Tuesday, December 13th

Is it true as we get older, the days and months (years, perhaps) seems to go faster? I have sat myself down to post this Blog and I don't know where the day disappeared to and yet every minute seems so busy. Maybe keeping busy is the reason why the time seems to disappear so fast but I'll bet it's dragging for my students.
I enjoyed my day despite its 'speed'!

Homework
Nothing new (no spelling this week by popular demand!)
Some students have taken home their fridges and some books to research from
Reminders
Ski Day tomorrow- leaving after attendance and morning announcements- please come prepared for a day in the outdoors :)
Looking forward to it :)
Band concert Friday morning

General Day
daily French- making great strides in the ability of the students to recognize feature (and basic) vocabulary and translate the meaning. My goal for 2012 is to work on  their daily pronunciation of the French words and phrases.

Journal write: I haven't asked for a journal write in a while and I thought that this would be a 10-15minute effort in the peaceful quiet of a classroom full of students writing. NOT!
I was WRONG! However, we had so much fun with the topic that we ended up taking a whole 40 minutes including going onto Google to get some facts and information about the costs of things.
The topic?
You have been awarded $100,000 with a catch. You can only spend $1000 for yourself and your own 'wants' and MUST give away the rest of the money to at least five different deserving people or charities or organizations (local, provincial. national and/or international. Say briefly why these people and places are in your opinion deserving.
The students 'went to town' and I must say it was interesting and enlightening to read and hear the conversations that took place. No Grinches here. I know you would have been proud of who and what the students decided were deserving of a gift of money. I don't have time to do all the responses justice. There were students with calculators out down to the last penny and others who approximated costs. Some of their ideas

• Tim Horton's cards to Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan (apparently they have a Tim Horton's in Kabul)
• goats and chickens to African villages
• food bank because there so many struggling with $$$
• animal shelters because the animals need Christmas too
• UNICEF for children around the world
• Red Cross for disaster relief
• local hospital for staff to work the machines so folks don't have to travel to the city!
• our school for a boost in technology and books (our class- they wanted a flat screen 3D TV)
• my family for helping with our tight budget
• Providing shelter for the homeless because it is getting so cold out
• To my brother to help him get through university without any debt! WOW
• a spa day for my mom

See, aren't they thoughtful? Of course, there were the Porsche-for-my-dad buyers and the $20,000 for my friend(!) and we all laughed when three amigos decided to buy a KFC Franchise for our local community. KFC seems to be a favourite with these students.
It was one of those moments when I decided a quiet class of writers was not necessary and the students laughed and shared their ideas and got other ideas from each other. They had me on the class computer looking up costs of things they thought about. It was a blast. I look forward to reading the entries when they are completed.

Band

Math
We started class with a trial problem solver 'on your own'. This was the one that we did together last Friday about the % of profit from the Fair. Students did their best to work through the steps and handed it in for assessment. I hope it will give me a heads up about who needs a bit more instruction on completing the expected steps of a story problem.
Then, we completed the practice and review of the Transformation called Rotation (turn). We corrected together the worksheet we were working on yesterday and, using the overhead and visual examples, the students all managed to complete the three different transformations on the graph.
Together we tried a LOGIC type puzzle which gave clues to the creation of geometric figures plotted in a Cartesian Graph- I am finding that there is much more acceptance (less panic) of the new activities and skill practice that I provide. It is encouraging and we have productive classes.

Silent Reading

Chapter of our class read aloud while the students work on those fridges :)
There were a few interruptions- they were silly!

Physical Education was outdoors today- the students wanted to go OUT and I obliged. They really did need to run off some energy and everyone was 'game' So we had two groups - one went to the outdoor basketball nets and played '21' and the other group of 14 played a couple of different tag games with varying degrees of success! But after the half hour they all had rosy cheeks and said they had enjoyed being out in the fresh air. What's not to like? The weather has been so pleasant to date (hope I didn't jinx it)

More filling of fridges- actually many are now at the labelling stage and using resources available to find the French for various foods. One great resource I nearly overlooked (thanks, Simi) is your fridge at home. How many items are packaged and have both French and English? In Canada everything has to be bilingual.

We reviewed the expectations for our ski day tomorrow and went over the clothing and the different groups. Clean up and pack up- time for the bell
Dismissal
Have a good night
I get to hear my son play saxophone tonight in the Junior High Band concert :)