Eventually

Let's see how long this lasts! I have been meaning to write a daily blog now for the past 10 years. A daily what we did and to what degree it worked or whether I need to scrap an activity or two.

Today was a quiet and laid back one as all the students are working towards tomorrow's midterms. My subjects don't have midterms at the moment so we were just finishing our project. Project description: Write an appreciation letter; for real to someone after reading this article. ARTICLE HERE. Yes this was a success, as well as challenging my students' English, finding non' cheesy' ways to say things, it fitted in well with my theme for this year which is connectivity. We are focusing on re-socializing, on celebrating being together and the learning, the academic part is a byproduct of this. The boys struggled the most with this project but all in all it was very successful. Here is a link to student feedback. PADLET

In art I have scrapped the just pick an object beginning with x and draw it. It was hopeful I suppose that grade 7 and 8 would not abuse this freedom. However after a few too many mouse mats and 5 minute scribbles, and Miss-I'm-done s I have decided to go with origami again. It provides a fast and relatively simple 30minute lesson where there is a UNIFIED expected outcome. Giving students too much freedom of choice is not always a good idea. We will keep the alphabetical theme but drop the do what you want and enjoy the experience bit. I have regained control of my class. From next week all students  will be much more productive. Picture Galleries here ART 7 ART8

Note: Last year when we were online this approach worked really well. The difference was that we only had about 30 minutes or so. We spun 2 wheels, one for the medium and one for the room the object could be found in one term and the colour of the object the next term. The pictures turned out excellent. Very spontaneous and interesting. These were uploaded on Miro. I am using PADLET this year as we are face to face and padlet is easier to access with a mobile phone. 

For the wheel I used this website: WHEEL OF NAMES

Footnote: Spent my freetime in class making mini origami envelopes with inspirational quotes on the inside and handed them out to random students...a fun thing to do and was received well.