Thursday, February 21, 2013

I was away from school yesterday and did not post on the blog.

HOMEWORK

- ensure that pp. 138-139 are completed (this was assigned on Wednesday in Math)
- Math quiz on p. 131, 133-135

- homework from Tuesday still has not been done on writing Complex sentences (4 only from the worksheet on Independent and Dependent clauses)... an example of what to do was posted on Tuesday's blog

- pp. 3&4 need to be signed, by the parent and student, on the most recent report card

- GRADUATION PHOTO DAY ON MONDAY, FEBRUARY 25

Here are a few things we did today, in no particular order.

I am hoping we can spend some time talking about the cheating of cyclist Lance Armstrong.  Before we got to reading a brief article about him, I surveyed the class to see what they know about him:

The brief article comes from the excellent Canadian website, Teachkidsnews:

http://teachingkidsnews.com/2013/01/21/2-lance-armstrong-confesses-in-oprah-interview/

While posting that, I just learned that all of his records are being erased: http://teachingkidsnews.com/2012/10/24/1-world-renowned-cyclist-lance-armstrong-cheated-erased-from-record-books/

Our discussion on this topic will continue.

The class seems to be enjoying listening and talking about a book that I got my daughter, Charlize, for Christmas:

It is interesting because we have been able to make some connections between cheating, as in the case of Lance Armstrong, the suicide of Amanda Todd, and our former TDSB director Dr. Chris Spence. 

I returned to the exercise of modelling a set of questions for the class based on the Level 1 - 4 question chart.  I had the students select a topic that they love and generate questions that were easy to answer to ones which require more thought.  Here is the sample I shared with the class to assist them in helping structure their own questions:

Notice how the questions become more thoughtful and challenging as they move from 1-4.

I hope to continue working on this research more in the Library tomorrow.

In an attempt to do some review before a short quiz on division, I had the students work with some manipulatives to actually feel and see how items are divided into groups.  I did a sample on the board and then issued three challenges to the students to solve.  The following photos are of the review question, a sample done by me, and the work of some students.

 Have a good evening.