Rainy Wednesday, Jan. 23rd

The rain dampened the soaring spirits a little today and I hate to say it but I think we needed a little rain on the west coast!!
Better afternoon today...

Homework
Spelling Test Unit 4 (D and A Test #3 again) study tonight
Math 7 - no homework but if you really want to why not review the reference book information for our work so far in algebra and/or go on-line for some test practice
socials -project due next week - get cracking!

Reminders
Thanks for the hoodie orders and payments
the camp letters do not need to be returned it was just an FYI on the days and the cost- permission and medical forms will follow and a deposit can be paid to register interest of your child (payment in installments is recommended)
PJ and afternoon dance performance on Friday this week

Our day...
daily French

Band class

SRA reading program

Math 7 redo of the operations with integers quiz (15 student chose to redo to inprove results) and reference book for the work done so far reviewing algebra- writing and solving equations using the inverse operation
half hour at computers for the FSA numeracy practice
Students still have a way to go with the concept of SILENCE during test taking!!

silent reading (better than yesterday) Yay
lots of 'neediness' this afternoon!

Have put the students on notice that I will be tightening up the time for eating lunch from being allowed through reading time (1:25pm) to being completed by 1:05pm which gives them 20 minutes. Many are taking advantage of the time to play with food and be social to the point of not eating food during the lunch time 12:45-1pm. I am finding that due to the delay in eating the reading times have become difficult to manage and students are taking a longer time than necessary or are unable to read a book because they are peeling oranges or dealing with sticky fingers.
Guess what? Not one student complained! Go figure!
Whatever the market will bear! Huh?

Physical Education
basketball unit- drill  two separate groups for passing and shot practice of skills (bounce pass, chest pass and dribbling).
Whole court games 3 minutes per session/rotation. You should have heard the whining when I requested no dribbling during the games today. Why? Simply because it means no one player can hog the ball and suddenly everyone is receiving passes and getting free because there is a chance that they will receive said passes!! What a difference - we had a TEAM- Together Everyone Advancing & Moving :)
Good session: everyone was on-task and moving and (Shhhhh) enjoying themselves. Yay!

Karma Tube consider the following clip (I mentioned it yesterday) and remembered to include it in today's post (after a lesson from my teenage son on how to embed a video clip!! Our children are so darned smart, aren't they?)

http://www.karmatube.org/videos.php?id=3091

My students and I watched this clip today and I was encouraged by how quiet they were after it was over. It made me emotional when I first watched it and I really wanted to share it with them to see what they thought. We had a brief discussion about our afternoons and what I was observing about our general behaviour and how they were feeling. We have decided to try an experiment as part of our social-emotional curriculum. We are going to make every effort to consistently incorporate just 5 minutes to begin with after our afternoon reading time (which is not always as silent as the title suggests) and see if it has an effect on our afternoons.
Most students seemed to be quietly interested, a couple made funny faces but only one was negative and soon stopped complaining when others were not joining!
I am excited for the trial- more about "quiet time" when I have some results to share.

To complete our afternoon I read aloud the end of the chapter I was in the middle of yesterday: Payback
The nice thing about  reading aloud everyday is that the students start to request either another chapter or let me know that I have't read to them yet! I love it...they can't help themselves.
Some worked on art during this others just listened and that's okay too.

Have a warm and dry evening.
More tomorrow.
Mrs. J.