Tuesday, April 26, 2011

After Snack and silent reading, we welcomed students back to the class today by doing a Community Circle.  This provides each student with the opportunity to share one thing they did over the long weekend.  I am aiming to have this sharing moment resemble the structure of a paragraph (1 topic, with details).

In preparation for watching a play (May 11, more details to follow), we read the book called Edward the Crazy Man by Marie Day.  Edward suffers from Schizophrenia and Charlie, the protagonist of the book, offers him help.  We spoke a little bit about what mental health is and how people can become ill, mentally.  We did a brainstorm about this and talked about some of the stereotypes of people who are called "crazy" or "mental".  We spend a little bit of time on the Centre for Addiciton and Mental Health website looking at what Schizophrenia is. The link for this site is:  http://www.camh.net/About_Addiction_Mental_Health/Mental_Health_Information/Schizophrenia/schizophrenia_whatis.html

In preparation for the upcoming election, we took a look at the boundaries of the Davenport riding and then had each student search for the riding in which they live.  Each student used either there postal code or address to find the location and the names of the candidates running.  Homework was assigned for this and will be listed below. 

The Math re-tests scheduled for today have been moved to Wednesday.  Just a reminder:  a Study Sheet was sent home with each student on Thursday, April 21.

Homework:  Ask a family member what advice they have about voting.  Have a discussion with them about the party they are thinking they are voting for and why.  If a parent or guardian is not voting, ask why.   

All students should be encouraged to read at home, quietly,  for at least 15 minutes.  It would be great if you could spend some time asking them a couple of questions about what they read.