May 12th Monday

Happy Birthday Maria Jelica and many thanks from your classmates who celebrated with a very generous selection of donuts - nice treat for a Monday- thanks mom:)

Reminders
Camp payment ?
Hot lunch orders for May due today
Have placed everyone who has not returned the dietary form yet on the list for camp as 'regular' diet
Thursday is our Pot Luck at HSSS for to he project "installation" - please consider sending something for us to share
We are preparing a letter to parents regarding the possibility of escalating job action and the contingency plans for camp - look for that tomorrow
Friday is a professional development day
Monday is Victoria Day - long weekend coming up

Our day
Thanks for the help setting up the gym this morning boys - much appreciated
Also thank you to Austin and Robert, Sukhreet and Simrin who spent time organizing and tidying up the equipment room while the rest of us either played badminton or floor hockey.

It was a treat to get some practice using the new sound system in the gym although I need to work at not making the wireless microphone scream at us!!

Everyone seemd to enjoy the selection of tunes and worked cooperatively together while getting some Monday morning exercise- lots of tried bodies today though!

Back in class we set about the mastering vocabulary units that for many were yet to be complete- a handful worked on Unit 3 (three) while the rest completed the Unit 2 work from last week. Greek and Latin etymology helps us understand many new words and gives us another tool for making sense of parts of words and then inferring meaning from prefix, suffix and roots.
The students seem to enjoy it. And, with each unit we do, they are becoming more adept at recognizing these word parts.
It was amusing to find them making up some of their own crazy words and asking things like...
"Mrs. J. Are you an autochronophobic? You know, fearful of timing yourself?"
Yes, I am. I do not want to time myself on how long these Blog posts take! Thanks for asking!

Math 7
today we reviewed the skill of identifying Cartesian graph coordinates (x,y) before we begin looking at transformations (translations, reflections and rotations).
According to results a review was very necessary because without the skill of coordinate plotting the
unit  will be more challenging than it should be.

For some reason (spring, hormones, tiredness, lack of interest) a handful of students had a real challenge focussing on the math activity and instead heckled one another - they are kind of like puppies right now! It only takes one snarky comment from a classmate (or one weird noise) to set them all off.  It would be funny if it wasn't so silly!
We did manage to complete two activities and will start the Chapter 1 work in the text tomorrow, God willing! Wish me luck.

Read to self or use for activity completion
 It took me the majority of this reading time to remember how to set up the slide carousel - it is a really old one! (Excuses, excuses)

Socials today

Introduction to Greece : we started a virtual tour of Greece today based on the trip that I took with high school students many years ago from then Brackendale Secondary with EF educational tours.
I asked them kindly not to laugh too hard at the once 'state-of -the -art- technology' that was a carousel of slides of pictures developed from a good old fashioned Kodak camera (remember those?).
The students looked at me funny- only a handful said they knew what I was talking about!

They were motivated to look at the photograph albums to find ancient pictures of Mrs. J before she was Mrs. J. (Bad hair and poor sense of style! It was the early 90's folks. One part kind of funny and two parts embarrassing!) those students who were on that trip are now in their 30's - that is so hard to believe! I am officially older than I think I am.
Sorry, I digress....senior moment

Today we completed days 1 and 2 of the seven day tour.

So far we have travelled to Greece (nearly a day 5 hours to Toronto - 4 hour layover and the red-eye to Athens). Then day 1 and 2 in the city of Athens and at the Acropolis. Students seemed interested, observed the detail in the slides (honestly not that they were that great) and asked questions.
They noticed narrow roads, lots of vehicles parked along those narrow roads, mopeds, smog in the city atmosphere, lots of ancient archaeological sites, dense buildings and lack of open areas in the city, architecture and many sites of interest for tourists.
I haven't told them yet about the tons of homeless ferile cats in the parks! Although I did mention the cockroach in the bathroom of the hotel and the difference in the toilets and shower set up - things that you kind of have to experience for yourself.

The intention is to complete the 'tour' and use the notes from it to chose one of the spots on the tour (Athens, Delphi, Olympia, Mycenae, Epidaurus, the Saronic gulf islands) to research and develop into a creative brochure to encourage other people to visit that particular spot. I need to ensure they understand why they are taking notes tomorrow as some had difficulty today with the actual writing of notes from the slide presentation.  As it became later in the afternoon, the ability to focus took a dive too!

After leaving Athens, we worked on an activity that had them identify various food items from around the world and try to identify the country and the continent from the capital city clue
Example: If I am eating moussaka in Athens, I am in Greece, Europe
This was a bit of a cheesy connection as a reminder of our pot luck on Thursday!!

Monday's got to love them!
Have a great evening
Hope Mother's Day was everything you expected (or maybe didn't expect if was a nice surprise!)
Mrs. J.