Check me for Ticks

So the grade 7s ventured out to highway 5 heading east to Madge Lake for highway cleanup. Our students are raising money for their Winnipeg trip. We left the school at around 3:30 and walked to the starting point. There was about 15 students and 4 parents plus myself and Mrs. Holodniuk involved. The students broke up into 2 groups and each picked a kilometer at a time on both sides of the highway and then they would leap frog to the next kilometer.

I was the unofficial garbage man and bringer of juice boxes. Driving back and forth in my husbands "Darth Vader" dodge ram (Yeah his license plate says DRTHVDR)

 I could see the kids working hard picking up all of the garbage from last year's passerby's with their bright orange safety vests. When checking on the groups I would pick up garbage off of the side of the road that the kids would drag up from the ditch, I put the road signs up and handed out new garbage bags. I never once walked down into the ditches and yet I found myself covered in ticks. Gross! I grew up four hours north west of here and we didn't have ticks, I think they are starting to migrate up that way now. Anyways, I had a couple of freak outs, not really being good with bugs in the first place, but there is just something really creepy about these little black discs with legs that you can't kill. There was a few times I felt something on the back on my neck and sure enough it was a tick. I learnt very quickly to check myself for ticks every time I got back into the truck. Too bad I couldn't use the force to get rid of this little pests. During this whole experience all I could think of was Brad Paisley's song "Ticks".


The ticks unfortunately were the least of my worries. I was quite shocked that there are so many drivers on that highway that do not obey road signs. Even though there were signs saying "Workers present" and "60 speed limit, fines tripled". People wouldn't slow down. I guess 60kms is just too slow when you are in a hurry. I was so frustrated when I was driving back out after getting rid of a load of garbage bags and I was passed twice in the 60km stretch of highway, that I rolled down my window and honked at the drivers and waved my arm at them. I guess people don't know how to read. I don't care if it is students, emergency vehicles, highway workers, tow trucks ect. if there is a sign then SLOW DOWN. The RCMP were finally able to make it out and they did patrol the 3km section for us and they had to stop quite a few cars for speeding. Maybe these people will now be more observant of road signs. (sorry for the rant but this concerns me)
So after 6kms of picking on both sides of the highway the grade 7s went home. It took the group about four hours. We will have to do one more day afterschool to finish the job so we can get paid.
When I got home at around 8:30 I found that I had a stowaway on my leg. Yep, my creepy little friend Tick wanted to come home with me. This is the first time I have ever had a tick bite and I will admit I had another small freak out, which my 4 year old son thought was quite hilarious.
After our first day out for highway cleanup I think the kids and parents did a great job in getting half of our section of highway done. Thank you again to the parents who helped out, we appreciate it. We will have another day in the near future to finish up the cleanup.

 

Let it Rain

Highway cleanup is cancelled today due to rain.

photo taken from flickr

On the way to Winnipeg

This year the grade sevens will continue the tradition and travel to Winnipeg by train for the 20th year!! On our trip we will visit Lower Fort Garry, the Zoo, a baseball game and the Forks. In order to afford this trip students will be involved in highway cleanup tomorrow and Wednesday. Each student should bring work gloves, bug spray, bottle of water, appropriate footwear and dress for the weather. This fundraiser will be added to the two grants that Ms. Veregin was able to get for us this year to help subsidize this trip.

Kid comedy and Mad Libs

Today in LA class the students had a few laughs with watching Kid Snippets by Bored Shorts TV. It was a great way for students to see how you can make situations funny by just changing one small thing. Kid Snippets are short videos where they ask young children to explain a situation. This by itself is cute but not overly funny. The makers of these shorts then take adult actors and act out and lip sych the children's words. By changing the actors the situation turns hilarious. After watching the snippets we talked about Mad Libs. The students filled out an already made one and read them out loud infront of the class. They could see that by changing a few important words in the letter made the letter funny. They are now working on creating their own Mad Lib where they will switch with a partner tomorrow. I have linked the Kid Snippets to the side of my blog for you to enjoy.

