Wildlife

There aren't too many places within 50km of us where there are schools that can say they have a lot of wildlife within the arm throw of a good second baseman.

And, no, these students did not see a cougar near by the school. We did get a report of one having been seen about 30 minutes before the recess break, so we gave a call to the conservation officer to see what, if anything, they had heard. The report was news - at the time - to them and so I went to look around the area where the cougar had been reported.  The sighting was across the street from the school at the bus stop. I could see nothing at that time, so made the decision not to have the students go out for recess.
A bit later, I went to look again and met up with an RCMP officer who had been called by the conservation officer and who came to take a look himself. We had a good conversation about the wildlife sightings in the area, including cougars further up the coast and out Port Mellon way. At lunch there had been no further reports of sightings, so I opened up the play area for the students to enjoy the fresh air along with a reminder to remain in bounds and in sight.
You should also have received an email from me with a two page document regarding being cougar aware from the conservation officer.

Today I watched Mr. Pond's class work with fractions. Most of the students were breaking printed shapes into quarters, halves, and eighths, colouring in the required fraction. One student was working with a computer based math program for which we purchased a license this year. He was doing his work with the software on the laptop. Off to the grade seven class where Ms. Krannenburg was working with the students on an introduction to circle graphs, breaking the circle into percent areas ... a clear extension of the work done years earlier as they were introduced to fractions. Nice to see the progression in learning.

I'll leave you tonight with a bit of humour... not mine, but one of the students. You can double click on the image to get it in a larger size to see what I saw this morning in the sign-in book.

Until tomorrow...