This Week At School

Another full week teaching grade 8. 

It was mostly just a continuation of everything we were doing last week. 

In math we were talking about Pythagorean’s theorem 

In ELA we were reading Half Brother (and we also did an Orange Shirt Day activity, a listening test, and some writing activities). 

In Music Education kids continued making their mix tapes. I had them colour a photocopy of a tape to go with their themes and write in the songs for one of their sides… here are some of their tapes 

In Social Studies they handed in their family trees or timeline assignments and we moved on to some textbook work.

And nearly all week my homeroom begged for me to take them outside (because I had taken my other math class outside to measure triangles earlier in the week) but it was such a crumby week outside that I decided they could do the activity with their regular teacher (today it was even snowing on and off throughout the day!)

I must admit... I'm going to miss this class.


And I know they're going to miss me too.

It's been a swell 2 weeks.

Orange Shirt Day

On September 30th we honor residential school survivors and the painful experiences they had to endure.

Why an orange shirt?

Phyllis Webstad wore an orange shirt on her first day of school when she was 6 years old. It was a shirt her grandma had purchased for her with what little money they had. She was proud of that orange shirt. But when she got to the mission school that shirt was taken from her and she was given other clothes to wear. She never saw that orange shirt again.

The orange shirt represents more than just a shirt though… it represents the many things that were taken from these residential school survivors (their families, their language, their heritage, their freedom, etc.)

Tomorrow , Friday, September 28th the school I am subbing at is participating in orange shirt day… I’ll be wearing orange. Will you?

If you are looking for resources to help you plan something for this year (it’s never too late). I found some here.

If you want to share Phyllis Webstad’s story with your class here is a short video on YouTube about her.

Happy Thanksgiving!

It's just about Thanksgiving here in Canada and I found this great writing activity you can do with your students around Thanksgiving.

Go visit Mel D-Seusstastic's Teacher's Pay Teacher's store for this 100% free resource and download it for your students.

When your students have completed it come back here and let me know how it went!

This Week At School

My home away from home for the last week

I’ve been lucky enough to be in the same classroom all this week 

(and spoiler alert: I’ll be back in this same room next week as well).

I’m also a pretty lucky substitute because I hit the jackpot considering what I believe a grade 8 class could be because they are amazing. They work quietly (and yes, most of them are working), don’t interrupt, and are just overall a lovely group of students.

So what have I been up to in this grade 8 class?

We are reading Half Brother by Kenneth Oppel and they are super into it. I read them about every third chapter or so and we are on chapter 10 already (they had started before I arrived though).   Even I'm into the book... in fact I brought it home with me this weekend to get some reading done and have every intention of finishing it so that I know how it ends.

We are learning about the Pythagorean Theorem in math which is going pretty good. One of my math classes is definitely better than the other (behaviour wise) but for the most part they are getting their work done and understanding the theorem and how to do it… we are still working on recognizing if a measurement is an area or a line (I mean it seems so simple to me).

In Social Studies they have been working on a timeline or family tree. I assigned it for homework to be completed on Monday though so next week we are moving on to some textbook work.

I also teach a grade 6 music education class and they are creating a mix tape. I found a blank mix tape template online and had them colour it one day when we didn’t have access to the computer lab. Their mix tapes have to have an overall theme to them. There are a lot of “happy” “sad” or “dance” themes but I’ve done my best to steer them away from genre themes or artist themes so that there is a bit of variety in these mix tapes. I think the hardest part of the assignment will be to make sure when you add up the songs that they don’t exceed 30 minutes per side.

Yesterday afternoon I was missing about half my class because it was a fun afternoon spent outside (in what I would consider almost too cold of temperatures to be outside all afternoon... I should have tried harder to find some gloves to bring this morning I guess).  We played a bunch of games keeping score and surprisingly the 8th graders came in 2nd place (out of 3 places)... I really wasn't sure they had it in them.

Overall I would say it’s been a really good week and I’m looking forward to having to be back for another week.

AND, this week I managed to book myself not only 5 days for October already but also another 5 days in January (and a few others in between). I’m predicting it being a fairly busy year.