Monday, October 15, 2012

The Progress Report went home on Friday.  It is a short report that gives you a short summary of the work habits your son or daughter has had this year.  Here is a photo I took of one of them:

I first learned how to do this at Lawrence Heights Middle School in the former North York Board of Education.  It is not an indication of your son or daughter's academic performance but more of a comment of the Learning Skills he or she is demonstrating.  It should be signed and returned by Wednesday, October 17.  If you have any questions about this, please write in the agenda or send me an email at:
 marc.proudfoot@tdsb.on.ca

There is a Math test today.  It was placed on the Homework board on Thursday.  I did ask students to submit a Study Sheet (a review sheet) and I received sheets from 2/3 of the class.  Some were done better than others and I reviewed all of them and made suggestions on the parts where more information could be added.

There will be another test this week.  I will ask for another Study Sheet from the students based on Math work we have done over the past couple of weeks.  I have purposely chunked, or broken down, the tests into units so there is not too much information on one test.  Monday's test, by far, will be the larger of the two.

Once we complete this unit on Number Sense, we will be moving to the Measurement strand and it will look at the conversion between unit of measure (millimetres to centimetres to metres to kilometres). This unit will also reinforce the Number Sense unit we are currently in because it will review the Base 10 system we are studying.


The second half reading/image previewing of the first chapter of the History textbook was to be completed for homework this weekend.  It follows the same format of the homework we did last week. I went through a couple of detailed examples of how to do this homework and used a couple of student samples to provide correct models of how to do this.

All homework is written on the HOMEWORK board and reviewed.  Time is provided for students to jot down homework assignments and for questions to be asked.  In addition, if homework has not been completed, additional time is provided in the class to catch up.

On Friday, we began viewing a film called Phobe in Wonderland about a young girl who is having some difficulties in school but finds some comfort in her Drama class, where she blossoms.  Our Friday afternoon film festival is a part of my curriculum and I have recently decided that I will refer to it as the Room 52 Film Festival.

We may not always watch a film but I try to find one that provokes some thinking about the characters and the realities in which they find themselves.

Have a good week.