Tuesday and some notes on homework before March Break

It has been a long period of not posting and I believe it has something to do with the weather and feeling quite tired.  Although I do not always sign off on the agenda after school, the students may have homework.

For example, this is an image I took of the Homework chart from last week.  The majority of students typically complete work, but a number of students are falling into the trap of not completing there work.  Although it is the responsibility of the students to do their homework, please ask your son or daughter if they have homework to complete.






An image of the Homework chart as of today:

I am quite happy to report that 14/15 students complete Study Sheets for yesterday's Math test.  When it is marked, we will see how that worked for the class!  The Grade 7s had an open book test and able to look at their notes and homework to help them along.  I am a bit disappointed to see that some students are not correcting their homework, when we take it up in class.  By correcting their work, they take the responsibility to ensure they are completing and understanding the work.  If they are not understanding it, they have many opportunities to ask for help (in class or after school).

The Grade 8s just completed a Unit in Science that had them looking at some of the questions they will see in high school.  I was quite pleased to see them working through some of the shortcuts I offered them.  They has a test last week and should be receiving the results soon:

 















We are coming up to a natural break in the school year (school ends this Thursday until March 17) and won't be getting into new material.  We are aiming to bring closure to the units we are currently working on.  This includes the final presentations for Storytelling (another reminder that has been on the board) and the completion of the research project on African Canadians.

I am pleased to report that most students have submitted jot notes for this assignment.  This is mandatory.  I want to ensure that the students are not copying work directly from the Internet (plagiarizing) or having other people complete the assignment for them.  With the remaining three days of school, I am going to have the students devote a larger portion of time putting the research together in the form of a Prezi presentation.  on the person they are researching.  I picked up on this idea from Ms. DaSilva and Mr. Beaupre.












To guide the research, the Success Criteria has been outlined for the assignment.  I will change in slightly, in light of the Prezi presentation format I plan to follow.  Basically, the students are to use the 5Ws and H model.  This means, they have to find out the Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How of the person they are researching.  It will be up to the students what information they use from their research to answer these questions.  I used the following chart to help guide some of the research work:

How might this chart work.  Well, as a class, we decided on a topic and then created a series of questions based on the 4 levels of questions present:

If you notice, the questions become increasingly "bigger" in their scope and require a little more thought.  So, the students can gauge the complexity of the research by some of the questions they may ask.


As for the details about what Prezi is, here is a sample video and hint towards the next item in Grade 8 Math:

The link for creating a free Prezi account may be found here:  http://prezi.com/pricing/

If I am correct, here is a Prezi I designed 2 years ago for the class to see.
http://prezi.com/-vrkqdy98qv3/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy 

After March Break, we will be returning to paragraph writing and reviewing what we have learned.  Paragraph writing, according to the Head of the English department at Oakwood Collegiate, is the skill that most students in high school have trouble with.  Even friends of mine who teach in Community Colleges say that most students struggle with this critical skill.

A while ago, the class worked in groups to create some paragraphs using only the Closing or Concluding sentence as a guide.  Here are the samples of that work, along with some feedback from me.  I will use this feedback to kick-start the re-teaching of paragraphs.

Here is the original example, done by me, to guide the students, followed by the ones they did.  This may be a double post, but this is a skill that I think is worth repeating and returning to.  Kind of like multiplication.

Students selected a concluding sentence and then proceeded to write a paragraph around it.

HOMEWORK

The Storytelling sessions will be over by Thursday.  The only homework tonight has to do with being prepared to present the stories on Thursday.

The Prezi based research projects will not be due until after the March Break.  They will be presented to the class beginning Wednesday, March.  Since the students have set up the Prezi accounts, they may access them at home and continue to work on them until the due date.  It is not formal March Break homework since I usually don't assign homework during holidays.