Tuesday, October 15th

Another whizzy kind of school day...

Hope everyone enjoyed a family meal over the Thanksgiving weekend.
Back to school today ...a busy one

Reminders and Home practice
Spelling test for Unit 3 will be Friday this week due to the missed Monday yesterday
'Do Overs" for the Unit 2 test will be Thursday however, students will focus only on the words they need to improve
Hot Lunch forms were sent home tonight (complete with envelopes for $$) and are due next Monday (no exceptions)Oct 21st
Hot lunch is Oct 28th (Monday)

I will need to follow up with planners tomorrow as we (I) left it too late for a proper check tonight!!

Announcement
Congratulations go out to Hannah Magee (now at Don Ross) for her win in the poetry competition run by the BCTELA (BC Teacher's of English Language Arts). Her poem, She Sits, has been selected for publication in the Spring 2014 journal dedicated to young writers, Voices Visible.

Our first writing competition this year will be the Remembrance Day local legion competition (also an art or poster contest) and the BCTELA will be in Spring 2014 for publication in the Spring 2015 journal. Publication takes time!

Our Day

check on the rock candy experiments-
of 11 jars only three seem to be lacking any crystal formation and I have a sneaking suspicion that they are the ones that I did after school on Friday when I was running out of sugar! There were a few other variables of course but still in rock candy the biggest factor is the sugar so I take full blame for not having enough sugar in the liquid.
I guess the good news is that the other 8 are definitely forming some kind of crystal candy. More later as it still needs a few days to form. At least one student has tried the experiment at home. Today I took off the plastic to allow for evaporation as more air flow to dry up the liquid is necessary especially in the hot window of the classroom- the plastic was causing too much condensation but luckily this year (so far) there is no mould!!

Band class

Spelling
return Unit 2 test
general results showed an improvement over last week's results in that 19 students passed (5 of those 19 with 100%) and only 1 student was less than 50% (last week there were 6 or 7 in the same category). This shows me that for now tracking and nagging seem to work!!

Preparation for Unit 3 words which are a bit easier this week - lots of words that seem like they should have double letters and don't! Some /shwa/ blurred vowel sound and the odd French influence word - 'amateur'.

Word search and hidden message activity using the Unit 3 words for practice.

a couple of students need to make up tests and some have been given the chance to redo the Unit 2 test on Thursday this week- I can lead the students to the water but ...

Math 7 return the Quiz #4 from Friday
2 students away Friday wrote today
General results showed that the areas most lacking in skill were
1. using relative size to estimate
and 2. subtracting decimals

Today we reviewed the quiz skills by going over the answers and correcting it together.
Quick review on writing decimal numbers using place value.
Using a multiplication grid - place value grid to multiply three digits by two.

Also prepared and distributed a Learning Outcomes overview of the report card Math skills for Term 1 so the students can see where we are and where we have to get to by mid November.

Today it took a bit of time to settle students in the class as I found some students were more interested in talking to each other (something to do with a recess disagreement) than to tackle the math skills. Once that was put to rest things settled down but what is with the silly noises and humming? Enough already- making noises keeps their brain busy and they can't possible listen or hear instruction.

Read to Self time
record progress
need for all students to get to reading novels at least three times a week- enough picture pointing that will not help to improve reading skills. There is absolutely a place for non-fiction but not every day- research has shown that reading skills do not improve with extended reading of visual material that does not have a story line attached (I do not mean National Geographic articles or the like but more picture inspired captions and brief explanations that accompany them).

Computer Lab
Web sites providing a history of Halloween and vocabulary game: Halloween Hangman
Scavenger Hunt
Free time once activity for Halloween was completed
Finding it necessary to clarify school firendly games for free time!


Art
back in class provided students resources to get started on their rendition of a Haunted House (more time needed perhaps tomorrow morning for a change of pace!)

...ran out of time

distributed Hot Lunch forms tried to get planners in before the dismissal bell but was not successful!
no time for Word Nerd...
another day gone
Have a nice evening
Mrs. J.