It’s been a very busy week!  There is much excitement as projects wind up and new ones begin.

1) Our Odyssey of the Mind teams competed last Saturday and did very well in competition.  Our two grade 6/7 teams both received silver medals.  And our grade 8 team won gold and is eligible for World Finals at Michigan State University. The Tumble-wood team won the OMER award and were nominated by the problem judges for overcoming set-backs and challenges and persevering through their performance.  The team demonstrated lots of team work and positive attitude to continue after their balsa wood structure did not hold the crusher plate.  (We will be uploading pictures and videos of the competitions soon).

2) We had two presentations for Student Vote.  Students will have the opportunity to vote in a parallel election on May 13th.  The BC NDP and BC Liberal candidates in our schools riding came to speak with us and we asked them some tough questions.  See our blog post about their presentations.

3)  We also got outside and enjoyed the sunshine.  In PE this week, we challenges each other (Div 17 vs Div 18 and Grade 6s vs Grade 7s) in exciting games of California Kick-Ball.  I anticipate a re-match on the next sunny day.

4) This week we had the opportunity to speak with incoming grade 5 parents and students at the Grade 5 Parent Night.  Many MACC students offered tours of the school and several of our grade 7’s presented some of their projects from the past year.  The students also shared what was helpful to know as an incoming student and answered questions about the transition for elementary to middle and to MACC.  Thank you to Chiara, Emma, Corra, Maddie, Connor, Liam, Christine, Makenna, Natalie, Jennifer, Eunice and Tara.

5) This week Explorations Report Cards went home.  In our current classes we are in Home Ec and Art.  In Home Ec, we did food labs for apple muffins and cookies.  In Art, we start the class with daily doodles and are working on textured landscapes.

6) At the Evergreen Cultural Centre this week we painted and created poems.  The exhibit was on Pierre Coupey.  He was a writer that followed his dreams to become a painter.  He now incorporates poetry into his paintings.  This was a fun and amazing experience! http://bit.ly/186HGJG

7) Over the past month, students have been desiging a country that has a government, flag, anthem, economic system and their place in the global community.  The countries had their own identity, allies and enemies in the global community and had to be self-sustaining.  The country was required to be located in an extreme environment: deep water, desert, polar, volcanoes, outer space or caves.

8) Ms. Abbot’s class had a government quiz on the three levels of government in Canada.  We have had several lessons about government structures in Canada and before our quiz we played a Canadian Government Jeopardy game.

9) Today we watched a video made by two students in Hillcrest.  The video showed about how people can cyber-bully and how they can hide behind the internet.  We did a Facebook questionnaire about our usage.  “I thought the video was a good idea and they are trying to raise awareness about cyber-bullying,” said Mark.

10) Strong Kids continued this week and students had the opportunity to continue to develop awareness about their feelings and discussed and did role plays about ways to handle anger.