This Week At School

-  In SCIENCE my students created commercials on different things that use light (as in scanners for barcodes, automatic doors, cd's, telephones, and solar panels).  I really wish I could post one of them because I think they did a fantastic job (if only they would have spoken up a little more).  They were really creative though (pulling moving whiteboards, making pretend solar panels, having catchy starts, one group wrote Walmart on the board and I was confused all day why someone did it... then I watched their video and it all made sense.  I feel like such an awesome teacher this week and mostly because of this because awesome teachers video their students light commercials.  Next week we are going to watch the commercials, talk about how they could improve, and self grade the projects (and review for a science test).

-  I'm also really excited about how well we are all doing in MATH.  Seriously, 4CP is shining like a star. Everyone is getting their grades pulled up and just doing awesome.  While working on multiplying we are also doing a graphing project for the olympic games (see out bulletin board below).  On Friday's we work on our bar graphs (not in the picture).  Eventually I'll remove their predictions and replace them with bar graphs that we make in Excel in the computer lab.  One day at recess as I was stapling new medals up to our board I heard the class across the hall commenting about how many medals the countries were getting.  It's nice to see our bulletin board getting noticed!

-  We FINALLY started the comic book part of our unit in grade 8 ELA.  I have one class of grade 8's that to be honest isn't normally quiet.  But on Thursday all was quiet as they were finishing up work and flipping through comic books (and graphic novels).  Right now we are in the process of learning about comic books. Basically, I printed off 4 articles that we will read and answer questions on to learn about fonts, writing styles, and pictures then in about a week (or 2) we will get down to actually turning one of our short stories into a comic book.  I REALLY hope they do an awesome job.  I'm excited to switch up those bulletin boards in that class with some exciting comic books.

-  In FRENCH we have finished reading our 5 very basic French books.  Now we are in the process of creating our own books.  I'm excited for this as well.  I rarely have anything French related to showcase on the bulletin board so hopefully their books will turn out awesome.

-  I sadly got cut from the board members visit schedule since I will be teaching French and not ELA while they are here.  I might try to get them back out to my hut though.  The students could read them their French books (either the ones they make or the ones I gave them).

-  Next week is the ski "trip".  Don't get excited... it is a day trip.  6:30am - 6:30pm.  Which means it will be a 5:45am - 7:15pm day for me.  I guess the roads won't be busy on the drive to work!  This means planning for a substitute.  So far they will be doing problem solving, St Patrick's Day art, and heading to the computer lab.

-  My grade 4's were lucky enough to watch Canada's gold medal game in curling (they had been begging for at least a week to watch some curling over the noon hour).  I put it on while they did some math in the morning.  That same day Canada also won gold in woman's hockey.  We weren't watching it because I was reading my students the first couple of pages of an article in grade 8.  I did put on the medal ceremony for them later on.

-  On Thursday I stayed a little later to get some work done and one of my grade 8 students came at the end of the day to get some work he had to get done.  Praise the Lord they do bring stuff home with them occasionally!

It was another really great week in my classes.  I'm REALLY loving my job which is a huge change from before Christmas break when I wasn't sure if I was doing anything great.  So thankful for everything I've been blessed with there and to finally have the opportunity to show someone what I'm able to do in the classroom (other than substitute teach).

It's true

Our Olympic bulletin board (on the right are their predictions for how many medals they thought each country would get  - then broken down further to gold, silver, and bronze).

And because I teach grade 8...