Monday, May 30, 2011

I was pleased to see that most of the class was able to fall into the routine of reading quietly, even without me asking them to read.  This is a sign of their growing independence and maturity.

We spent part of the morning looking at the Toronto Star article on plastic bags being littered into the adjacent trees near Dufferin Mall.  Here is an image, from the Toronto Star, of the issue in question:

The link for the original article is on the following website http://www.thestar.com/news/fixer/article/888721--the-fixer-bags-grow-on-trees-at-dufferin-mall . When I returned the Reading Comprehension questions back to the students, I gave them detailed feedback of what they needed to do to improve.  In class, I went through each question and used the data projector to model what a "good" answer might sound like.

We continued writing this morning by spending a little more time on planning for the descriptive paragraph.  We are only in the stage of planning for it and I wanted each student to come up with a list of details about the thing  they are going to describe.  I will model this process in class with the students to assist them.

Since today was Day 6, the students were out on rotary a fair bit.  Both classes had Family Studies, but the Grade 7s had Music along with French, while the Grade 8s had Geography and Gym.

There was no homework assigned, but students with outstanding work were reminded to complete any work they have.  A homework/assignment tracking chart is up in the classroom (I will have to take a photo of it) for the students to check what they have and have not handed in.