Wednesday

Tonight is Transition Night at Bloor Collegiate.  Here is the reminder, once again:

Most of the students have developed their graphic organizers for the Myth writing project.  This is a required part of the process!  By the time the students prepare to type up a draft, they will have a clearer idea of how to organize their ideas.  Students are able to check if they have completed this steo by referring to the homework board in class.  While this serves as a reminder for the students, I am hoping they will develop the skills and discipline to become responsible for their learning.

Anyhow.  The reason I mention the Myth is in relation to another aspect of the Success Criteria.

The third item listed relates to the technical aspects of writing.  Since Grade 1, the students have learned how to write sentences, but I am often surprised that some students still have difficulty creating them.  As the students move from Grade 1 through Grade 6, the sentence structure and types of sentences expected from the students become more complex. So, we began with some short exercises yesterday and continue to build on them as we progress through this assignment and through some of the other work we will do in Language this term.

I usually begin the exercise of Goal Setting much earlier in the year, but it is never to late to think about things you want to accomplish.  We are doing a series of short, but fun ... I believe... exercises relating to some of the accomplishments we have had in our lives (they can be school related and outside of school or in the community).  This will eventually lead to setting up some goals for this school year.

As part of this exercise, we did a Community Circle activity where each student had to speak about something they had accomplished.  This exercise in speaking in front of the class prompts them to think about something positive they have done, and feel good about, and share it with their peers.  Also, by speaking the accomplishment, it has the potential for activating other thinking and ideas in their heads.  Here are Junior and Rasheed sharing their ideas.  Unfortunately, the battery died and I was unable to record any more contributions from the class:

I modeled another Reading Response for the class.  On Monday, the students were given another opportunity to complete one.  I am concerned because only a handful of students completed this homeowork.  As I mentioned earlier, the students can look at the Homework chart to see if they completed the work, but really should be making a point of recording this information in the agenda and taking responsibility for completing the work.

Here was my example from yesterday, or was it Monday.  I must apologize in advance, I hit a key on my computer and have engaged the French characters on it and no longer have a question mark.

Tamar completing a review for the Math test the students did last week.  Tamar did superbly.  If the students have fallen below a Level 1 (50%), they will have the opportunity to improve their grade by doing a Rewrite (more details to follow on another post).  I have to factor into the final grade who completed a Study Sheet for this test.  It is worth 5% of the total grade.

Have a good day.










The link for one of our morning work activities is from the New York Times newspaper.  Here is the link:  http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/category/lesson-plans/whats-going-on-in-this-picture/

HOMEWORK:
Complete 5 Simple Sentences related to the Myth you are writing.  Do this in your Language notebook.