Tribal memory: As a kid, I remember the first day in May was a public holiday in Scotland (Europe) and was a day of celebrating all 'workers'. It was a spring festival day that went back to ancient times. I remember the May queen, dancing around a Maypole and other Celtic traditions.
I am trying my best to be positive about our day today. It is not that anything inherently awful is going on just that I am finding the behaviour generally to be fuelled by hormonal uupheaval and high (noisy) spirits that are very tiring to deal with and even more difficult to keep in check throughout the day.
We are collectively making an effort to keep on top of the 'boisterous' behaviour. However, the usual suspects have very short memory about what behaviours are (and why those behaviours are) problematic.
We still have learning to do and too much ground to cover for them to check out now!!
Homework
Spelling Unit 4 redo and Unit 5 prep
Biography posters asap
Math 7 if not completed in class, analysis of the bar graph and pie chart for Wednesday (also if you need to revisit your survey question have that ready for Wednesday)
Reminders
distributed a school newsletter that has the 2012-2013 calendar for your perusal
Mr. Pascuzzi e-mailed all grade seven parents with the DRS schedule yesterday for grade sevens going to high school
Camp letters to be returned by May 10th (payment can come later if necessary)
General Day
extended the morning's House Keeping to include a showcase of the amount of clothing and plastic containers among other paraphernalia that is lying around the cloakroom!!! Time for it to go home.
Spelling Unit 5 practice (analysed the French influenced words and provided some ideas for studying them)
Language Arts: Greek Mythology: The 12 labours of Hercules
It is amazing from a brainstorming activity how much the students can recall about Greek mythology. They know bits and pieces of many stories but have them all a little muddled. Can't blame them because the myths have been used over and over and every time might be a little adapted or manipulated depending on the storyteller or the story medium.
Before we read the story, the students managed to remember (kind of) about eight of Hercules' tasks.
Today's activity asked them to listen to the story and name each of the 12 tasks providing a summary (point form) of each of the tasks. Of course, the background as to why the tasks were commanded of him in the first place is another story itself.
I read an abridged version and as always the students seemed to be transfixed by the power and heroism of Hercules. I joked a little that it seems that ancient Greece had an abundance of vicious animals and monsters wreaking havoc on the countryside just waiting for someone like Hercules to take care of them.
There is so much to the stories of Greek mythology they are not exactly simple myths and the cast of characters is long and deep owing to the philandering ways of many Greek gods. It is a fascinating unit and we just scratch the surface.
Math 7 This class tried my patience today due to the fact that there were students at all different levels who wanted help right now ('yesterday'). Two came back from missing class yesterday and needed to start the activities. Some had completed work others had not. Some were on a challenge pratice question and others were onto a new analysis activity provided today. Questions for me were all different and asked of me while I was in the midst of helping another student. This led to wandering around and inevitably the physical silliness that comes when 12 year olds are not in their seats! When I spent some one-one time for given students others used it as a cue to become social and LOUD.
I prefer to have classes that are conducive to learning and thinking and there is some noise that is inherent in such an atmosphere but should not be so loud that the majority of students can't concentrate.
We are still working on Data Analysis and we are practicing the skills of identifying (calculating) the mean, mode, median and range of data. These are called measures of central tendency. Analysing graphed data to answer questions about what the numbers tell us is the point of the unit.
Silent reading (not bad- not great!)
New reading record sheets were distributed for the 10.5 reading hours that we have for the month of May.
French: Using French question patterns to answer in French in full sentences. Using the weather and clothing vocabulary: respondez aux questions par de phrases completes.
Phys. Ed. split gym: floor hockey / basketball
There are a few wounded warriors of late. Had about 5 not participate due to one injury or another!
Socials
I once again tried valiantly to start the Civilization series at App # 5 : consumerism and had even prepared it at lunch time. We did get to see about 10 minutes of it after I had to start and stop the sections to get to the correct part of the documentary. Apparently, at lunch time, my 'preparing' for the show moved them out of the order that they were originally in and I was confused as to which was the correct section.
Before dismissal I reviewed homework.
Is it too much to ask for students to stay still when I am addressing them? Sheesh...
Hope you have a restful evening.
Mrs. J.
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