The entire school participated in a writing assignment today: to tell a creative story based on a visual prompt. The prompt was a black and white photograph of a group of school-aged children looking beyond the lens of the camera with varying expressions (glee, horror, shock...). Students in 8A and 8B were reminded to focus on structure of a story (a concept from grade 7 that we will continue to work on in grade 8).
Afterwords, I broke students into small groups of 4-5 for our first Daily 5. Reminder: every day students should come to class with something to write with, something to write on, and a book to read.
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Students sorted their long list of values into similarly themed groups and then labelled each group with one overarching value. For now, we are considering this short list their core values. We will use these to generate a list of classroom values.
We talked about classroom routines including "Daily 5" where on any given day, students will spend time working on one of the following activities:
We played a game the required students to ask insightful questions, synthesize the information they received, and make educated guesses based on that information. Please ask your kids about it. Students were given a schedule to copy down that they will use tomorrow and use regularly on Fridays. Students worked in small groups to understand the Report Card stems for English Language Arts.
Students went to the Learning Commons where they used their @educbe.ca accounts to access, complete, and submit a get-to-know-you survey. Students who were unable to log into their @educbe.ca accounts need to see Mr. Neustaeter to reset their passwords. We will be using these accounts all year for distributing and submitting assignments. Students finished selecting the values (form the list provided) which they most connect with. Tomorrow they will sort those values into similarly themed groups to determine their own personal core values.
We did a quick paper hat-making activity as an introduction to the idea of growth mindset. We shared stories of times we had to work hard for an achievement. I shared my on-going challenge to play the accordion. Yikes! Tomorrow we will sort through and discuss our values, we will review the report card stems for English Language Arts and Social Studies, and take a trip to the Learning Commons to fill out a get-to-know-you survey. Today, students copied a legend for common annotation symbols and then used those symbols when reading an essay about mindfulness. As a class, we looked at our own personal values as a first step in generating a set of classroom values.
Tomorrow we will be continuing our values work and learning about growth mindset. Students also had a successful fire drill this afternoon. Students took notes on our year-long plan for both English Language Arts and Social Studies. ELA plans included literary devices, story structure, story elements, and planned assignments/activities.
Social Studies plans included our major units and some assignments/activities. Because we have a school-wide assembly tomorrow, I will see students again on Monday. On Monday, we will continue looking at Growth Mindset, Mindfulness, Daily Routines, Values, and Purpose. It was wonderful seeing everyone today. We divvied up classroom chores and then took part in some team-building exercises (going on a picnic and speed meeting). Tomorrow we'll discuss our plan for the year and hopefully have a chance to go over some of the following ideas: Mindfulness, Growth Mindset, Values & Purpose.
Homework: tell your parents/guardians what your classroom chore is; get a good night's sleep so you'll have lot of energy tomorrow! |
AuthorMr. Spencer teaches Grade 8 Language Arts, Social Studies, Science, and Drama at Mount Royal School. Archives
May 2018
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