Wednesday Nov 13th

Quick one tonight from the lobby of the West van Aquatic centre - this place is crazy busy at this time of night!

Reminders
Photos retakes were today
Our spelling units this week are being tested on Friday (not tomorrow)
No new homework

Our day

Daily French

Language Arts
Worked on a class activity today recognizing some of the parts of speech and language vocabulary that we have been discussing like synonyms, suffixes and past participles

From there we looked at an activity to recognize in sample sentences where the capital letters needs to be placed- did this around the groups instead of in a written format which gave everyone a chance to participate.

I had been wanting to do a guided write for Halloween but things got so busy and then pretty much right after we had all the Remembrance Day prep  so today I was able to create the atmosphere in class as it was a bit gloomy outside and. With the lights off and the blinds half drawn it was a perfect atmosphere for the pre-writing activity for what we called Secluded Mansion.


Yesterday we talked about and shared how we could all protect our imaginary mansion from being burglarized and today I did a guided write for the students to think about and imagine and write about their mansion (it did not have to be scary or haunted but I left it up to their creative ideas as to what their secluded mansions would be like)
We responded to 10 guide questions and then the students shared with each other and seemed
 to really enjoy their creations. Some amazing writing and thinking happened and some quite 'bizarre'! Our next step will be to turn it into a short story at the computer lab.

Math 7
Percentages- fractions - decimals conversions there and back again
Looking at and applying some quick calculator tricks to finding percentages of a given number.
Followed up the Tangram activity from Tuesday
Returned the Unit 6 BEDMAS quizzes
The results were very encouraging. The vast majority of  students both felt confident with their skills in BEDMAS and did well on the quiz.  Great news - tomorrow we are in math 7 groups

Read to self
Record

Phys Ed. Today I was looking for evidence of moving in a coordinated manner and sportsmanlike participation. We played a variety of classic games including silent ball, four corners and rainbow tag. Student seemed to be enjoying it for the most part some good, energetic participation.

Personal Planning / health and Career
I introduced a game of choices and consequences today called How's the Weather
My only thought after the fact is that I should have kept back some of my 'clouds' for this first go
around but the students handled it quite well.


The idea of the activity is to provide the students with some scenes or activities to do with teenage issues or personal ideas around such things as  'lying to parents', 'going to parties', forming relationships', 'getting into vehicles ' etc
Some are of a low risk and others are more serious like 'choosing to try alcohol' and the idea of the activity is that the students get a chance to figure out what the risks  and consequences  are before they are ever faced with these scenarios so they are clear and confident about what their response and comfort level would be if they ever had to make a decision.
It is interesting that some students are driven by peer pressure to answer certain ways perhaps for shock value or to be 'part of the crowd' but what is really valuable about that is when the students are asked to 'defend' their answer very often their real values are shared and you would be happy to know that on the topic of 'lying to parents nearly every student in the class put it into a high risk with serious consequences. so that made me a happy camper. Be proud of your sons  and daughters they know what is right and what might be problematic when it comes to certain decisions and we have to keep them on that track.

No time for Word Nerd after planners

Anyway gotta run (actually dance)
See everyone tomorrow
Mrs. J.