Tuesday, 23 April

Well, I'm back from my specialist visit at St. Paul's in Vancouver and as well as learning that I just need to keep my thumb splinted (hurray), I also learned that I would never be able to skip out of work: I met parents and students from our class at every turn of my trip - I would have been so busted.

Thanks go to Mrs Taggert and Kristi for leading the class yesterday.  The students read a short story together, discussed it, had band, did a math lesson, read their novels and participated in an art project in Aboriginal Ed.  I got the dates of the project confused and so I owe an apology to Kristi and the students who had to make do with an insufficient number of knives to carve their potato stampers.

We began the day today with a talking circle.  I like to ensure the students have a voice and the circle is a good way to achieve that.  After our circle, I issued a study guide for the short story the class read yesterday.  Next we had a fire drill and our class conducted themselves well, modeling good conduct for the younger students who use them as guides for their own behaviour.

After recess we read for 15 minutes and then did math.  In Math 7 we completed the review of the circles unit.  Tomorrow we'll do the practice test in preparation for the unit test.  There is no homework if the review is complete.

After lunch we read for 10 minutes and then we had a discussion and some group tasks to examine the work we've done with the inquiry process.  I wanted the students to have a chance to reflect on their learning and their thinking as we prepare to dive into our next inquiry: compare and contrast two ancient civilizations (one is Greece or Rome, the other is India or China).  Here are our notes:

Whole-class brain storm

Summary of small-group brain storm

We ended the day with some work on the projects.  Tomorrow is Art, so please remember your film equipment.  Enjoy the sun!