Monday, February 15, 2010

The blog I wrote a week ago... Whoops

I have been neglecting my blog and actually most of this was drafted a week ago.  I thought I had published it earlier this morning but hadn't so the blog before this one was actually written after this one.
The picture is skating with our  first grade buddies last Monday.

Time always passes quickly it seems.  Well on the Haiti front in the end we raised over 1600 dollars and another 400 dollars for the Nepal Library Association.  Lately it seems I have been trying to drum in the academics before Olympic fever begins.  We are having our own mini Olympics Thursday afternoon and then after school we will be donning our red mittons (our whole school is getting free red Olympic ones) and catching a sight of the Olympic torch bearer as he runs by Sunset Community Centre.  Note I don't have any tickets to any events but hopefully we are going to get some Paraolympic event tickets for our kids.  That's the rumour.  I am going to see what "traffic" is like and if I am feeling energetic I may drag my class downtown to see some excitement at the free venues and ride the Olympic line streetcar to Granville Island.
I keep meaning to write about inspiring professional reading I have been doing but ...
Basketball season is about to end(it actually ended last week) and I have had lots of fun coaching my junior girls.  Can I play basketball?  Not really but why let a little thing like that stop you?  We won three and lost two but we won the last two.  The girls have made great progress!
I also made it through my microscope unit with the grade sixes!   Teaching science is not my greatest strength and trying to hit two curriculums has been a challenge.  The grade sevens are just finishing a unit on ecology and I am deciding whether to hit the earth's core or chemistry... In grade six extreme environments has far more appeal to me than electricity.
A couple of weeks ago  we had a brief foray into sex education.  I am jsut wondering what the grade sevens are going to be like when spring hits.
I have to laugh  a bit about my language arts program.  I wouldn't call it stellar!   But as noted before they are all reading and quite happily so.  I continue chipping away at non-fiction reading skills mainly using their science and socials and sometimes math text books.  Word study seems to be helping their vocabulary knowledge and spelling.  They now are much happier and better writers. 

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