The First Day of School 2012

Well tomorrow is the first day of school. It's what we've been either building up to or avoiding all summer. I've spent the better part of the past two weeks at school, and I am excited for us to get started!

I'd like to start by welcoming everyone to the 7-56 team here at BLMS. You have all been hand picked for this team, and we are going to have a great year. I've put together a little welcome video for you. Check it out below.



We will be spending lots of time in the coming weeks getting to know each other, and getting everything sorted out. I just wanted to send an initial post to say hello, and that I'm really looking forward to classes starting!

See you all soon,

Mr. Hyland

Peer Assessment Day!

Today we will assess our peers on their involvement in the Literature circles. Please find the link to the survey here: 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dDdUSk02VFRhNHc1QURnMEJBeGJUUUE6MA#gid=0

Please make sure to evaluate ALL members of your group! 

Once you are done that, please take a moment to reflect on the year and please give me some feedback on how you think that the year went to help me make improvements in my teachings. Please fill out the survey here: 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dDVpTzViNzhnVUZjRWNFS2ZwYXJwNUE6MA#gid=0

Thanks for sharing your time and opinions! 

May 24 Updates

Some updates for this week!

ELA: We are continuing to work on our Literature circles. Students should be doing some reading at home this month to keep up to date with their work. Our next Literature Circle sharing day will be on TUESDAY May 29. 


SOCIAL: In social studies, we are working on an examination of Power and Government. We are halfway completed the power section, and we will have a quiz on TUESDAY MAY 29. It will involve True/False, Matching, and Multiple choice sections, as well as a Short Answer section. The two questions for the short answer have been given to the students, and are as follows:

1. Explain why and how a nation can have power? Make reference to a minimum of 3 of the powers that a nation has and give detailed examples. (6 Marks)
2. During Global Sim this year, you have used the power of your country to affect others, and you have been affected by other countries using their power on you. Describe a situation when you used your power, or were affected by the power of another country. Include in your description which FORM of power was used, which SOURCES of power and give evidence to back up what you say. (5 marks)

Students should consider these questions before the quiz so that they are better prepared to answer them. 

PERFORMING ARTS: Students are just finishing their writing and recording of Radio Plays this week. All recordings should be completed by Monday next week. After that, we will begin work on our short film final project. 

We also will host our Discovery Afternoon on Thursday May 31st. Check with your child to see what they're signed up for, along with the necessary fees and equipment. 

It's getting down to crunch time! We are going to be cruising fast all the way to the finish line. Final exams are coming up. As it looks now, we will write a Social Studies final during class time, then Math on Monday June 25th, ELA in the AM of June 26, and Science in the PM.  

Enjoy the weekend! 

Literature Circles!

Great news! We are embarking on our Courage Unit, and will be participating in Literature Circles.

What are literature circles? Easy. Here's the plan.

1. You will be presented with options on which books are available, and rate your top three. 
2. Groups will be created by me based on your choices and availability of books. 
3. Books will be signed out to each of you. They are your responsibility to take excellent care of. If they come back in worse condition or are lost, it will be your responsibility to replace them. 
4. Each week you will have a role to complete and a specific number of pages to read. Please do not read ahead, as it can create problems with your group. 
5. You will receive one, and only one booklet with the roles to be completed. Do not lose this. You will need to turn this in at the end of the literature circle. It will be a part of your final mark. 
6. In class you will have time to read and prepare your role. The number of pages to read will depend on the book that you have chosen. There will be necessary homework time to read and prepare your roles. Please plan to be spending time in the evening on this. 
7. During Literature Circle meeting time, you will share your roles with your group and discuss the book. 
8. One group will share their literature circle in front of the class during each discussion period. You will be evaluated on your participation with the group, understanding of the text, and completion of your role. It will be a part of your final mark. Other groups will engage in their discussions after this. 
9. If you complete your reading early in class, there will be a creative project option. More on this will be discussed in class and posted to this site soon. 

Alright! Ready to go? Check out the list of possible books and vote for your choices by going to http://mrhyland.wikispaces.com/The+Novels. Read through the options, and then go to this site to vote for your favourite choices! 

Cogneeto, Global Impact, Grade 8 Registration and more!

Good morning everyone! Here are some updates about what is going on.

We are going to be piloting a new program called "Cogneeto". ( http://cogneeto.ca ) This is an online program which allows for students to create projects, offer feedback to one another, revise their own work, and eventually hand in their finished copy. We're going to be doing some testing this week to see how it works, and hopefully will be using it for our next project in ELA.

Students are working on a quick intro assignment using Cogneeto. They should have access to this on any computer with Internet access. The first part is two paragraphs, which need to be completed by tonight. Many students finished during class, but there is still a number that need to complete this tonight.

