Friday, Oct 12

We began the day with art, completing our still life drawings of a model ship.  We used a small painting as our inspiration and focused on perspective, scale, point of view and horizon.  The drawings are now posted in the classroom for all to see.  Next, I returned the printing (penmanship) tests.  Everyone did well enough to advance to cursive writing.  Anyone who wishes to redo the printing test in order to improve his or her grade, may do so.  We also practiced our first two cursive letters: a and c.  Afterwords I issued the finished descriptive writing rubric that we developed together yesterday.  I also issued the paragraph we did together last week and we used the rubric to assess that writing.  I explained that from now on when students hand in writing, it with be accompanied with a student-made self-assessment in the form of this rubric.  Research shows that this is an important step in helping to improve student performance and I've had a lot of success with this process in the past.

After recess we did a lesson showing how to graph the ordered pairs from an In/Out machine.  Afterwards we practiced, sometimes graphing, and sometimes not.  Some of us did a session of XtraMath, but computer glitches again hampered some of us.  I was not happy with the amount of talking towards the end of this block of time.

After lunch we watched some mini-plays about fire safety performed by our little buddies and then did some little buddy reading.  After that we returned to class and completed the paragraph on Crash that we set up yesterday.  It was to include the three BIG idea words that we decided on yesterday.  Please complete it for homework if you didn't do so in class.

We ended the day with a discussion of yesterday's World Girl Day, the attempted murder of Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan, and the suicide of Amanda Todd in Coquitlam.  We discussed women's rights at home and abroad, bullying (especially cyber-bullying) and the use and abuse of the Internet.  I was very pleased with the maturity and candor that the students were able to achieve.

Here are the links to the three on-line resources I used as springboards:

International Girls' Day:
http://becauseiamagirl.ca/?gclid=CIPp7efV_LICFQjZQgodvnYAyQ
Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/10/11/f-kermalli-pakistani-activist-shooting.html
Amanda Todd in Coquitlam:
THIS LINK HAS BEEN REMOVED UNDER THE ADVICE OF THE MINISTRY OF EDUCATION.  IT IS SUGGESTED THAT SINCE THE STORY HAS A LINK TO THE AMANDA TODD VIDEO, IT SHOULD NOT BE AVAILABLE FOR STUDENT VIEWING.  PARENTS AND GUARDIANS MAY DISCUSS THIS CHOICE WITH THEIR CHILD'S TEACHER.

Have a great weekend.