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.

Easter is upon us...An Update

A few updates just before we go to break.

Report cards go home today. Make sure that you receive both the report card AND the behaviour report.

In ELA students have been working hard to complete their Global Impact Project. We will probably need the help of parents to spread our messages of environmental conservation to the community of Lloydminster and the world. Some students have elected to send pamphlets out into the community, some letters to companies and magazines, some have produced videos that we will be sending out into the world via YouTube. I will be posting a gallery of our work here on the blog. I thank you ahead of time for helping your students to push their messages & research into the larger community.

Upon our return, we will be partaking in a bit of a writing bootcamp, followed by an exciting project, where we will be doing some creative writing and hopefully be publishing our own books! Stay tuned for more info.

In Social we've been wrapping up some exciting rounds of our Global Government Simulation. When we get back from break we will be starting our Resource Investing project, which will end off our Resources & Wealth unit. We'll take a week or two to complete that project, and then we'll be switching gears to examine Power and Government.

In Performing Arts we have wrapped up our monologue presentations, and they were AWESOME! I am looking for a collection of volunteers to perform their monologues in front of a camera and a plain white background. We would like to screen a selection of monologue artists at our Art Night in May. If you're interested, PLEASE let me know! We'll be launching into a full out film review when we return, and then moving into an examination of Radio Plays and creating our own.

Lastly, I will likely be out of communication over the break, as I will be getting married. I will be back the Thursday following the break, and I do so look forward to hearing from the students about their adventures over break, and sharing with them stories of my own.

Take care, and have a wonderful Easter!

Global Impact Project - How to Convince People

Ways that we can convince people

• Get famous people to endorse your cause
• Sarcasm (Humor)
• Social Networks (Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, WOW, Xbox, MySpace,  etc.)
• Colours
• How much it is. 
• Need vs Want 
• Threaten people
• Connect to emotions, make them feel sad, make them feel bad about themselves, make them feel like they have to do something. 
• Peer Pressure
• Use humour, music
• If it looks cool
• If you see it on a T-shirt
• Sign flipper guy??? 
• Excitement
• eg. Shamwow guy
• Having expression, making what you say interesting
• People who are doing this activity are really happy
• Share it with a lot of people (a reputable source airs what you make, people will take it seriously)
• Have  a name that is catchy so people can remember it
• Set the mood with music, colours, etc.
• Have  images to show people
• Walk around and talk to people
• Give people samples
• Over-exaggerate things (Hyperbole)
• Jingles, music, repeat yourself

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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.)