Monday, 29 April

So, I opened my Twitter account after school and got two pleasant surprises.  First, a friend from high school who I haven't seen since a chance meeting on the ferry in 1984 sent me a tweet.  I've learned he started the first chapter of the Guardian Angels in New Zealand - very cool.  It's neat to hear about people we know who are doing something meaningful for their communities.  I don't have a Facebook account, but this Twitter thing is proving to be pretty engaging for me.  Second, a while back, we watched a TED Talk video about the research of Amy Cuddy from the Harvard School of Business.  She proved that our posture can affect our brain chemistry and suggested that we "fake it till me make it," and use "power poses" to increase our ability to deal with stressful situations.  Here is a link to that blog post: Amy Cuddy TED Talk post   Anyway, last night I tweeted her a photo of our students in a power pose on the snowshoe trip and she favourited it and retweeted it - yippee: we're famous.

We had a good discussion on imagery

We began our day with a discussion/lesson connected to the short story "Sisters" that we read at the end of last week.  I'm using these stories to engage the class in an examination of the parts of a story.  As they become more sophisticated readers, they will be able to appreciate their reading material at a deeper level.  I used some sports analogies to try to demonstrate my point.  My daughter is taking riding lessons and at first, I just saw a girl on a horse. But now I look for the position of her heals in the stirrups and whether of not she is riding on the diagonal: I can appreciate what she does because I am becoming more educated about the subtleties of the sport.  This appreciation will come for the students as they learn to read beyond mere plot.  Next, the class went to band.

After recess we read for ten minutes and then started math.  In Math 7 we did the unit test for area of triangles, parallelograms and circles.  It took most students longer than one block to complete the test and so we continued after lunch while the grade 6s started their socials inquiry work.  It's good to come against tension in our learning.  The key is to remember that we're all learning.  If we find we haven't mastered a concept when we need to perform it, it is no big deal: get more practice, or more instruction and just try again.  I love that today no one in our class got upset of visibly frustrated.  Some said, "I can't remember how to do that," or, "I think I'll be writing this test again," but that's okay in my books.  The game is about learning and being engaged with your learning; it's not about As and Bs.

We ended the day with a short game of camouflage in the forest.  I was displeased with the amount of time it took for us to get ready for p.e. today.  We need to be respectful of everyone in the class and that means getting ourselves sorted out quickly and not causing everyone else to wait.

I issued three notices at the end of the day: 

1.  Dad and Me Dance: May 14 at the Chatelech Secondary Gym

2.  SCYSA (house league) soccer registration: closes May 31

3.  Consent form for Grade 7 trip to Vancouver: May 22.  THIS MUST BE RETURNED ASAP BECAUSE IT INCLUDES CONSENT TO PARTICIPATE IN TANDEM BIKE TRAINING ON THURSDAY AND FRIDAY THIS WEEK - BRING A HELMET.