Early dismissal today- have been meeting with some parents- need to get to a fitness class so I will finish the posting for today from home!

Homework
Spelling Test # 8 (last one for the novel and for this Term)
Math 7 encouraged the students to go on-line and try some of the math practice on the IXL website

Reminders
there is another early dismissal tomorrow 2pm
I'll be available for any parents who would like to meet (just drop me an e-mail or give me a call at school)
Friday volleyball tournament
Friday movie night at school
Today, please ask your son or daughter to share the Math 7 update for Term 1 with you. The students each received a teacher assessment attached to a self assessment for the first term in math 7.
What I found so encouraging is how accurate many of the student comments were regarding their own learning. I agreed with many of them and some even said it better than I could!

General Day
Daily French  - no new vocabulary today- same old day, date, weather routine :)

Spelling study 5 minutes

This morning we used the scheduled Language Arts time for completion of the science work that we started last Friday. I want to get a bit further ahead in science topics and will be introducing new topics this Friday so we want to get the review activities completed.

Band
While the students were at Band class with Ms. Sorban today a colleague, who works at Don Ross, popped in to say 'hello; and bring me a message that made me emotional but very happy! It was an "I miss you" message from a former student! It was a student whom I was sure couldn't wait to see the back of me waving me 'farewell' as they all went off to high school! lol

Sometimes the students who need us the most give us the toughest trials and I learned today that even if it seems that I am not reaching a student when he or she is here with me, my contact with them can still resonate months later. It reminds me that while students might not always remember what we taught them, they will always remember how they were treated and how they felt!
What a great message- it made my day and I intend to send a message back soon. It helped me hold my head a little higher :)
I am humbled by the imapct that simple message had on me.

Math 7
We are now ready to tackle the textbook work on application of the skills we have been learning and working with in converting decimals-fractions and percents. The students are working through Chapter 4. p. 30 # 19-24 and p. 138 # 16-19 in Mathlinks 7
I prefer that the students do not take home textbooks but gave them the option IF they wanted to complete the problems which we will look at tomorrow so homework tonight was optional!
The students voted on a date for our next quiz of recent concepts for Monday November 28th. Quiz #4 will ask them to study the Order of Operations rules and practice decimal-fraction-% conversions. They asked for a review class tomorrow! Absolutely :)
I also distributed the Term 1 Math 7 assessments which provides a numerical skill rubric and has both a self (student's own thoughts about their Term 1 performance) and my assessment of their Term 1 achievement on the numeracy performance standards.
W completed today's class in the computer lab on the on-line learning centre for the math text- students went to the Chapter 4 internet connects and some tried the quiz while others tried the games that are connected to the skills we have been working on. Remember to check it out- just google Mathlinks 7 and go to the student's learning centre and see for yourself what is available for personal learning and practice.

Talking about on-line practice, (I might have said this before but...) the IXL website has a wealth of practice examples and immediate feedback whether the answers given are correct or not- an incorrect answer gets immediate explanation of why the answer was incorrect and what a student can do to fix it. It is great and the grade seven level has something like 227 separate math skills that can be pracriced. Wow! Check that one out too. It is used in over 150 countries and can be matched to different curricula all over Canada including BC. The students seemed to be enjoying their 'playing' with math time on-line today.

Silent Reading- due to the earlyy dismissal we okayed the completion of science and math during this reading session which we extended by 10 minutes.
**had to catch some students up with missed spelling tests during this time (thanks to Manpreet and Gurpreet for the assistance)

Before the 2pm dismissal, we had a vote on a read-aloud novel for Term 2. I am not ashamed to tell you that the one that got the most votes (just from sharing the story lines and the first chapters) was my all time favourite story set in Vancouver called, Word Nerd. I try not to push it on the students but maybe my passion for the story comes across in my presentation!
This will be the third class in as many years that I have read this story to (I love it). The students from previous years have loved it too; they practically begged me to read 'just one more chapter' and I was happy to oblige. I'll keep you posted about the progress :)

That was it folks 2pm already and the phone was busy with students calling parents!
More fun and excitement tomorrow. Have a good night :)
Mrs. J.