Mid November News!

Here we are again with another 2 for 1 blog post. Last week my work-life balance was upset by
a hockey tournament in Burlington. I missed my early Saturday morning writing session to cheer
on Malcolm and his teammates in a freezing cold arena. #hockeymom

Last week both classes participated in what I thought was going to be a global twitter chat but
turned out to just be us and French immersion kids from the Ottawa Carlton board. I’m putting
my feelers out for a better opportunity to collaborate with other students in the future. Each
group shared their ideas for what their vision for schools of the future will be like. To see more
check out #NPDLfutureschools on Twitter.

In the land of non-fiction, we tackled the topic of teen vaping. This is a very timely article as the
kids all agreed that this was a problem and that vaping is something that students of MDHS
definitely do. We had some great discussions in both classes where students shared their
thoughts and opinions about why they think that this dangerous trend is on the rise. They also
worked in small groups and took on the role of “Premier of Ontario” to develop regulations for
the e-cigarette industry. 

We have launched the next writing assignment in our narrative unit. We took the time to review
the essential elements of stories. We did a deep dive into how dialogue can enhance their stories
and grammar mechanics behind the use of quotation marks. Students should have completed the
“Understanding Dialogue” lessons assigned on noredink.com by the end of this week.

The next writing assignment has been posted in Showbie and we had a chance to co-create the
rubric that we will be using to assess this work. Students were reminded that the rubrics are
always given at the beginning of assessed tasks so that they know how they can achieve their
absolute best. Students need to make sure that they are submitting ALL stages of the writing
process. We also talked about the importance of prewriting and the difference between
brainstorming and planning.

Narrative Scene Assignment from Showbie: 

You know that stories are built on scenes that contain sensory details of setting, characters, and
action. All of this detail is essential to help the reader experience the moment.

Your mission is to craft ONE scene. Show a moment in time (scene) through the use of sensory
details (see, taste, hear, feel, smell) to help readers imagine and live inside the experiences of
those settings.

• Balance show and tell to establish the pace of the scene and to show readers what matters.

• Use dialogue to reveal characters both in what is said and through the words of other characters

• Use word choice to create a believable, consistent voice for the narrator of the scene.

We had a ton of kids away on Friday making it hard to teach a new lesson so I changed
up my original plans and we took advantage of all the different language games I’ve got.
We played Scrabble, Upwords, Bananagrams, Boggle, Scategories, and Pictionary. We
also accessed some great digital games like Camelion, Wordscapes, and Wordstacks.
I have o admit, it was a nice way to end the week!

Language Game Day!