Second Entry for today

I am doing a separate, second blog posting tonight because I chose this photo for another project of mine, my 201165 project which is up on Flickr.

Here is what I wrote to describe that photo.

I took the first shot today of what is going to be an art project in one of our classes.

The teacher has sketched a drawing with chalk on a set of pieces of black construction paper and each student in the class will get one piece to use mixed pastels (I'm probably not explaining it well). The final project will be a reassembled drawing. 

The characters in the background have nothing to do with the project… they just come from what is behind the drawing. But, you probably already get that.

I'm certainly looking forward to what comes next in Ms. Kennedy's room. She credits Ms. Anderson for the idea.

Primary is pretty basic

I spent some time this morning in our Kindergarten and grade one classes observing the way the day gets going and watching the children working in small groups and as individuals on beginning skills. It is fascinating to see the little ones learn.

Calendar activities start the day in many classes. The weather and important days in the month are talked about. Students share stories that are important to them and as you can see from the photo where Mrs. Morris is working with the monthly calendar the days here are shown with the dates following along a pattern. Double click on the photo to see the number patterns being followed by the graphical numbers for the dates. Then following some talk about letters, the children moved to the tables to work on making the letters on sheets of paper where they could visualize models. At this age, a good number of students learn how to hold a pencil or other writing device.

Having stories read to you, picking out the important words and finding how some of them fit - then, in this case, drawing a picture of what the story means to them. This student saying that he likes it when his friends come for a sleep over and he draws the bed, the mattress, the sheets, the bed cover and is happy to tell me what it is all about.

Nice.

We had early dismissal the last two days and the school had a good number of parents visit, meet with some of the intermediate teachers in the gym and see some of the students work posted in the hallways and at many of their desks in the classrooms.

I have written before how important it is to get a good narrative report on your child's progress and visiting the school and your child's teacher goes a long way to accomplishing that objective.

Thanks so much to the parents who were able to take the opportunity to visit this week.

Quite a find today... blow up the photo and you will see why.

Remember... Tomorrow is Movember Friday. We'll see you at the school tomorrow with your real or fake Movember mustache!

Variety

Today was a day full of variety. I didn't get as much time in classes today as I would have liked, but the day was a busy one with more time sensitive administrivia accomplished.

The photo on the left is one I took after school before I went into an Administrator's meeting in Sechelt. I just had to stop and spend a few moments thinking about how fortunate I am to be doing the things I get to do and how the minor disappointments earlier in the day were just that - minor.

It really was enjoyable watching the primaries at lunch time today explore the book fair and ask their questions about how good a book was they wanted to buy, how much would it cost, would the money they had in hand be enough... all to show us their love for books and reading. The library will benefit from this fund raiser and we have the PAC to thank along with Ms. Corbo and Mrs. Randall for organizing things. And, I was reminded again today how some of our grade seven students contribute their time to help get things moving along so well.

Tonight our PAC came out about a fifteen or so parents strong to talk about our earthquake preparedness and how to support our school in ways of providing some of the learning resources our school budget can't support at this time. You need to consider how you can be involved ... as Mrs. Riggs said, there are many parents who work behind the scenes on numerous activities and that the PAC needs some new parents willing to step in as leaders.

Watch the website and the PAC wall outside the office for the minutes of this meeting to be posted.

Movember 22

I was in Ms. Kennedy's class today, more about that lesson later, when I overheard her talking to the children about Movember and having a Movember Friday. It was a great idea that they had about putting on the 'stache on Friday, boys and girls, to show their understanding of what Movember is all about. Of course I asked if I could borrow the idea and run it past the other intermediate students and they wholeheartedly agreed. After visiting the other classes from Grade 4 to 7 and explaining and answering questions about the rationale behind Movember, we are now having a Movember Friday ... yes, this Friday. Students will be looking for make-up, costume accessories ... anything to put on a fake mustache to get in the mood. This is NOT a fund raiser; no money collected, just a bit of fun.

Thanks to this blog, I learned something today and sat in on a lesson to confirm what I learned. You may recall the other day when I wrote about being in Ms. McAllister's class with Mr. Bocking and the students were telling him about their field trip up Grouse Mountain. In the blog, I referred to the students having done a mind map about their trip.

Ms. Kennedy read the blog and since she is teaching the mind map concept to her class right now, she brought to my attention that what I saw the other day was webbing and that if I wanted to sit in on a lesson this morning I could discover the difference.

The primary differences are that webbing is primarily text and connecting lines that web from a central idea. The mind map uses text and lines, but also colour and icon graphics. The text in the mind map also gets smaller the further it gets from the main idea. Subtle differences, I know, but a different degree of complexity. Mind maps are a stage above webbing, but both are graphical organizers. At least I think that is what I learned.

Attention shoppers! Today was the first day of the book fair in the Library and it was a great success for the children as much as the adult customers. I had to laugh with these students about their exploration of the Adult Bestsellers - Christmas presents?

