Friday, January 29, 2016

8
ENGLISH
1. We have now begun our essay unit.  To assuage student stress, I have broken the task of writing frameworks into chunks, and given specific, staggered dates for them to be handed in.  Each student was given a 1/2 sheet entitled: "Essay Framework Tracker" today, and we wrote the first three dates for the frameworks on the paper.  You are being asked to add your initials to the sheet when your child has finished his or her framework and its ready to be handed in (on time, presumably).  The first one is due next Thursday.

Again, to alleviate stress and to save time, I have sent a blank essay framework entitled "7/8 Blank English Essay Framework" to all students through their gapps account.  STUDENTS: be sure to open the file, make a copy of it, and THEN make your edits.  Otherwise, you will be working on the same file...

What can your child be doing this weekend to prepare for the essays?
1. Brainstorm a list of potential ideas for the first three essay topics
2. Sort through the ideas and group them into possible paragraph headings ("the three bubbles"
3. Re-read (scan) The Giver.  Familiarity with the novel will go a long way.

Procrastinating frameworks will make for a very upset student: I have done my best to break it into manageable chunks, and your job is to begin immediately.

MATH
1. The unit test will be divided over two days: on Tuesday, students will be given tables of data and they will need to make deductions and inferences.  We spent a considerable amount of time today examining how to read a table and what conclusions could be drawn from the numbers.  This can be easily practised at home by looking a Stats Canada's Webpage and selecting tables that are of interest to your child.

2. The second test will take place on Wednesday, where students will do a quick reflection question based on the findings from their scatterplot project followed by a question on bias/reliability/validity.  Finally, they will need to be able to take a set of values and calculate %, decimals, and degrees (for a pie chart - they won't actually make the chart).


7

ENGLISH
1. 4 more seminars to go.  


MATH
1. 10.2 homework is due Tuesday.  The unit test 1.5, 10.1, and 10.2 will take place over two days: Wednesday and Thursday.