First Friday

It is hard to believe the first week has come and gone and I am looking forward to the coming weeks as we begin to settle into the routines of the cycle and school year.

I sent home a note on Wednesday, I believe.  It was meant to inform you of some important information.  Here it is again.  I shrunk it down to 1 page:

In addition, a paper was sent home requesting some contact information:

I completed setting up 4 rotary schedules for the Grade 7s and 8s in my class (Room 52).  As an HSP class, they are only in the room 50% of the day.  This can be tricky because the 50% time frame they are scheduled for support does not always happen in sustained blocks of time, but that is the reality of a rotary schedule in an Intermediate school.

We have spent a fair bit of time working on some diagnostic assessments.

This helps me prepare for setting up the IEPs (Individual Education Plan) over the next several weeks.  The assessments are mostly Language based (Reading and Vocabulary comprehension, along with a writing task) along with a Numeracy one.   It will take some time to get through this with the larger numbers in the HSP program.
















In addition to this academic/cognitive based stuff, I have had the students do a few things to help me get to know them better.   One is a Coat of Arms exercise, another a Learning Profile, and a Student Survey. 

Once I go through these, they will help me get a sense of what ways might be best to reach the learners in the class.

I still need to complete this!  Every now and then, I try to do a sample of the work I want the students to do.

Some former samples from years past.

This a screen shot with some more details about what is expected for each section.  It was done using a Promethean Board, also known as an Interactive White Board.

The last image was rotated by accident.  I do not have a touch screen to rotate it correctly at home, but I tried to straighten out my typing.  Once again, I try to model and provide some example of what I expect from the students.  I have not read them yet, but will provide the students with some feedback and details for improvement.

In addition to this work, the Grade 7 and 8 teams also created two separate exercises for the students.  The objective was for them to get to know one another and work on a cooperative task.  I managed to float between the groups and took some photos.  The work and presentations happened over the last 3 days, during the last two periods of the day.  Normally this time would be for Language, but that will happen next week.

Homework will begin next week.

Please return the contact information sheet, payments for the lock ($5) and ($6) for the agenda.
Have a good weekend.