It is very hot

I am hoping that with the cold front on the horizon, the learning environment might be cooler.

Despite the weather we pushed forward with the exercise involving the time it would take to count to a billion.

The students worked in groups to figure out some of the problems.  Usually problem solving in Math is challenging for students and I plan to make this a part of the work they do in the Math program.  Some of the students figured out how many seconds were in a minute, then an hour, and used these statistics to help estimate the answer.  I provided some guidance after all of the groups attempted to solve the questions:

All of the groups completed the questions I assigned.  Tomorrow, we will spend a little bit of time looking at the answers the students created and compare them to Level 1 - Level 4 responses in the workbook I took the question from.

Answers by the students

In an attempt to support the students, I made a few jot notes around some examples where I had to be resilient.  Here are the notes.  The idea was to show how jot notes could be used to create a story.

A visual for the first example I used in my story.  Sometimes when you have a lot things to deal with, you can feel overwhelmed.

But if you see them one at a time, and deal with them one at a time, they are not so overwhelming.

 As for the story, I created a Success Criteria chart to show the students.  

A more visual look at how to set up the Resilience based story.

Like some of the other schools in the AMG community, we are a model school.  http://www.tdsb.on.ca/Community/ModelSchoolsforInnerCities.aspx

Being a part of this community requires us to take part in the Canadian Achievement Test (known as CAT).  A letter went home detailing the test (the results are not used for the report card, but are useful as a discussion point with parents).

This will happen before the end of September

It was a little late in coming, but I wanted the Community Circle to be put into practice by allowing the students the opportunity to talk a little bit about what they did in the summer.  Upon reflection, I should have done this last week, but today's temperature felt enough like summer to think back to those lovely memories of a few weeks ago.  Here is an image I took of us:

The talking and listening that takes place during this exercise becomes a part of the Oral Communication mark for the Language program.

HOMEWORK:

- multiplication quiz (2-5)

- return Hepatitis B forms (Grade 7 only)

- complete rough drafts of your story of resilienced

This is the chart I use to keep track of assignments students have been working on. They should use the agenda, but this poster is up, in the back of the class, for them to see what it is they have and have not done.  A happy face indicates a completed piece of work and a red X indicates that work has not been done or needs to be completed.