Wednesday - Friday March 5-7

Starting with today

Friday March 7th
Morning session of science Ch 4 both grade six and grade seven students are doing the chemistry unit together
This session complemented the last couple of labs we have conducted for the characteristics and properties of matter
Reading, vocabulary, discussion of what is and is not matter and a close activity on the topics of the first section of Ch 4

Math 7 we resumed our math review games of Jeopardy started last Friday (same teams) and included a geometry category (review questions about the topics we have been learning this week) the teams really enjoyed the BEDMAS questions for some reason!! And they got most of them correct too!
It was nice to see the teamwork and in some cases the speed with which the questions were being answered. All teams were very close to each other in 'earnings' between $200-300 (except the team that won the double jeopardy question)

Read to self
Students were encouraged to complete the science work from this morning

Computer session - introduced to the on-line science web site for the text book and all students did the first quiz for ch 4 (this morning's science lesson) average scores were about 75-80%
There is an "Internet connect" section on the web site that has interactive demos and more information on the science that we are learning so students can access it anytime and not necessarily
from school.

Ted Talks from Ambleside in West Van
A teenage student talks about his experiences with depression and his message to others is to learn to protect who they are (not be afraid of who they are) and stand up together to address the issues of mental health among young people. It was a powerful and effective talk.
His name is Kevin Breel and his talk is titled: Confessions of a depressed comic

Report cards for term 2 were issued.
I left the envelopes open for students to check before they left the classroom just I case there are any questions or concerns. There were a few.
By the way the band class mark is in the Fine Arts music section where the learning outcomes are described. It is a lot of reading (5 pages) plus the attachments.
Grade six have attachments from Mr. Parker for math 6 and I included the student reflections of the
term which were completed last week and printed before they saw their report cards.

I always hold my breath - I am as nervous as they are (maybe a bit more) as sometimes students are not happy to read the teacher's comments but 'darned if I do and darned if I don't' I have always been of the mind that being fair and honest in my observations allows parents to understand that there is more to report than just achievement marks.

Hope you are proud of your children - we have worked hard this term although it probably has been one of the busiest I can remember (Olympics, FSA, weather weirdness, presentations and visitors, illness, extended vacations for some, High School meetings and paper work etc.)

Have a good weekend.
Mrs. J.

Thursday March 4th
Sentence combining activity - learning to write paragraphs with a unified topic (follow up from
earlier this week)
band class
Math 7 groups for the properties and angles of lines and using them to determine missing angles
Read to self / drop in
art session (double time) because we wanted to break out the water colour paints and pencils, we needed longer than the usual 40 minutes to work on the Landscapes. The completed ones look great - they are drying in the window (I hung them on the wire with some pegs) some are still mid paint even with the extra time.

Finding the management of paint, water, paper, students and  motivation (especially of some students who say they have 'finished' but have really not paid any attention to detail or the quality of the piece) quite challenging. But the up side is that the majority of students have completed amazing colorful landscapes.
So there!

Chapter of our read aloud novel before clearing out the cloakroom of all boots, coats , jackets  and miscellaneous items that need to find another home!

After dismissal I was stuffing envelopes with report cards and attachments. I really enjoyed reading the students reflections on the term - they are very honest (well most of them).
I guess there will always be students who think they are doing much better than they really are.

Wednesday March 5th
Novel reading lit circles - groups of students who are reading the same novels had time to find a space and read together.

French les vetements (clothing) activity recognizing the vocabulary and accessories en francais

Math parallel lines and transversal - recognizing the letter patterns that remind us of the properties of the various kinds of angles created

Read to self

Phys Ed
split gym floor hockey, badminton and near the end some basketball lay-ups- much nicer session than Monday! Thanks everyone.

Art complete the sketching for the landscapes and introduced the techniques for using the water colour pencils.

Chapter from read aloud and time for home.

Crazy week!