Wednesday, May 25, 2011

I was away at a morning workshop for the new IEP program which will be available to the teachers for the 2011-2012 school year.  The IEP you receive in October, 2011 will look a lot different, but will contain a lot of the information already on the reports you receive.


During my absence, the students worked on a Reading Comprehension assignment.  This is something I would like to continue to do until the end of the year to support the skills of learning how to be detailed, curious, and critical readers.  The students, both in Grade 7 and 8, continued to work on some Algebra.  There will be a lot of reviewing and re-teaching before the students are evaluated to ensure they understand the work.

Ms. Wills, our Teacher Librarian, was at the IEP workshop today and left instructions with the class (who had Library today) to work on their keyboarding skills.  Tomorrow, Thursday, they will be spending an extended period of time completing their Health projects.

In the afternoon, the Grade 8s had Music class before they were involved in a workshop on Substance Abuse.  A group of youth, who are either former users or in recovery, spoke with the classes today about the dangers of becoming involved in the drug trade or abusing drugs.  Unfortunately, I was unable to attend the workshop but based on past experiences, I am sure it went over very well.  The students, for the most part, seem to respond favourably to hearing advice from their peers.

The Grade 7s spent most of the time in the afternoon reviewing the morning's Algebra work.  For some of the students, this work is quite new and quite challenging, but we will stick at it.  I plan on introducing some manipulatives into the work to assist some students with basic adding and subtracting.

The Grade 7s concluded the day with French while the leftover students completed either their Reading assignment from this morning or the reading response from last night.

Homework:  Grade 7s have to complete the assigned Algebra question and be prepared to show the steps they used to solve the question.
Quiznos sub forms are due on Friday.
Signed Progress Reports are due this Friday.