May 13th beautiful Tuesday

Reminders
FYI the letter regarding Evans lake will go home tomorrow- had it ready but didn't get to the photocopier on time
Please send some thing for us to share for our Potluck at HSSS on Thursday this week- we will be heading there in the afternoon for the unveiling of our art and language project
No school Friday and long weekend (Victoria Day) Monday

APB for a missing lithium battery that was taken from the classroom sound system - the battery is not an ordinary AA but a special order lithium rechargeable specifically for the sound field. It is disappointing to know that one of the students has purposefully removed it from the microphone but there is always the chance for it to appear no questions asked on my desk or somewhere in class!

Our day

Band class first block

Then we discussed the plans for ensuring a camp experience will be taking place as one of the students had 'heard' it had been cancelled and this created some concerns.
This is how rumors get started!! It is not cancelled.
I had to be careful not to get into the politics of the issue and to keep it focused on the students. You would have been proud of the questions they were asking about education. Felt it better to skirt some answers to keep our discussion about us - our camp and our efforts to ensure it goes ahead :)

I moved quickly into our Grecian Odessey tour of Greece
Day 3 today

Slides were shared and some details explained about he day 3 guided tour and ferry trip from Pireus to the Saroinc Gulf islands of Aegina, Poros and Hydra.
They saw the donkey taxi cabs! Hydra has no vehicles.
The squid drying in the rigging of a fishing boat, fresh from the sea. The market in the harbour in Aegina (no big grocery chains to shop in). The produce is shipped in each day by boat. They observed the very different architecture of Poros which is a Naval base (fortress).

Math 7 transformations today
The slide - not the line dance!!
A slide is also referred to as a Translation- translating the (x,y) coordinates of a point
The vocabulary of translation is written. In square brackets like so
[3,5] this translates to a point move of 3 units right and 5 up
[ -3, -5] translates to a point move of 3 units to the left and 5 down

Students translate the point move and then move the points to create the same shape in a different spot - thus sliding it from one point to the other. When points are joined (connect the dots) a 3-D prism is the result.

We flipped the afternoon
We used a half hour in the gym for a floor hockey game and / or badminton or basketball - we managed this extra gym time as another class was on a fieldtrip.

We went from there to the computer lab
First I asked them to check the EF educational tours website where they discovered that the Grecian Odessey is still one of the options and that it now costs $2600 for a 12 day experience!
There are many different options for trips - it is an interesting website to visit.
Says me!

Before any free time (although some needed to be reminded) the grade sevens looked at the work
done so far as they had a chance to print for their Spend a Million project.
Last 10 minutes free time. Elijah showed me the animations that he created at. Cyber camp over spring break and another showed me how to navigate the Dan Ball virtual chemistry experiments! I learn a little everyday.
I also find that there are some things that I do not understand everyday!!

Back in class the students settled for their read to self time - that's when I discovered the missing battery - it wasn't an accident!

Anyway - I try not to take these things personally because on the stage of world disaster they do not register but it takes energy to deal with and I do not like to end the school day feeling disappointed.

After a cold drink with added vitamins, I managed to put it into perspective! Many thanks, cold drink ninja!

Have a lovely evening
Mrs. J.