Another hot, beautiful weekend for us all in Ottawa. Hope your families are enjoying our delayed summer. Please do remind your children to bring water bottles to school as the building will continue to be very hot in the next few days.

This week in Language Arts, we will be continuing to write and will be doing some reading comprehension activities with an article on social media. You may want to ask your children what their personal screen survey results were for last week. We will be discussing their (and my) results and talking about balance and strategies to manage time and activities. As well, this week marks R7A’s first vocabulary assignment, assigned on Google Classroom on Monday and due on Friday in their vocabulary assignment duotangs. The vocabulary assignments focus on the origin and meaning of words and exercise students’ writing muscles. Please take a look at the assignment and also encourage/help your child to get a little done every day and not wait until the last minute. The assignment, a graphic organizer and an introduction primer we discussed in class are all on Google Classroom.

Independent reading, read-alouds, a podcast and reading buddies are also planned for this week. All students are to be reading an average of 30 minutes per day.

Please remember that we are collecting money for the Terry Fox Foundation in support of cancer research. The Terry Fox Run for VM will be on Thursday, October 5th.

I hope to meet many of you this coming Thursday, September 28th at the “Meet the Teacher” gathering from 4:30 to 6:30. I will be in our classroom, room 201, from 4:30 to 5:30 and then outside with the school community. Students must be accompanied by adults.

Friday, September 29th is “Every Child Matters” Day in Canada, a day to mark our national commitment to recognize our collective responsibilities for Indigenous children and to remember and reconcile our past when children were sent to residential schools. We will all be wearing orange on Friday and I will be doing a read-aloud about residential schools.

Take good care of yourselves, and keep cool!

Ms Swail

Week Three of grade 7 begins! I hope you and your family had a chance to get outside and enjoy the wonderful weather this weekend. The photo at the end of this message is the first fall-turning tree I saw on our lake. I had to almost lie down in the kayak to get the shot!

R7A students are slowly and surely getting used to the routines and responsibilities of the Intermediate Division. Most now have their locker locks and are getting from class to class with the materials they need. It is very important that our students carry and use their agendas. Please ask to see the agenda at the end of the day so we can all be working together to ensure that work is getting done and scheduled. I also encourage you to visit Google Classroom with your child where Language Arts and Math assignments and information are posted.

In Language Arts, we are working on two writing pieces – an introduction that is then summarized into a 140 character “tweet” and a three-paragraph piece on social media. This week, the students and I will be logging our “screen” time, outside of school,  to see how much time we actually do spend on social media, e-mail, Netflix, games etc.. Should be very interesting! All students are being tested for reading comprehension and we will be doing some other reading activities this week. We started with our kindergarten Reading Buddies last Friday and everyone enjoyed playing with blocks and getting to know their little buddies. We are continuing with the read-aloud, “The Code” by Mawi Asgedom, and we have allocated library and independent reading time.

Next week, R7A will start on vocabulary assignments, a bi-weekly exercise, that teaches them how to research and understand the origin and meaning of words and exercises their writing muscles. This will be assigned as homework. Also assigned as homework – thirty minutes of reading each evening.

Please remind your children to bring a water bottle to school to hydrate and refresh themselves. Thank you for ensuring that no nuts or nut products are being sent for snacks.

I look forward to meeting many of you at the VM Meet the Teacher gathering on Thursday, September 28th. Please check the Friday Weekly Update for details on this and the Terry Fox Run and Fundraiser.

Heather Swail