Since we were out at camp last Friday, I was unable to get a blog post prepared and published. It is going to mean that this one is longer than usual.
Camp was a HUGE success. The students bonded with each other, learned more about the teachers and administrators, did some art, science and PE activities and had a host of other things to keep their minds busy. The setting was serene in a deep valley with lush growth all around and a stream passing nearby. Today the students will bring home their camp newspaper with the articles they wrote this past week.
Today is Terry Fox run and being a Canadian it is especially important since even after many years, he is still a national hero. Just imagine running a marathon (26 miles) every day of your life for almost 4 months and this with a prosthetic leg. Although he never made it, I was on the University of Calgary committee to welcome Terry when he finally made it to Calgary. It would have been an even unlike any other. Today we honor his legacy to raise funds for the Cancer Society of China by doing 20 minutes of running here at school.
Our class elections for STUCO are over and Eric is our representative with Brandon the alternate. I want to congratulate these two and also thank everyone who ran for office. You did a great job with your speeches and I was impressed with the details you brought forward for the students. Eric and Brandon have already had their first meeting with many more to come.
Next week is the national holiday week and I hope everyone takes a well deserved break. Rest and rejuvenate is the theme of the week.
Last Monday we hosted Luca in our class. He is the son of one of the prospective candidates for Head of School. The class took to him very fast, and he became one of the class very quickly. While his dad was not successful, I know many of the students would have loved to work with Luca next year. We do wish him all the best in the future. I was quite proud of the class in their manners and helping attitude.
When we return we will continue with the writing of our biographical sketches. Most everyone has selected their historical figure and now it is time to research and write about them. Lessons in this area will include taking notes, identifying important information, preparing paragraphs and proper research/bibliographic procedure. This will come in handy in their future since many more research projects are ahead of them.
We will also continue with our Exploration projects. In these projects students choose from 5 projects and then prepare to present their explorer. It need not be an explorer from long ago as some people want to do underwater explorers, space explorers, scientific and medical explorers and other famous people/explorations. They have a total of 5 questions they must answer as part of their presentation and when it is all done, they will present this to the class who will do a critique for them to learn from. I have shown them examples and prepared a scaffold of learning for the students.
Our next math module us a continuation from the first one but now looks very heavily at the operations of decimal fractions and whole numbers. We will begin this on the Monday when students return to school.
I have been asked by several parents about Current events and want to make sure that everyone knows that on the night of this assignment, the homework is strictly optional. I want students to put a true effort into their Current Event so they are fully prepared to present this to the class next morning. We do four a week unless someone is absent and then their make-up will be with someone else.
After the break, here are the people doing Current Events;
Tuesday – Naoko
Wednesday – Michael
Thursday – Annabel
Friday – Robinson
Friday October 14 is the International Day here at ISB. A form went home this week and I would ask that it be returned as soon as possible please so I can have it ready for the parade component of the day. If anyone wants to stay after school for the rest of the event, I need to know who they will be with, where they will be picked up, and how they are getting home afterwards. I thank-you in advance for this. On this day I do hope students will wear things that represent the country they are from.
As always, if you have any questions or concerns please let me know and I will gladly set up a time to meet with you.
Harold Daw
