League of Super Geniuses HQ

Tuesday, September 10, 2013

Forms

Right now, the following forms are due to be handed in:

Student Verification Form: 2 pages, white

Pink Package: Technology Use, Peanut Free School, Media Permission, Pita Pit order form

Parent Questionnaire: 2 pages, white

Pizza Order: DUE THURSDAY! Check which side you are filling out (gluten free?).

$20 School Levy cheque (Churchill Alternative School) or cash

Scholastic: due this week

Second Week

Hello!

We want to tell you about what we have been up to so far.

We have been doing something called ECLIPSE (Rowan). It is a Language Arts program (Katie). ECLIPSE stands for Engaged Choice Literacy Independence Purpose Stamina Enthusiasm (Kaitlyn). We have been practicing "Read to Self" everyday and building our stamina and muscle memory (Sohail). It is very very quiet when we are all doing "Read to Self" (Sarah). It's also very peaceful (Noah). We have Book Boxes that have good fit books in them and we practice picking a good seat, and reading independently (Katie). We talked about the three ways you can read a book (Read the Pictures, Read the Words, Retell the Story) (Evan and Jay). We also usually have volunteers demonstrate how to do it correctly and how not to do it (Evan).
I hope the students are enjoying ECLIPSE and learning from it so far. We will be training and adding on to the choices over the next little while (Tiiu).

We've been practicing our times tables by doing something called Precision Math each day (Jay). Precision Math is where you have a minute to answer as many math facts as you can and you are trying to reach your goal (Grady). We set our goals by writing the numbers 0-9 over and over again for a minute. We used the number of digits that we wrote down in one minute to set our goal (Zane). When we pass our goal we get to move on to the next fact family (Yarabi). Each digit counts as a point (Quinn). The idea is that students are working according to their own skills and pace. At the end of each minute, we graph our results (Katie). The Precision Math program has us practicing our facts from the 2 times tables to the 12 times tables. After we finish all of the facts, we might restart with a higher goal or we might move on to the Division program (Dominic).

In math, we also filled out a multiplication table with all of the facts that we knew automatically with a green pencil (Sohail). We did all of the facts that we needed to calculate a bit in yellow (Rebecca P.). We used red if the answer takes us a long time to figure out (Aidan). Now the students will have a better idea of the facts that they need to work to memorize or make little tricks to help them learn them. We will be learning some of these tricks in class.

We've also been working on an art project based on the artist Chuck Close (Grace). We are using photos of our faces to recreate something that looks like a Chuck Close piece of art (Ben). Chuck Close did grid paintings because he had a special kind of dyslexia known as prosopagnosia which made it difficult for him to recognize faces (Leigha). His style of art is called photorealism (Sarah). Chuck Close got a blood clot near the top of his spine that paralyzed him but he persevered through it and still makes art (Ciarn). After his accident, when he started painting again, his painting were more colourful. He said he was happier after the accident (Dominic). He was happy to be alive and still be able to paint (Alicia).

We are very happy to be in Room 207 (Katie).
We want to know if you are visiting us here. Please comment so that we know you are around. Thanks!

Thursday, September 5, 2013

Hello Families

Hi! We would love it if our families checked in here regularly. Checking in will give us something to talk about at home. It will show us that you are interested and wanting to support us. If you do check in, comment and let us know! Thanks!

Please remember to sign and hand in your pink forms and the $20 school fee. I am also collecting a Parent Questionnaire, Student Verification forms, and Scholastic.

We're Back

Here is our first post of the year! Many of us are excited to have this digital classroom. We will use this space to:

Explain neat things we did as a class (Sharky)
Write awesome posts about what we're up to. (Katie)
Write about plans that we might have for the future. (Quinn)
Reflect on activities that we've done and maybe include pictures. (Noah)
Comment on posts. (Dominic) (Tiiu says this is an excellent way to show initiative.)
Reflect on field trips and what we've learned. (Kailee)
Post instructions for activities so that you can access them from the lab or from home. (Fin)
Add links to interesting things that relate to what we are talking about in class. (Jay)

I hope everyone checks in here regularly, especially you family members. This is a great way to stay in touch with what we are doing. It is also a fantastic way to ask more specific questions at the dinner table about what we are doing so that you can get more than just grunts and shrugs when asking the students about what happened at school. For example: Instead of "What happened at school today honey?" "I dunno. (Shrug)" You can say, "Tell me more about that guest you met on Skype that was talking about the oceans."

We are excited to get posting!

Sincerely,

The Crew of 207

Thursday, June 20, 2013

Things You Will Remember

Think back. Way back. Heck, I guess you could scroll back. Take a trip through our year by scrolling through the posts and seeing what we've done. Next, I want you to comment on this post and write about your top 3 favourite things you've done this year.

I need you to explain why they've been your favourite and, if you know me, then you know that "It was awesome." or "It was cool" is not gonna cut it.

Your total comment should be at minimum, 6 sentences long. One sentence to state what your favourite thing was and one to explain why.

Trips, Haunted House, Mystery Skypes, and School of Rock are obvious ones. Can you think of any others?

Monday, June 10, 2013

Things that have a big showcase

Our latest and most likely last update on our project The Bracelet, on Thursday we attended the entrepreneurial adventure showcase at The National Art Gallery. We set up our booth for a day of representing our company and seeing and understanding other people's booths, the students took turns to run and represent our booth while the others had the option of sitting at the back or going out there and introducing them selfs to both adults and other students! There were also students with our iPad taking pictures for this blog post, or there were students with Tiiu's phone tweeting live at the event! When we were out there learning about everyone else's projects we had a very precise expectation on what was to happen, represent our company, ask interesting and creative questions and, to congratulate them on there hard work! After about 1 hour of walking around and touring...there was a awards show held in the auditorium sort of room, we watched and clapped as other schools, teachers, students were awarded.
The fun part about our booth was that it was very colourful, big and eye catching, we had novelty checks for Adam and Tanner regarding our loan for them. Also checks for our charity's! Everyone seemed to have the same idea in charity's because most of them were either Do It For Daren or CHEO, there were some other ones that were very surprising for us. We are so happy how The Bracelet turned out but sad that our adventure is over...We look forward to sending our money to our charity's! Until the next blog post...

Sincerely Kelly, and all of Room 207(:

Here are some pictures of the event!