Tuesday, 27 November

Today we started the day by completing our rubric to help us to be able to evaluate our individual performance in the classroom.  I found that because our class has become so comfortable with the rubric system of assessment, and because you have done so much self-evaluation using rubrics, this process was pretty painless.  You all have come a long way in being able to speak the language used in student assessment.  I will now go home and collate the working templates we created into a concise and typed finished prototype to be approved by you for use in class.  Here are some sample pages of our rough work:

Attendance

Conduct

Learning Skills

Pronoun notes

Next, we did a ten-minute review of the rules for using pronouns.  While marking your descriptive paragraphs over the weekend, I noticed that pronoun usage was a problem for a significant number of you.

At recess we left to go skating.  Thank you very much, parent volunteers, for driving.  Unfortunately, I heard that at least one group of students failed to thank the parent who drove them.  On behalf of the class, please accept my apology if your students made this misstep.  We talked at the end of the day and everyone was reminded how we show appreciation (and good manners) when someone extends us a helping hand.  I asked the students to refrain from eating or drinking when they are a guest in someone's vehicle.  I also asked them to ensure they change quickly so that drivers could get home as soon as possible after an activity ends.  I was pleased with everyone's behaviour at the rink; thank you.

After a late lunch we had a visit from the Division One penny drive organizing committee and this led to a class discussion to address our students' concern around how this activity was to conclude.  Many in our class voiced upset at a change in the "rules" of the "friendly" competition we were in with Division One.  I talked about what I called "gracious" behaviour - about what it means to sometimes be the "bigger person" in times of conflict.  Upon sober second thought, I realize that such an outlook, while expedient, doesn't necessarily promote a good collaborative relationship based on fairness and respect.  In the future, we will have to try to lengthen the time line when an activity is changed so that we can address, or at least acknowledge, people's thoughts.  I felt that some of the concerns that you raised were valid and deserved to be discussed with the other group.  However, I also thought it was important to remember that our primary goal was to raise money to give clean water to people who otherwise wouldn't have it and I wanted to make sure we didn't lose sight of that.  Division One raised about $150 and that is an amount we can be proud of.  I was pleased with the way you worked together this afternoon, and I sincerely apologize to Group Three who didn't get a chance to work on the coin creations because of my oversight.

Our next class activity will be to build a food hamper for the Elves Club.  I think this time we should have a contest with ourselves.  Let's make a goal and meet it.

We will also have to discuss what we'd like to do for the "Christmas concert."  I'm open to your suggestions since I have no experience in this area and am not a person with much "stage presence" (at karaoke gatherings, I'm the guy people hope doesn't get up, even if I think I do a mean cover of anything by the late, Sonny Bono).

There is no homework tonight - remember, we have art tomorrow morning.