What a great first week back!

I think this has been one of the best first weeks back for me. The students have been eager to learn and take risks in both our homeroom and rotary classes and we had a wonderful week of learning. I will be posting updates here until D2L is up and running for the Sensational Six/Sevens.

Students got to know me and my expectations:

In Math, I wanted to get to know the students as Math learners. I was very impressed with how so many of them applied the four-part problem solving model that they learned last year and we will continue to work with it. The Art activity that we began on Tuesday is due on Monday September 14th.

This is our intro slideshow.

This is our first unit slideshow. We only got as far as working collaboratively on the first problem.

In Language, we reviewed forms of writing and we will begin with reading strategies next week. We wrote newspaper articles about each other, I will hopefully begin to post some of those here once the technology in the school is up and running!

In Religion, we were joined by our ESC friends and we discussed the uniqueness of our names as well as a prayer service to end our week. I feel so blessed to have this wonderful group come together in my room.

New to me this year will be Health. We will begin with Digital Citizenship (lessons will be posted next week) and some discussions around mental health and stress. I would like to start an online discussion forum with the students, we are looking for alternatives to D2L as it may not be up and running just yet. The following forms need to be returned: BYOD (went home Friday) and the purple form (went home on Tuesday) as well as the pink form regarding permissions.

Our leaders of the school, the grade 8s, surely impressed me in Science class this week! We reviewed the big ideas of our first unit and I challenged them to ask one to three questions of each big idea. This is a diagnostic assessment and I hope that I will be able to continue to see growth. Their first challenge: coming up with a lab that investigates the properties of fluids.

Below are the course outlines for each grade. The 7s only had one period of Science and the 6s will begin Science next week. The 7s will be exploring lab equipment and safety while the 6s will begin their first unit: Space! (One of my favourites!). We have our Tomatosphere seeds ready for planting and NASA is eagerly waiting for our results.

Grade 6 Science

Grade 7 Science

Grade 8 Science

Well done everyone I'm looking forward to a wonderful year!