September 8

WELCOME TO GRADE 7 & R7A: The week of September 9th – 13th, 2019

HELLO R7A FAMILIES –

Welcome to the VM R7A – Ms Swail weekly blog, and welcome to all of you to grade 7. Every Sunday or Monday you will be receiving notice of my weekly blog where I report on school administrative issues, what’s happening in the classroom, upcoming events and the fun and interesting stories of grade 7. Please subscribe to the blog and/or look for an e-mail from me at the beginning of the week.

Let me introduce myself. I am Heather Swail, homeroom teacher for R7A, teaching Language Arts, Social Studies, Visual Arts and Drama to the R7A students. I also teach Language Arts to two other Intermediate classes and provide resource support. I have been teaching at Vincent Massey since 2001 (gulp!) and love my job and the VM community. Teaching is my third and best career so far. Teaching grade 7 and 8 is challenging and exhilarating at the same time. Young adolescents have very exciting and challenging lives as they figure out who they are and who they want to be. They are growing physically and emotionally, and going through their second and last huge burst of brain development. They are sweet and young, funny and edgy and they keep life very interesting – for parents, guardians, teachers and themselves.

I work with a wonderful team of committed colleagues here at VM. Our immediate team for R7A this year comprises myself, Kim Shiau (resource), Lindsay Foote (LST), Meg Davies (student success support), David Marcus (Math, Phys. Ed., Health), Alex Smith (Science), Beth Prokaska (Music) and Caroline Lefort (French). Our teacher candidate this year is Patrick Catahan from the University of Ottawa. We are all supported and guided by our Principal, Kateri Deschenes and Vice-Principal, Kelly Haslam. Larry Gauthier is our school social worker.

Meetings: “Meet the VM Staff” event is on Thursday, September 26th from 4:00 – 6:00 p.m.. Come and meet the teachers and other staff and see where your R7A student is learning and spending lots of time. I will also be scheduling meetings in the next 2 weeks to meet families/students with I.E.P.s so we can review the 2018/19 document, and, most importantly, talk about best ways to learn and teach.

Forms and agendas; R7A students went home with many forms last week. Please ensure they are read, signed (if necessary) and returned as soon as possible. ALL students must have some kind of agenda to use for every class to record assignments and reminders. We gave out small copybooks to many of the students. Please ask your R7A student to show you the agenda. We will be working on organization and keeping track of work all year. NOW is a good time to start!

PIZZA! Vincent Massey has a pizza program which will be starting up on Thursday, September 26th. You can order and pay on-line or use paper forms. Pizza choices are: cheese; pepperoni; and gluten-free. Information, forms and access to the on-line system are in the link below:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LUf7pfeJCJjAHDBqqwGdiGIgEoe0GmYin4R_wJM7ZBs/edit?usp=sharing

Image result for dancing pizza

THIS WEEK:

In Language Arts, we will continue to: revise our introductory letters; get organized on Google docs; write a time capsule letter to ourselves for June 2020; start some guided reading; continue a teacher read-aloud of Of Beetles and Angels; and, set three personal goals for the first term. That should be more than enough!

In Visual Arts, we will be beginning a project that focuses on our thumbprints, our individual stories and creating an art piece. We have many aspiring artists in R7A and there will be many beautiful and creative art pieces in our class and lockers.

We will start Geography next week with mapping exercises and learning latitude and longitude.

In DPA (Daily Physical Activity), Ms Prokaska and I will be introducing a brand new activity that connects walking stairs (great exercise) and climbing mountains. R7A and EF7B students will be ascending and descending the VM stairwells and their steps will all be counted toward climbing 6 mountains located in North America and Europe. Ms P and I will be showing some photos from our recent climb, the Tour du Mont Blanc, a 170 km trek around the Mont Blanc massif through 3 countries – France, Italy and Switzerland. Ms P and I are part of a group called Climb for Kids which involves talking on challenging, physical climbs and raising money for the Christie Lake Kids Foundation. In 2018, we climbed the Rainbow Mountains in Peru and this year did the Tour du Mont Blanc. These treks keep us fit and also remind us of the importance of persevering through difficulty, something many of our students know and experience.