Tuesday, April 23rd

Back to school for everyone today.

 Yesterday our staff shared a presentation of 62 Apps for educational activities in the morning and reviewed the main components of the MindUp program in the afternoon- it was a productive professional development day.
That said...
I am not completely sold on all the Apps and programs out there for devices- there are so many and some have similar but slightly different functions not to mention the continual updates and 'bugs' that need to be worked out of them. Sometimes I think that we jump too fast onto some features of technology and don't stop long enough to consider if it is really as useful as it is being marketed or if the students are really interested. The truth is we have a ways to go to be a technologically friendly building and lots to learn about being technologically savvy. I need time to get my 'feet wet' and play around with practical applications but by the time we have learned it, the kids are through with it and have moved onto the next thing!! We have come a long way technologically in our little elementary school in the last couple of years and we teachers are boldly messing around with things new, shiny and digital but the journey has just begun...
There's more to creativity than finding an App for that!

Homework
Math 7 redo of the geometry Unit 1 (finding missing angles)
Read the novel please!! Guide questions for all three were distributed today- no excuses for not knowing what to focus on.
Reminders
FYI the grad hoodie orders finally went to the printers today :) yeah
Grade 6/7 Band Concert 7pm tomorrow evening (Wednesday)
Math tutoring session #3 students were fine with having a math tutor group after school as it gives them another focus before the band concert - we haven't decided on the skill yet but I think we might need more time on subtracting integers.
Thursday class pictures (panorama)
Friday Hoop Dancer performance in gym 9am
Friday is Decades Spirit day
Friday 11-12 McCreary survey for grade 7's during math class

Our day...went so fast...

Phys Ed. free choice activity as long as you are moving and exercising
Floor hockey (9)
Skipping rope (5)
Hula Hoops (4)
climbing (4)
basketball (2) outdoor court
It was a beautiful morning so the majority of activities were outside- back of the gym. The hockey group was very well behaved today- no drama :)

Novel chapter guides and questions were distributed for all three novels this morning. The next 40 minutes was spent on organizing novel time. Students read, asked and answered questions for their novel choice. The majority of the class is reading Milkweed set in second world war Warsaw during the Nazi Occupation so I needed (felt it was appropriate) to discuss the importance of the setting and the historical time on the story told by the young characters.

Math7 as we are redoing the unit 1 quiz on geometry tomorrow, I didn't think it would hurt if we all worked on some more find the missing angle examples- I pulled them from a resource called MathSmart7 available in bookstores for about $20 (a great resource for summer or beginning of the year review as they are available from grade 1-9). No, I don't get a kickback on sales!
I am an advocate for the students to consider taking their learning out of the classroom and working through concepts that are frustrating or difficult for them using such resources as the Khan Academy, IXL (20 free a day or a subscription) or even the MathLinks 7 website for our text which is on-line. There are many Apps that also help with Math skills (games too).
We worked through 17 examples before their brains were tired- some of them will appear on the test that I still have to create, tomorrow ! I sent home a one pager of 10 more examples for them to try as test prep but it truly frustrates me when I see them lying in the cloakroom instead of in their packs!!

Had a nightmare about my math7 class this morning and was glad to wake up- try as I could in my dream I could not get the students attention; they were chatting and noisy and I was getting upset. When I turned around they were all moving their desks around and being social and I couldn't see any math. After class today, I told the students because we had a great class and Ethan said that my dream hadn't come true...YET! Yikes! lol

Silent reading

French -er verb du jour Aimer to like/love
working through the conjugation and correct application of verb declention in les phrases francais

Personal Planning The media and You- images and manipulation of young people in marketing of videos etc
tired a class discussion but it was difficult to get the students to share opinions partly due to the nature of the content of some of the examples we were discussing- the overtly sexual and sexist portrayal of men and women. This lesson needs a follow up...my intention is to compare it to real life and TV life and discuss how people can become so disillusioned with their life.

Art Mazes- creating and designing a maze using graph paper as a 'rough' draft.

While the students sketched I read a chapter from our class novel which has all but been abandoned since Spring Break. I am not sure if the students are that 'into it ' any more.

Dismissal already
Have a nice evening
Mrs. J.