Thanks so much to our PAC who had a good number of volunteers there for the lunch and after school sessions. The doors will be open again tomorrow for the primary students at lunch and throughout and after parent conferences. Thanks, too, to the grade 7 helpers at the cash counter.

Please do remember we dismiss an hour early tomorrow.


A good deal of cash changed hands. If you do send your children with money please talk with them about the need to care for it and not leave it unattended.

As well today there were some students wanting to "borrow money". This something I do not want to encourage by any means.

Finally ... I hope to see you at the PAC meeting Wednesday night, 7 pm. I don't expect the meeting will be in the library, and baby sitting is provided.

Monday, Monday...

Now, does this title date me or what...

Mondays are often good days after the children have had their weekend experiences, ones which many want to tell me when they get to school. And yes, I was there today. Some of you may recall that I am at Cedar Grove to Christmas or the return of Mr. Hunt. He had hoped to be back today, and I got an email from him yesterday saying he is just not ready for a return just yet. It does look right now as though I will be here for another month, so start watching for the December/Christmas ties.

Last Monday I let you know about a Science Unit Mr. Kerr was starting with the students called Science in a Bag with their experiments coming from the site under the link above. It is an interesting site that comes to the class from New Zealand. The photo here is of the criteria sheet for marking the projects which are due beginning the week of December 5 since school is closed on November 28th so that is the next day Mr. Kerr is here. Parents of students in this class may want to get involved with the projects.

As you can see the marking will be a collaborative effort on the part of students and Mr. Kerr, with the criteria laid out well in advance. The experiment itself is marked out of 10 (clicking the image will blow it up) and the write up (written or typed) out of 20. I was in the class when the students went over the criteria so I know the meaning of COPS ... you may have to ask you child what that means - think good writing - and they should know, or ask someone to explain it to them again.

It is exactly what it looks like. I was out walking and talking with the students when my eye caught a number of children out in front of the school gathered into a tight group. Thinking gang-fight (NOT ;-) I headed over to see what was up and found the children doing the limbo. Pretty creative thinking going on to make the set-up work with a couple of stumps and a stick.

I'll leave you with something to think about tonight and would be interested in you thoughts as comments to this post.

Don't be shy.

Mondays are for many classes the day of the Spelling Pre-test with practise throughout the week and a final test Friday (and, yes, I did use the British spelling for the verb).

Here is a blog article I read on the weekend as the source for my enquiry about your thoughts on having spelling tests.

Volleyball practice (back to some people's norms) tomorrow morning and I will hear how the play date after school went.

Found it

I went to school this morning and found my camera. I also found two of your teachers actively involved in lesson preparation for next week. It was nice to chat with them for a few moments and then head off to lower Gibsons for a bit of a walk.

I mentioned a bit yesterday about the use of technology tools and had these three shots from yesterday to share. As you have gathered I believe the use of technology tools is important for the growth of today's student, however, I fully believe that the teacher remains the most important person in the "9-3" educational life of the child. Introducing literacy and numeracy topics to these young grade 1 and 2 students and giving them a good feeling about learning is so important.

I guess that fits in with my good feeling about seeing some of our primary teachers at work this Saturday morning.

I've been thinking a bit about where to get some beachfront relaxation this winter and these ducks and gulls seem to have made a late Fall decision to choose Gibsons.

See you Monday...

Friday part 1

Yes, part 1. It seems I may have left my camera at school today. If not, I may be looking for a while ...

I did want to share a couple of things tonight and I will write again tomorrow... The first thing is that I hope you take an opportunity to vote tomorrow. I has always been a concern of mine that School Board elections don't seem to get much press leading into the event when it is a fact that the School Board members manage a budget of 35 million dollars and our school district is one of the largest employers on the Sunshine Coast with over 400 employees and over 3,000 children in public school. While they may not have much of a say about bargaining - the results of which take up about 85% of that budget, the do have a lot to say about programming and directions the district will go. And that is big thinking. So please, most of you are area 2 voters and you have some significant choices to make.

The Coast News does have a brief summary of the all candidates meeting earlier this week and I urge you to look at their report.

One of the things they spoke about was technology and you can probably guess that this is one of my issues as well.

I enjoyed watching a couple of presentations by the grade 7 students today about things they have learned and researched in Social Studies.

The students did an oral presentation and used images which they had from books or which they had hand drawn and showed using the class projector and the document cameras. These tools simply support the work that they have done. Good stuff, and a big thank you to the PAC for having these technology tools as part of last year's fund raising goal.

I had to get a bit of a kick out of something I saw when working a bit with the primary students in the library this morning using the COW laptops. Sometimes geometry comes into play with the students who like to build as much as work on digital things!

So, until tomorrow when I hopefully find my camera!

Once again... please vote on Saturday.