Monday, November 21, 2011

While I remained with the Grade 7s, the Grade 8s had a short presentation with some Science students from the University of Toronto. 
Once the group returned, we continued our discussion about the Occupy movement.  Today there was late breaking news about the protesters having to leave  the site of their occupation.  This news can be seen at the following link:  http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2011/11/21/occupy-toronto-court-decision.html

After reading through the Reading Responses completed by the students, I decided that we will do a jigsaw activity with the article we read last week.  A small group of students will become experts on a small portion of the article and then explain it to the class.  I will model this tomorrow in class.  We will then continue to do some work around the article, follow up with some other activities and then work our way towards evaluating (grading) the students' comprehension of the article.

We resumed Math after a break from doing it.  We will focus on a life-skills section on time (for the strand of Measurement)  and then move into some more problem solving/higher thinking type questions.  Time, in the Measurement strand of Math, only goes up to Grade 5, but the skills needed to solve some of the more problem solving types questions will get them thinking.

Towards the end of the day, we continued to listen to the novel, The Giver.  I had the students write a journal response today on their thoughts on the novel.  I will check them tonight, but I reminded them that I want them to write in complete sentences.

Homework:  Complete Journal (if it was not done in class); Grade 8s need to bring bus fare for a trip to Central Tech tomorrow afternoon