Wednesday. April 24th

A bit of a schedule change today due to tonight's Band concert.

Homework
Nothing new

Reminders
class pictures and our annual panorama shot of all the students and staff at our school (the whole fam damily)-
Friday Hoop dancing performance 9am
Decades Spirit day - dress as your favourite decade? really...an excuse to dress hippy, dippy I guess
11-12 Friday grade sevens have the McCrteary Health Survey to complete during class time

Our day so far...

No band class this morning but will be switched to 1-1:45 (silent reading time)

This morning we extended the Language Arts time to include...

1. working on a proofreading activity which asked students to find and correct a number of frequent errors of spelling,  punctuation and general grammar. The 15 errors in the sentences were ones that the students tend to overlook when in the 'middle of writing'; sometimes it can be easier to see them in a single sentence but the isolated nature of these kinds of activities do not always transfer to independent writing.

2. Poetry: I am a Rock Paul Simon
A look (study) of the connection among lyrics (words), sound and image:  first we considered the words so students could determine what the lyrics tell us- we brainstormed a mind map and then looked at the use of alliteration ("freshly fallen shroud of silent snow") and the 'mood' of the poem's lyrics. We then considered the images the words conjure up or imply in our minds before listening to the song to music (one version heavy with the 60's twang guitar) and the other Paul simon's more subdued version unplugged which was more true to the 'mood' that we had previously discussed as being dark and depressed! The final part was to then watch a YouTube video of the song and see if the images we suggested were featured and sure enough the students were accurate with nearly 80% of the video images (no shaking booty in this video) as this was when videos were closely related to the song lyrics!!
I have asked the students to find and write out the lyrics of one of their favourite songs for a similar study in the coming weeks- I'll need to check them of course for appropriateness for school but the students seemed to be excited to bring their own song choices for a poetry study :)

3. Novel reading, thinking, writing responses and answering guide questions- some students are making short work of the questions I prepared so I need to get caught up with the next set of chapter chunks - good stuff some are forging ahead- others not so much!!

Math 7 redo of the geometry (angles, lines and calculating the missing angle) review for approx. one third of the class (10) the rest worked on the second page of the practice samples in the MathSmart 7 book that I set for yesterday's practice
the other half of class was at the computer lab - many worked through 20 questions on the IXL website and others completed the MathLinks7 quiz for Chapter 3 before using some free game time on Third World Farmer and Free Rice among others.

Band Class 1-1:45/2pm
I am taking the opportunity now to post today's blog report

2-2:45pm
Physical Education will be outdoors today as the gym is being set up for tonight's concert so Mr. Parker and I have given in to pressure to try a double class game with mixed teams of Capture the Flag at 2pm. I'll let you know how that goes!!

Back in class - having missed our Silent Reading time earlier- some time will be provided for clean up and reading at the end of our day today. I will hand out the Scholastic TRC flyers for May. I hope it will be a calm and quiet end to the day but of course that depends doesn't it (I can dream can't I?)

Dismissal just after 3pm
Math tutoring group after school- skill tba (I'll see who shows up and we can negotiate)

Hope you can make it to the concert tonight :) 7pm in the gym