A note about Cogneeto: It seems to work best in Google Chrome. If you need to download Chrome, you can find it here: https://www.google.com/chrome

Global Impact Projects are now overdue. Students who have not completed this project can expect to be spending lunch hours with me until they are done.

Grade 8 registrations have gone home today! Please make sure that you read over all the information on your child's form. Check that everything is filled in correctly, and that they have chosen band or PA correctly, and sign the bottom. These forms are due Tuesday April 24th. Note that if you are interested in hockey academy, that you should just write that in on the form.


Thanks to all of the students for their patience while I was gone this week due to my wedding! We're back on track now, and ready to rock our way through the last few months of classes.

Global Impact Project - The Issues

We have been brainstorming a list of environmental problems in our school, community, country and world. Below is the collection of environmental issues that we brainstormed as a class, and could be used for your Global Impact Project research. 

• Wasting energy
• Littering
• Oil Spills 
• Poaching (killing animals illegally)
• Air Pollution
• Water pollution (dumping in lakes)
• Toxic Waste - 
• Water contamination, soil contamination. 
• Noise pollution
• Smog (air pollution)
• Acid Rain (air pollution)
• Over-hunting
• Light pollution
• Fossil Fuels
• Smoking
• Wasting water, leaving the tap running
• Wasting Food
• Recycling
• Over farming
• Burning plastic (air pollution)

• Blue boxes aren't being used. Mess from Blue box?
• Poaching - illegal hunting
• Taking shortcuts to save money (eg. Sometimes companies sacrifice safety to cut costs. Makes it easier to break, like oil lines)
• Gas usage: More and more people are using gas. Car pooling? 
• Convenience foods --> too much packaging = lots of waste
• Busses would help to conserve gas, pollution, etc. 
• Carpooling -->pick each other up to go places
• McDonald's & Tim Hortons --> coffee cups on the ground Maybe make their stuff biodegradable
• Wasting paper
• Library vs buying books
• Forest Fires
• Deforestation (cutting down trees)
• Air pollution (eg. smoking, cars, industry, fireworks)
• Recycled backpacks? Use technology instead of paper
• Pens that break down in compost
• Composting
• Excessive Energy consumption: Video games using a HUGE amount of power to run, leaving lights on, leaving computers running, cruising Facebook forever
• Smoking -->pollution
• War, destruction, nuclear bombs
• Drive-thru's ppl leave cars running for a long time. 
• Cutting down forests for city expansion
• Water pollution -->gross lakes, plastic in the ocean
• Over Fishing

This list is not inclusive of ALL problems facing our community. If you can think of others issues that you think about please leave them in the comments below!

Once you choose an issue that you want to try to help, start researching to find out more about it. Make sure to use the Research Jot Note sheet to keep track of your research. (You can find a digital version of that handout in the Resources section.)  

Boy in the Striped Pajamas

In class we have just finished watching The Boy in the Striped Pajamas. This film causes us to think about a few very important issues:

• The essence of true friendship
  
• The courage to engage in humane actions
  
• The uses and abuses of obedience and conformity
  
• The development and consequences of prejudice and discrimination 
  

Please consider these questions and answer them in complete sentences.

Innocence

1. What do “innocent” and mean when used to describe children?
2. Does Bruno and Gretel’s tutor take advantage of the children’s innocence in what he teaches them? How? What were these ideas? 
3. Although Bruno and his family have moved to a desolate place, Bruno continues to display his strong sense of adventure and creativity. What are some examples of this in the movie? Can you give an example from your own life when your sense of adventure and imagination allowed you to escape from a sad or painful situation? 
4. Why was it so hard for him to believe that his father could be involved in hurtful acts?

Friendship

1. Why do you think Bruno and Shmuel become friends and stay friends?    
2. The barbed wire fence is a physical separation between Bruno and Shmuel. What other types of separation does the fence represent in this story? 

Obedience & Conformity

1. How is obedience constructive and how can it be destructive? Give examples from the story of each. 
2. When are some examples in history when obedience or disobedience have been constructive or destructive? 

Prejudice & Discrimination

1. Have you ever been discriminated against? When have you witnessed discrimination against other people or discriminated against someone else?
2. When Bruno first finds out that Shmuel is Jewish, he says: “You’re a Jew. You can’t be. I think I should go now.” Why does Bruno react that way at first? 

Final Questions

1. When you hear someone make a biased comment about a group of people, what do you usu- ally do? How hard is it to stand up to prejudice and discrimination? Why? 
2. What do you think causes people to treat others in such horrific ways as was done during the Holocaust? Are there people being treated like this anywhere in the world today? What is or can be done to stop it? 

These questions are based on a discussion guide produced by the FILM Project with Harriet S. Mosatche, Ph.D.

youthfilmproject.org          boyinthestripedpajamas.com