April 25

English 8 & 9

Our poetry unit continues amid great student enthusiasm for poetry which is heartening for their teacher. My English 9 class, in particular, is having mature and introspective class discussions about poetry.  They are filling up their Hilroy notebooks with glued-in poems, notes and paragraphs, which I am collecting this weekend for an initial, formative evaluation.  After about one more week, students will choose one of their paragraph responses to expand in a good copy, then we will start writing poems.

Social Studies 11

Test on Chapters 6, 7 and 8 is tomorrow: Friday, April 26, last block. There will be 50 multiple choice questions and two written answers.  Note for students reading this blog: Aboriginal people in Canada won the vote in 1960.  (We ran out of time in our review today.) Now we are finished history!

Next week we start our Canadian politics unit and will be participating in Student Vote activities which will liven it up a bit. The politics unit is only three chapters (and three weeks) long: 9,10, and 12.  (Law in chapter 11 is no longer in the course.)  Also, there is no essay on politics on the provincial exam, so we will just be focussing on facts.

April 18

English 8 and 9

Both grades are in a poetry unit this term, and the school has bought each a Hilroy booklet for their poetry work. It would be helpful if students brought their own glue sticks as the school ones run out quickly. Right now we are reading and responding to poems, and later students will write them. The grade 9s are using a new grade 9/10 anthology called Live Lines and the grade 8s are using a special children's edition of Arc Poetry Magazine, in addition to the old tattered anthologies published in the 1960s.  Some days students write a response to a poem. As the term goes on, they will write more. Ask your child to describe the IQIQU reading strategy and to show you his or her pocket poem.

 

Social Studies 11

We continue to focus on post-war Canada, this week on Canadian Identity. What does it mean to be a Canadian? Questions are due Monday. The next test will be on Friday, April 26. This is a fast moving, very full course. Keep up the good work, everyone!

And here is a handy glossary of terms and definitions needed for the exam.

End of Term 3

English 8 and 9

All projects for English 8 and 9 must be handed in by Friday, April 5 to be included on the term 3 report card.  Next week we start the poetry unit in both grades – my favourite!

Brendan McLeod, famous Canadian slam poet, will be performing Saturday night at 7:00 in the new Gibsons Public Library. The event is free. I hope you can bring your child.

Also, next Thursday, block B1 will hear Governer General Award Winning Author Susin Neilsen read in the Elphinstone library.

Socials 11

On Monday students wrote a big unit test and now we are zipping through the cold war, if you can imagine going from the creation of the United Nations to the Bosnian War in just a few days!  They should be reading their text book and reviewing their notes every night and have four paragraphs to write this week as well as a timeline, which we are mostly completing in class.