This Week At School

Before I tell you about this week at school can we just take a moment to appreciate that we are officially down to our last week of school here!  4 more days with students and one inservice day and then I'm officially on summer break!  So... if I happen to not post anything at all that first week of July it's because I'm taking some time to enjoy my first week off (plus, it's my birthday that week) but the posts will continue after that!

Anywho... this week at school

I put the kids into groups and we started practicing debates.  We've been using this book and the short "articles" in it are perfect for my class... especially since the iPads at the school have been super unreliable so this way they all have a bit of research sitting in front of them ready to go.  The plan is to present out debates next week BUT.... I'm getting the morning off from school on Monday which leaves only a couple of other days as possibilities... so we'll probably just play games in ELA instead.

I took my students to the Canadian Museum of Human Rights.  If you've never been you really should go.  I'm not sure I would ever arrange a field trip there again though... only because it's a lot of walking and reading (although also very interactive)... you just need to have a class of students that is all interested in that sort of stuff otherwise you'll have a handful that spend the day complaining and I am just not all about that on a field trip!  Anyways, if you are planning on visiting here (or live here) the museum is actually free to get into the first Wednesday of every month after 5pm.  4 hours will not be enough to get through the whole museum but you'll certainly learn a lot!

I played some Settlers of Catan one day with some grade 8 students.  I was supposed to be helping out on a walk to Tim Horten's but this class needed some coverage so I may not have gotten my ice cap but the trade off wasn't too bad.

Friday we had some awards in the morning and then spent the entire afternoon outside.  Luckily the rain held off until I made a mad dash to my car after school but the heat certainly did not.  It was likely sitting around +35 all afternoon.  But the kids were troopers and at the end of the afternoon the schools Rock Band put on an outdoor performance for us which was kind of cool (fun fact: my classroom was right beside the room where the rock band practiced so I could often hear them practicing through the walls... and I didn't mind it).

We had our final TUSC meeting.  It was actually the first couple of periods before we left on our field trip and about 10 or so students didn't make it to school that day because they weren't going on the field trip.  So the meeting ran relatively smoothly.  One of my students had been requesting I do one of the speeches so I came with some banana cookies to tell them about and to share with the class.  On Friday one of the boys who wasn't there the day of the meeting insisted on doing his which was making protein shakes.  He said they were good for muscle repair after a hard workout so he made everyone that wanted one do a single push up.

All in all it was not too shabby of a second to last week of school.

BUT... I'm REALLY looking forward to my summer break!