Monday, January 25 - Thursday, January 28

Thursday
I was away on a field trip today. I left the IR test with Ms. Hanelt. That took up most of the class.


Wednesday

I was away today. I asked the Ms. Hanelt to have you working on the essay practices related to writing a thesis, and introduction and a body paragraph.

Tuesday

I handed back a lot of work today - particularly Socials work. The IR test will be on Thursday of this week. It will be open notes, but not open textbook. The form of the test will be short answer. We marked one of the study guides for Chapter 5 in class, and there was time given to complete the headings/questions/answers activity that we started last week related to pages 150-155.

Monday
No class due to exams and Math/Science projects.

Monday, January 18 - Friday, January 22

Friday

After silent reading, we spent some time going over what a thesis statement is and where it should appear in a basic essay (last sentence in the introduction). Everyone took the "Thesis Pledge" to ensure that on their essay they would not produce a deficient thesis. We will finish taking a look at the sample thesis statements and assessing their value next week. At the end of the class there was some more time to finish off the life-sized characters for Unwind.
Thursday

To begin today we headed down to the library to collect a new novel of the realistic fiction kind. We skipped the essay practice related to thesis statements to provide more time to work on the life-sized characters and the novel autographs.

Wednesday

After silent reading we did the Unwind final quiz and then marked some of it - the remaining questions are ones I will evaluate.

Tuesday
I collected the filled-in notes about the sections of Chapter 5 from the Crossroads textbook. Afterwards we did an SQ3R for the remaining sections of the chapter which involved looking at the headings on the 5 pages, coming up with a question related to each heading, reading each section and finding the answer to our question, or creating a new question which did have an answer to it in the text.

Monday
Once silent reading was over, we returned to the Crossroads textbook and went over the sections on factories and child labour, completing a set of notes by filling-in the blanks. The handout about these sections is due tomorrow. Towards the end of the class, we looked at a portion of another "Industrial Revelations" video for 7 minutes and continued adding to the ABC brainstorm about the IR. At the very end of the class, we looked at the Bitesized history web site to continue adding to the ABC sheet.

Monday, January 11 - Friday, January 15

Friday

At the beginning of the class, after silent reading, I went around and gave Essay practice #1 feedback to most of the class. I collected up the remaining practices and will return them with written feedback on Monday. The remainder of the class was dedicated to getting the life-sized characters almost finished.

Thursday

I handed out progress reports for Socials during silent reading. I have at least a couple more items still to add to the term grades. After silent reading, I reviewed the basic essay format and we started working on Essay practice #1. It is due tomorrow.

Wednesday

The class was shorter today due to PLCs. We did silent reading, the Unwind quiz up to page 254, marked it and then were pretty much out of time!
Tuesday

We started today off with a little competitive review of some details related to the IR. Congratulations to the winners  C & N   and I & M. For the last 20 minutes of the class, we viewed a video that explained Newcomen's water pump for extracting water from the British coal mines.

Monday

We watched the end of Oliver today to start the week off! Following that, we worked a bit with the Crossroads textbook. In pairs, I asked everyone to read the section on the economic effects of the IR, particularly as it related to the textile industry in Britain.

Monday, January 4 - Friday, January 8

Friday
We had a quiz on Unwind up to page 226 today. Afterwards, we watch almost all of the remainder of Oliver. I also collected the green sheet about the Industrial Revolution.
Thursday
We spent five extra minutes reading today because there is another Unwind quiz tomorrow. We need to finish the book asap as there is another class waiting to use them. After reading, we finished the BBC news articles and summaries with partners. From there we moved on to essay structure because I will be assigning an essay related to Unwind.
Wednesday
After silent reading we did the Unwind quiz (up to page 197). Following that, we did a word sort activity as a way of anticipating the subject of the news articles we were about to read. Summarizing sentences about the articles were then written including elements from the articles such as: people, places, events, objects, problems, outcomes.
Tuesday
Today we spent some time reading in pairs about the Agricultural Revolution that occurred in England at the same time as the Industrial Revolution. Each partner took turns reading a section aloud. After each paragraph, the listener made a connection to the text: MIP, asked a question, made a personal connection, said something. During this activity, you were to take notes using headings: Agricultural Revolution, new breeds, new crop technologies. At the end, pairs created an “on the line” type of quiz consisting of 6 questions which was then used to quiz another pair. 
Monday
During silent reading today, I set the target page for Unwind at page 196 for Wednesday. Don't forget that your Harvest Camp/Unwind Clinic poster was due before Winter break and should now be in your e-portfolio. I returned the short stories based on primary source documents - it was a nice marking assignment for me - I enjoyed seeing the progress you have made in your writing.
For the remainder of the class we went over some more details about the Industrial Revolution to refresh your memories using a "What's in, What's out" activity.