Some (mainly my girls) students have politely (mostly) asked for a clarification of the "Dress Code" and I do agree that we have to make an effort to monitor it more carefully as the sundresses and shorts come out of the closet.
Mondays are always interesting and it's one thing I love about teaching - you just never know!
Homework
Spell test (second last of the year) Unit 7 test Thursday
come on people there are 9 biography posters that I have just about given up on ever getting!!!!!
Reminder(s)
If not yet returned, please sign the front page of the report card and I will check off that it has been seen and agreed to by parents. I would like to keep the envelopes for the next report card in June.
Popcorn $1 Thursday
Friday and Monday: the Victoroia Day long weekend back to school May 22nd
General day
Morning daily French
Spelling Tests returned Unit 6 Mean (average ) 88% A
very good general results on this set of words
We are down to two more spelling tests in May and then we will be working on a vocabulary and etymology unit in June. This set for the week are mostly double consonanat and e,i, placement. One doozie is 'vengeance'.
The students and I are trying a new read aloud novel called Accomplice about a couple of high school seniors (young ladies) who make a really bad choice in faking a kidnapping to get some 'notoriety'. I always suggest giving a novel about 5 chapters so far they (my students) want to keep it going. I think they are intrigued by what goes wrong with the 'foolproof' plan!
Band
Math 7 returned the Ch 5 and 12 unit review tests to students today and we had some strong results and in the analysis of graphs section some not so strong. I use the information to inform my planning or review instruction and as usual a number of interesting comments were aired and shared in the "What do these results tell us?" section of today's class.
I split the assessment into three sections:
1. Learning outcomes for the ability to determine measures of central tendency. The results were very encouraging. No one failed and the class average (mean) was 77% (B)
2. Learning Outcomes for the ability to analyse information from graphs. This one was not so successful. 14 students achieved less than 50% and the class average was 54% (C-)
3. Learning outcomes for Probability- able to express the probability of simple outcomes. The average was 65% (C)
In the interest of our statistics unit, I had the students do some work on the results of the second section of the test. They discovered the average was 5.37 or rounded up 5.4 or 54% (C-) as a mean. The range of marks was 8 out of ten!! A very big (long) range from 20%-100%!!
The mode (most frequent score was 4 (40%) and the median or middle score was also 4 (40%).
My questions were, "What does this tell me? What does it tell you?"
Here are some answers...(from the students)
- half of the class failed this section
- the teacher didn't teach it well (thank-you very much :))
- the test was too long
- the question on that section was more difficult than expected and worth too many marks
- students didn't listen to instruction
- students didn't study for the test
- we need moe practice analysing information in graphs
As I use the information to help my planning for our classes (and reflect on instructional methods or difficulties) you can imagine that today we reviewed the ability of reading graphs and making some analysis of the information presented in them. I can't forget that they are still young and not quite aware of the misuse or more misleading visual representations and inevitablilty of the outcomes that many presentations of graphs deliver. Consider this question
"Which of these three graphs would you use to represent the profit of a medical drug sales company if ...
a) you were the president of the company speaking to shareholders
b) you were a politician planning a presentation on the excessive profit of drug comapnies
c) a spokesperson defending the profits of the company to the media
Each graph used the same information but presented it slightly differently!! Lies, lies and D*** statistics!!
It was an interesting class.
Silent reading
fraught with some drama left over from the lunch time and it took a while to deal with it so I really want to thank all the students who were able to settle down without being directed and made a good job of it today. Thank also to Arsh and Gurpreet for working with Aaaron today.
Socials Ancient Greece: introduction to the route we will be 'virtually' taking to tour the main ancient sites of the Greek countryside including Athens, Thebes, Delphi, Olympia, Epidaurus, Mycenae, Corinth and Cape Sounion. This week we will be doing a slide/ image tour. I'll be the guide on the side.
2-3pm Art- hands on- following directions-having fun
We completed the kite project started last week (decorated Friday). We needed patience, scissors to cut the shape from the bag (guided by perforated lines!), ability to tie knots and cut string, ability to use tape in the right places! and creating a 'bridle' to attach our flying string to beofre we went out side into the sunshine to fly our kites.
I was truly flabbergasted by the number of students who were unable to follow step by step directions and cut all the wrong sections then got themselves into a tizzy and gave up trying. I did my best to help everyone out but I was tired of hearing my name called this afternoon!!! We finally managed to figure it all out but tying knots apparently is a dying art! One student needed three kites before he got it right!
Outside:
Some strings wound around others and kites came crashing down but for the most part I think everyone managed to get their kites up and flying for at least ten minutes. Some students were upset that the material was so fragile (it was a paper bag!!) that it didn't hold up well to the wind but others flew amazingly well for paper bags!! The activity also allowed the students to see how easy and how much fun it is to fly a kite- we have the perfect back field for such an endeavour.
In other cultures, the art of kite flying is a sport that is brutal- people cut and try to take out one another's kites. Today that happened by accident.
Thanks to Mrs. Paxton for ordering our classes a set of kites. It was fun and a great way to spend a sunny afternoon.
Back to class after the dismissal bell because some students didn't want to stop :)
How many times do you have to tell students to go home after a day at school?
Have a wonderful evening.
Mrs. J,
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