Can't judge a book by its cover, they say...

... but here are our covers!

Here are the books we're reading independently to end this term:

PHASR poetry

We've taken a different perspective on writing poetry. Using this website, we've used pictures and put them to our words. We feel that it's interesting to see how the poem/words make you feel!! