Wednesday, October 23rd

Isn't technology a great convenience? Well, when it works...

I am posting the daily Blog from foggy West Van tonight. My son is completing his NLS course and they have Wifi in the lobby so no excuses tonight. Love free wifi :)

Reminders
Unit 4 spelling test as well as catch up with some others (if it is too much for the students who need to do the outstanding unit tests we can 'stagger' them. I'll see how they feel- but everyone has Unit 4
Math 7 asked students to try solving 5 order of operations examples on a Visual Instruction worksheet

Last day for any Scholastic orders Thursday
No school Friday due to the provincial pro- d day Oct 25th

Our day

Flipped to a French lesson first this morning thinking that I'd get them while they were still waking up! (Kidding) but seriously want to work on a more interactive method of teaching French as the constant (daily) practice with vocabulary is not effective. Today we worked on translating the daily French phrases that we did together first verbally. Topics are still days, months, dates, weather and some new vocabulary rated to these topics.

Novel Touching Spirit Bear
Reading
Completed chapter 7 and read chapter 8 today. It was a bit graphic about the character's bear attack. We have reached the crisis part of the action - the good news is he does survive. As one of the students pointed out "he has to survive the attack because the books not over yet!!"
Once we get to Chapter 10 together, a novel study for the remaining chapters will allow students to decide what format they would like to use to complete the novel.

Math 7
I tried to rally the troops about how they could be more successful on skill quizzes in Math

If you always do what you've always done,
You are always going to get what you've always got

I'm not sure how much 'rallying' becomes too much whining like Charlie Brown's school teacher ( wah wah wah wa)
We reviewed the Order of Operations examples from yesterday and did a few more today practicing BEDMAS once it was introduced properly.
The most misleading thing about the acronym BEDMAS is that students have to remember that although it says division and multiplication - both of those arithmetic skills are done before addition and subtraction. However,if multiplication appears first in an equation which is read left to right then the multiplication is done first and if subtraction appears first left to right that skill is completed first.

So consider (7-2) x 10 - 15 + 8
Solution = 5 x 10 = 50-15= 35+8 = 43

Second half of class we did some on-line practice using IXL and Khan Academy websites.

Read to self
Record

Noticed a kind of weird vibe in class this afternoon - not sure what it is about
I'll keep you informed but need to address the source(s) first and not hold everyone accountable

Phys Ed
We can all recover from one not so cooperative class.
I tried to teach a new game with a bit of a HAlloween vibe but whether it wasn't explained well enough or the students found it too difficult to follow the directions (afternoon?) I switched it up to one they know and loved last week :Space Invaders but even that became a bit of a disaster.
I have two rules safe and fun and for some it was neither. So back to the drawing board on suitable games or maybe a few saboteurs will sit the next one out. Have to be careful NOT to take it personally.

Back in class- follow up to the planning sheet for the H&C lessons - always like to give the students input into what they are comfortable covering together.

Planners and used last five minutes to settle everyone for a 'chill', calm dismissal instead of what can sometimes be a mad dash.

See everyone Thursday.
From West Van signing off Mrs. J.