Back to school after Easter weekend

Hope everyone enjoyed a happy Easter this past weekend- I didn't mind the funky weather at all!

Reminders

The Nurse will be here for completion of the grade six vaccinations this Thursday
have approximately 5 students who want to come to camp but haven't yet handed in permission forms!!
tomorrow I will be sending home fundraising information and a packing list with any dietary requests for Evans Lake Camp
we will be heading to HSSS art class tomorrow morning with our project pieces - the students will meet the grade 10 artists who are creating the visuals for our words and ideas


Our Day

Visiting artist Laura Barron spent the first couple of hours with us plumping out and completing the various project pieces for the Biennale installation... I realize that first day back after a long weekend is not the greatest time slot but the time we had is limited due to the constraints of working with 4 classes 2 at Squamish and 2 at HSSS. We all had to share the avaialable time slots to help the project work by May.

We worked on the personal (Heritage flags), the sensory postcards, the surname acrostic, the number of students who contributed a concrete poem was disapponting but those who did complete them did a great job. She took the pieces after lunch to work on choosing the themes for tomorrow's visit to the grade 10 art class.

Math 6/7

we played a couple of round of a mental math game called "I have...who Has?"


the first round was multiplication facts using the 6 through 10 times tables (6 minutes 6 seconds)
the second round was mixed computation +,- x, divide and I though it would be faster but this one was 6 minutes 16 seconds!! I agree with some of the students that some of their classmates were being deliberately slow- or maybe the processing time was needed ?????????
Cal me old fashioned or 'old school' but I believe I need to do a whole lot more mental math activities before the end of the school year.

Then we played a card game of addition to 100 called Quick Stop - after the deck is shuffled students turn a card over each and count totals - the closest to 100 or to hit 100 on the nose wins the round
interestingly, I found some students not playing the 100 count game at all but playing other games - my intention was to use the cards for math related mental counting so i was discouraging the 52 flip the cards at a classmate and pick up! Sheesh

Read to Self (the class voted to read over listening to speeches for the Squamish Speaks assembly)
a number of students had a difficut time settling to read and a few never managed at all- darn that Easter bunny!

Computer Lab- sad news but it won't affect your children this year- the computer lab will be dismantled at the end of this school year apparently to make way for new classrooms!!!!!!!
Technology is expendable when it comes to making space I guess!

Anyhow, today I asked the students to spend some time on the EWG Environmental Working Group website on which exists an extensive data base of the ingredients and safety of many cosmetic and body products(60,000 to be precise))
I am using this little bit of research to introduce the science of shampoo in chemistry.

I think some found it intriguing to see how many ingredients are the same in many different body/hair wash products and some of those ingredients are not as safe as others. If you are interested google EWG and go to their Skin Deep data base.

Back in class for the last part of the day, we had a question and answer session about 'apartheid' again, I was using it as a way into a socials unit on Nelson Mandela that I would like to start later this month and wanted to gauage how much the students knew about the issues of apartheid and Nelson Mandela.
It was interesting to listen to politics through 12 year old's eyes - some had heard of Nelson Mandela but few had a concept of apartheid and when expalined they were horrified. We are so lucky living in Canada and I want so much to make sure that our children know and appreciate that not every country or society is as free as ours.

For the last few minutes before the bell we played a quick game of hangman with the 'reminders for tomorrow' the students seemed to enjoy guessing them - I have been realizing that they do not all read them from the board so I thought being interactive might make a change (although it is a lot more work!!)

Have a nice evening it looks sunny and spring like at last :)
Mrs. J.

P.S. my new seating plan is a bust- wanted to try something different and inclusive but need to go back to the drawing board.