Earth Buddies
Every Friday afternoon my Gr. 5 class still has "Reading Buddy" time with their Gr. 1 partners. Sometimes the Gr. 1 teacher and I like to mix things up a bit, so on some Fridays the classes have been "Art Buddies" (making Easter crafts) and "Drama Buddies" (helping the Gr. 1's prepare their play of 'The Little Red Hen'). Today, in recognition of the environmental messages in play this week, our classes were "Earth Buddies".
Ms. Donovan said that her class had been studying ways to take care of the Earth and especially our own neighbourhood, so she wanted to plan an "environmental walk", a chance to walk around the area and pick up any litter we see to improve our community. So, today we had all the enthusiastic Gr. 1's wearing plastic gloves and picking up wrappers off the school ground and a nearby park, with their Gr. 5 buddies running after them holding garbage bags for the trash to go in. I was amused to see my students get into the spirit of it all, encouraging their buddies to new areas to tidy or challenging each other with how much they could fill their bags. It was a lovely sunshiny spring day and they just enjoyed being outside and within 20 minutes we probably collectively filled ten bags of garbage.
A good and worthy way to end Earth Week.
Still massively busy here and getting exhausted as a result. I'm both looking forward to and dreading my teacher appraisal next week. It will be good to get it over with, for better or worse, but I still don't feel ready, especially with my paperwork. Sigh, it often seems the more planning and preparing you do the more you can see that you feel should be done. Still, I have the Science "simple machine" unit and the Guided Reading unit in place that she will be observing next week, so that's good. Taking more paperwork home to do this weekend...
I ran the Junior Oral Communication Competition in the gym yesterday and that went well. We had a gold, silver and bronze finalist and I was happy to see every grade represented with the bronze going to a Gr. 5 speaker, the silver going to a Gr. 4 speaker and the gold going to a Gr. 6 speaker. The winning speech was on "The State of The World Today" and the winner moves on to the Regional Speech Finals next week.
No doubt this weekend I'll be torn between last minute desperation appraisal prep and wanting to be out in the sun. I can't wait until -next- weekend when my life will no longer be on-hold and I can go hiking or running, maybe go to a movie or out with friends, read for fun again on the "50 Book Challenge" or play "The Sims". Whee, it can't come too soon.
Ms. Donovan said that her class had been studying ways to take care of the Earth and especially our own neighbourhood, so she wanted to plan an "environmental walk", a chance to walk around the area and pick up any litter we see to improve our community. So, today we had all the enthusiastic Gr. 1's wearing plastic gloves and picking up wrappers off the school ground and a nearby park, with their Gr. 5 buddies running after them holding garbage bags for the trash to go in. I was amused to see my students get into the spirit of it all, encouraging their buddies to new areas to tidy or challenging each other with how much they could fill their bags. It was a lovely sunshiny spring day and they just enjoyed being outside and within 20 minutes we probably collectively filled ten bags of garbage.
A good and worthy way to end Earth Week.
Still massively busy here and getting exhausted as a result. I'm both looking forward to and dreading my teacher appraisal next week. It will be good to get it over with, for better or worse, but I still don't feel ready, especially with my paperwork. Sigh, it often seems the more planning and preparing you do the more you can see that you feel should be done. Still, I have the Science "simple machine" unit and the Guided Reading unit in place that she will be observing next week, so that's good. Taking more paperwork home to do this weekend...
I ran the Junior Oral Communication Competition in the gym yesterday and that went well. We had a gold, silver and bronze finalist and I was happy to see every grade represented with the bronze going to a Gr. 5 speaker, the silver going to a Gr. 4 speaker and the gold going to a Gr. 6 speaker. The winning speech was on "The State of The World Today" and the winner moves on to the Regional Speech Finals next week.
No doubt this weekend I'll be torn between last minute desperation appraisal prep and wanting to be out in the sun. I can't wait until -next- weekend when my life will no longer be on-hold and I can go hiking or running, maybe go to a movie or out with friends, read for fun again on the "50 Book Challenge" or play "The Sims". Whee, it can't come too soon.