Ms. Abbot and Ms. Moody were both off for extended periods throughout the month. We seemed to tag off and as Ms. Abbot came back, Ms. Moody headed off. We are both back and catching up with the blog.
1. Yellow Team had the opportunity for 30 students from the team to participate in an Anime workshop and a Clay workshop. “We learned how to draw manga characters and we made anime buttons. It was awesome!” said the students. “We looked at a bunch of abstract clay statues. There was a 3 creatures that look Egyptian, these were the best. We went to the studio and made a bowl out of clay, they went through all the steps with us and we painted them with glaze. They fired them and we will get them back later, ” said Marcus.
2. Remembrance Day this year focused on Paschendale. “It was fun to sing for the first time with Girls Choir at the Remembrance Day Assembly. We sang In Flanders Fields and Hymn to Freedom,” said Natalie. “The assembly was quite good,” said Liam, “we sang Take Me Back to Dear Old Canada and Hymn to Freedom. We practiced a lot and it turned out well.”
3. After learning about our family histories through drawing family trees (when we read Between Heaven and Earth) and interviews with family members (one of the tasks for the literature circle on the Seven Series), we broadened the scope and looked at timelines. We drew timelines and hightlight key events from various civilizations and cultures. “Once the projects were done, they all had similar information but all of them are done in different ways,” said Natalie.
4. This month, we (grade 6/7/8) also finished the Literature Circle on the Seven Series. Students wrote two written responses to whichever novel(s) they read and completed a task related to the theme of the novel. Some students interviewed family members about what it was like from them to be a teenager, created maps of the characters’ journey, wrote an essays on the relevance of cliche in the novel and whether meaning changes over time, designed gang prevention brouchures, designed a symbol that would be significant to family, created a suitcase of memories for a grandparent, compare character from the novel to a quote from The Tell-Tale Heart, build models of World War II planes,studied the geological profile of Iceland and researched the International Bridgades in Spain during World War II. Some students also selected challenge topics and wrote either an additional chapter to the series about the adventures a hypothetical granddaughter may have had or wrote an epilogue for the series when all the grandsons reunite and share stories.
5.Ms. Abbot introduced us to the concept of circuits. We did electricity safety activities with Ms. Rogan (in for Ms. Moody) and Ms. Abbot taught us about parallel and series circuits. We tried many many variations and burned out several mini light bulbs. We had the opportunity to try a lab. We got one of five options and then prepped the supplies and tried the lab. Some worked, some didn’t. We tried lemon batteries, but couldn’t get enough current to light the LED bulb. We only had 3 lemons. Mr. Utting let us measure the conductivity of the lemon juice and we compared it to water. Other groups did static experiments and one group built their own light bulb. Another group tried to build an electroscope. We presented to the rest of the class and tried to explain our results and we shared our models.
6. We have continued to work on the Seven Habits for Highly Effective Teens. This term we have focused on stratgies to put “first things first.” We have talked about how to prioritize what is important to complete first, and how to identify things that may be time wasters that we might use to procrastinate. Right now, the grade 6/7’s are working on projects to show what we know about the 3rd Habit.
7. Grade 6/7’s Explorations classes are currently Home Ec and Art. Students have been cooking french toast and sugar cookies, made fruit platters and open face canapes. We also hand sewed stuffed animals. In Art, we have been working on clay projects and doing a daily doodle. Grade 8’s are currently in Life Links, Dramus and Tech Ed. We are making a medicine cabinet in Tech Ed and we have finished the frame. This year, we made boats in Sketch-Up. In Life Links, we learned about how social we are and about how we cope with stress. We learned everyones names in the class. In Dramus, we have been learning to play guitar, doing improv and we learned how to do a fight scene.
8. All the grade 8’s in our school have been doing a project called the Feudal Games. This is a game where you take on the role of a medieval character such as a serf, a free holder or a monarch. We play our role in daily life, this means writing cheques to the monarch, working and collecting pay and trying to survive through diseases and war.
9. With Mr. Utting in French, we have been working on conjugating verbs. We reviewed and learned to conjugate “er”, “re”, avoir and etre. Ted explained that “er” verbs are conjugated by (using aimer as an example): Je aime, Tu aimes, Il/Elle aime, Nous aimons, Vous aimez, Ils/Elles aiment. We were assigned a city in France and we needed look around the city for signs and words (on Google Earth). We translated the words and then drew something that represents the city we were assigned. We also wrote a short description of why the city is famous.
10. Mr. Utting x 2!! So, one chilly day, our class (MACC 8), went out into the park of Mundy, to visit the lake of Mundy – and since we needed to, we brought a couple of Mr. Uttings. Pretty much, all we did was surveying the water in and around Mundy Lake for its conductivity and pH levels with Mr. Utting – the teacher and his brother, Mr. Utting – the scientist of hydrology. I’m pretty sure that most of us were nearly frozen after a few minutes – I stuck my hands into the water after measuring the flow of the waters to get the ping-pong ball out. At the end of our little walk around the lake, we all celebrated in a glorious chocolate rain of one square per person. Many a laugh was had during, and we then headed back to the school after our warm walk in the park. – Liam D