Monday April 29th

I am always glad when Monday is over...today was a bit of a challenge!

Homework
read novel
find a magazine to bring for cutting up (art project- mosaic)
Math 7 complete the Area booklet if not finished in class today

Reminders
camp fundraising- looking for donations or baked goods - will send home a reminder flyer tomorrow as today's class went to the bell unfortunately
Set up Friday May 2nd- sales Saturday May 3rd from 9-1pm if you can lend a hand or send a plate of cookies for sale we would be grateful.
The proceeds will be applied go to the Camp costs.
We have been challenged to bringing a litter less lunch on Friday May 3rd- prizes for winning class.

Our day
Daily French

Poem today was William Carlos Williams' This is just to say
We discussed the simple format and the kind of reverse apology in the words and the students set to creating their own versions of this famous poem using the poet's structure.
Consider this example from Hannah:

This is just to say
I have eaten
the Oreo cookies
that you hid
at the back of the cupboard

and which
you were probably
saving for yourself

forgive me
they were delicious
so crunchy
so flavourful

Many students created poems and some shared; others are in the middle of ideas for writing and creating a version that they like.

Novel read, write, think and answer
Many students have now completed the chapter guides up to 11-15

Math 7
 Area formula and activities for finding the area and perimeter of rectangles, area of paparallelograms, triangles and trapezoids.
This is not a difficult skill but I really found the students very social, and chatty with each other today- the attention to detail was not great. I had to repeat several times that all working is necessary and that they needed to show the formula, the variables from the diagrams in place of the formula before giving the answer.
Found myself becoming impatient and frustrated having to repeat the same directions over and over! So maybe I shouldn't ...

Silent reading /literacy group.
(some students really struggling to settle down to read this afternoon)

Literless lunch challenge- presentation

Personal Planning - a follow up to the media manipulation activity last week with a look and exploration of how real life compares to media or TV/movie life. The students worked in small groups to complete posters together and managed to come to a shared understanding of how media affects our daily life and expectations. We looked at how the media can target different groups and affect our values, expectations and appreciation of our real life. So many of us feel that if we don't have that perfect life that we are not good enough or there is something wrong with reality and many try to escape the imperfect life that is our real one so much so that many young people are suffering from depression and develop physical and emotional disorders to deal with their feelings of inadequacy.

Most groups worked well; only one had difficulty settling to the task at hand and so the whole activity took longer than first anticipated but we persevered and managed to see it through. I believe it was a worthwhile activity but saw firsthand how some students are causing 'accidentally on purpose' disruption in class and with others in the groups!!

I decided not to try to squeeze in science today- just not the right kind of atmosphere for something needing deep thought!! Go with the flow- flexibility is key when the afternoon are not going so smoothly.

I wanted to display some mosaic art samples as the next art project I would like to introduce is a mosaic art design like the ancient Minoan culture once produced. I knew I had them 'in a safe place' but it took me a while to remember where I had left them (over organization is as bad as none at all!)
I had them look at an ancient Map of Greece (while I was earching madly for the mosaics) to point out how Sparta and Athens were so isolated from each other geographically and how even although just over the sea that Crete was historically and geographically isolated from the Mainland of Greece.
I managed to find the mosaics just in time (not just in Beiber- sorry bad joke) to display them and request magazines to create the pieces for their own mosaics. I'm not sure about the interest among the students as it was so late in the day for new ideas!!

 It is Monday and I had a challenging day so I am not even going to try to guess or speculate- we'll see if it takes off the same way the last project did!

Thanks to Kim for her help and wisdom!

Dismissal,
Have a nice evening.
Mrs. J.