It's Your Turn to Assess

Now that you have completed your post about a famous comedian, you will peer assess each other’s posts. You are required to assess at least 5 posts using the following checklist. When commenting on a blog you need to have more than: “that’s good”, “cool”, “wow”, “neat”… A good comment is written in complete sentences and has some constructive criticism or specific mention about parts of the post. For example: “I really liked how you described the comedians early life. You did a very good job painting a vivid picture of the comedians life. I really enjoyed your choice of youtube clip. You did forget to mention about the comedians accomplishments. If you would have included this it would have helped to give the reader the whole picture.”
Check list:

• youtube clip
• picture
• title
• description of their early life
• accomplishments
• what type of work they do
• original writing (no copy and pasting)

Famous Comedian

                                                               Picture borrowed from  http://www.therosevillatavern.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/Comedy1.jpg

This week the grade sevens are trying something new. A paperless assignment. Students assignment was handed to them via there blogs and they will be creating a research blog post on a famous comedian, where they will have to include a written biography, a youtube clip, picture and anything else to make their post unique. Some of the comedians students chose are: Adam Sandler, Ellen DeGeneres, Wil Smith, Eddie Murphy, Seth McFarlene, Steve Martin, and Seth Meyers.

Moccasin Making

On April 29th and 30th both grade 7 classes learned how to sew and bead moccasins. My mom was kind enough to drive from Prince Albert, 3 and a half hours away, to teach us. It was interesting to have my mom in the classroom with me. She has never seen me teach and I was a little nervous to have her here. She was also nervous about talking in front of so many people, but she did an amazing job. The two of us with the help of the master mind of this project, Andrea, put in 10 hours over the weekend just cutting and getting the materials ready for the students. She also put in hours on Sunday and Monday night sewing a pair of moccasins for the school's principal. She also taught me how to bead and sew before we started teaching the students. I really enjoyed this part the best because I got to spend some quality time with my mom.
Being involved with this project was quite an experience to have almost 40 students learning this intricate art. We started with learning how to bead and each student was able to pick a design and colors of beads. At the beginning students found this task frustrating trying to get the beads to stay straight and to create their chosen design.
At the end of two days two students completely had their moccasins made, fur and all. There were quite a few students who only have to sew fur on to have a finished pair. These students are staying in at lunch time with me to work on their moccasins.

I would like to thank all the students for their hard work during this project, Andrea for getting grants from SIGA and Saskatchewan Lotteries Community Grant, the other teachers and EAs who helped out and especially my Mom for working so hard. This may just become a tradition!

 

 

Voices through the Ages - Language Arts

The grade sevens just finished up their Language Arts unit "Voices through the Ages". We looked at a variety of ancient cultures such as: Ancient Egypt, Aztec, Mayan, and student choice culture. Students learned about the process of mummification, the ice man, ancient languages and forensic facial reconstruction. Some of the assignments students worked on were writing about a life event in Mayan hieroglyphs and pictographs and creating a facial reconstruction for a person from an ancient culture using paper mâché. I think the students really enjoyed this unit and this is one of my favourite Language Arts units to teach.
Take a look at a few of the students creations.

Welcome to my new blog!

I am very excited to finally have my blog up and running. After going to my first SSLA (Saskatchewan School Library Association) and listening to Andrea Hernandez  and all the wonderful blogging/digital profolio work she does at her school in Jacksonville, Florida, I was inspired. I came home from the conference excited to start both blogging myself and getting my grade seven students involved.
Yesterday, I introduced my students to blogging and they loved it! We are going to use our class blogs as a way to communicate what they are learning in school and to show some of their work.
Currently, my students are writing about mocassin making that happened on April 29th and 30th, what they learned about ancient civilizations in Language Arts, and Geometry in math.
Some of my students also created their own Voki, which they thought was really cool.
I hope that my students continue to enjoy created and developing their blogs for the last two months of school.