Support Systems

If there’s anything I learned this week, it’s that the people in my life at home and at school provide amazing support for me and for each other. We started the week off with some very sad news. A teacher at our school passed away on the weekend after battling cancer. We gathered in the staff room on Monday morning as our principal talked us through it, and as another teacher reminisced about the last moments she had spent with Lianne. It seems that these days, everyone knows someone who has been affected by cancer in some way. I lost my dad to cancer two years ago, and hearing the stories of Lianne’s last days were all too familiar to what my family experienced when my dad was sick. Many of us broke down, myself included, and cried for Lianne and her young family. Our principal made sure that she had a few supply teachers to go into our classrooms and support as needed. It allowed me to have a good cry in the staffroom while my class was safe with another teacher. My heart goes out to Lianne’s family, and she will be greatly missed by her Fairwood family.

I pulled myself together and went back to the classroom, putting on a brave face for my kiddies. We went on with the fun day I had promised them and read The Fox and the Falling Leaves for their second last retell. They used my descriptive feedback from the last Mr. Magee story to help them improve for this retell.

After recess, my sister, Amy came in to help me with a fun project. I brought in a big, orange pumpkin and the kids estimated how many seeds were in the pumpkin. They guessed as low as 67 and as high as 1000. As we pulled out the seeds, we grouped them in groups of ten because counting by tens is way more efficient than counting by ones (they can now say that all on their own, and actually know what it means). Amy helped out by keeping some of my kids focused, assisting them with washing their hands, and taking pictures of us doing our activity. The kids just loved her! They also loved that she yelled out my name, addressing me as Molly. Now they know my first name. There are no mysteries left in the world, are there? Speaking of mysteries, the kids solved the pumpkin seed mystery and counted 350 seeds!

Our shared reading for the week was a poem I found called Pumpkin Possibilities. We used this poem to work on comprehension and letter blends like th, sh, and ch.

I had to stop with the th practice because when they were sitting close to me, they kept spitting on me. Needless to say, I was sick on Thursday with a cold. I was up all night unable to breathe, so I requested a supply teacher through the system at 4:00am. And no one took the job. Can you believe that? Thankfully, the staff at school is so supportive and different teachers took turns teaching my class until a supply FINALLY accepted the job. I returned today sounding a little congested and left sounding like I have laryngitis. You don’t always realize how much talking you do throughout the day until you do it when you’re sick.

Let me rewind to Wednesday now. No. Back to Monday when I took the pumpkin seeds home, baked them, soaked them in food colouring over night, and let them dry again all day. By Wednesday, I had rainbow coloured pumpkin seeds and we did some awesome sorting and patterning activities with them. It was a great way for me to assess their abilities to sort by one attribute and to make an ABB pattern.

To end off the week, I brought in four little white pumpkins and repeated our Monday pumpkin activity, but this time it was student-led. They used what they knew about the big pumpkin having 350 seeds to make a reasonable estimate about the little pumpkin. Most figured that since it was smaller, it would have fewer seeds. Then one little guy said, “Unless the seeds are smaller too”. He’s a thinker!

We reviewed texture and value in art class and did some more rip art as we made haunted houses. They were all over it.

Here are a few more pictures I took this week

Last week I went through the Scholastic book order and bought a few holiday packs. I had no idea each pack included so many books. When I got home my Amazon order had arrived in the mail. All in all, I got 39 new books in one day. Thirty nine. Probably the happiest day of my life. 

It’s report card time, and those progress reports are due in exactly one week. You know what I’ll be doing this weekend…

Oh, and I’ll be painting our class pumpkin for the pumpkin contest. More on that next week :)