Is there a full moon?

There was a real hum of energy in class today; I guess a critical mass of students opted for Coco-Puffs over Shredded Wheat today. Days like this always have the potential to fly off the rails, but thankfully today it got channeled into some real productive energy. I am starting to notice that most students are speaking more French in class, which I am happy to hear. This is something I will get more picky about over the coming weeks. We got a lot of review accomplished in math, as well as additional practice writing out numbers and brushing up on place value. We played a fun game, one of the ones linked in my last post.

Students' homework tonight is to finish up a drawing they were working on in Health class. The idea is to represent themselves at age 5, age 10, and in the future. Students brainstormed lists of their interests (or projected interests) at each age, as a means of comparing them and seeing how things change over time. Each of the three panels on their drawing is meant to represent one of these ages, with all of their interests somehow represented.

We also got time to prep for our Drama in Education project about the Beothuk peoples and early colonization of Newfoundland, which will start tomorrow. I think the class will really enjoy this project. Tomorrow the class will bring home a letter that outlines what we will be expected to do by the project's directors.

I worked with the class on developing rubrics today as well. We took some existing rubrics that I found online and adapted them as the students saw fit. The topics they are meant to evaluate range from oral presentations to health class, and everything in between. I will finish altering these projects tonight and tomorrow, to include in their homework DuoTangs this week.

Tomorrow we will start a 2-week weather monitoring project. Students will bring home two sheets on which to record weather information. Some of this will be observable trends and conditions, and other elements will require listening to the radio or TV, or checking on the Internet. I would strongly suggest that you push them to work independently on this project, as the content is quite straightforward. It should be a neat opportunity for them to take ownership of the project and see it through over a period of time.

Please check out the post from Monday (yesterday) and feel free to explore some of the links. Students were especially interested in the Place Value math games on Gamequarium. Have a great night, and let me know if you have any questions.