What We Learned Today...April 29th

Inquiry Learning during math class.

We started out our week with a school wide assembly in the gym this morning.  After prayer and announcements, Ms. Grad and Ms. Norris asked the senior students to stick around for a quick meeting.  A couple of reminders from this meeting: We need some Grade 7 helpers for Grade 8 Farewell, Ensure you are following the dress code we have here at Deshaye (No muscle shirts, spaghetti strap tops). 
Once we got back to the class it was time for ELA (we decided to postpone AR until the afternoon) and we continued our Environmental unit by looking at Wind Power.  Students were split up into groups of 4 and each group was responsible for reading a few pages from the book, Generating Wind Power.  While reading their assigned pages, students are also responsible for taking notes on the key ideas from their section because tomorrow students will teach the rest of the class about the section they read. 

In Grade 8 Math we continued our unit on Volume by looking at a few different kinds of Problem Solving questions involving finding the Volume of a Rectangular Prisms, Triangular Prisms and Cylinders.  During the last half of class we did some Inquiry Based Learning and the students were split up into groups of 4 or 5 and were each given a different type of problem to tackle together.  At the end of tomorrows class each group will get the chance to teach the rest of the class about their problem.  Here's a few more pictures from our Inquiry Learning today:

After lunch we made up our missed AR time from 12:45 - 1:15.  AR update: We are now up to 7.8 AR Points Per Student! With only 4.2 Points to go and with so many students nearing the end of their books, I have no doubt we will achieve our goal by Wednesday! At 1:15 the students had Career Guidance with Mr. McCulloch before moving on to Social Studies at 2:30.  In Social Studies students got back into their Colonization Simulation groups and spent the hour working on the Treaty Negotiations for next class.  I'm really impressed with how well the students are doing with this and how serious they are taking it.  There are definitely some really creative demands and I can't wait to see how it all comes together when we have the negotiations next class. 

*Unfortunately I will be away all day at training session so there will not be a blog post tomorrow.  (I know the students are really broken up about this...)

Due Dates & Homework:

Math:
Grade 8
7.3 is due on Tuesday

French
Food Picture Dictionary is overdue

Overdue Assignments:
1) Environmental Mural

2) French Picture Dictionary

3) Grade 8 7.2 handout

Reminders:

-Track Mini Meet on Friday (weather permitting)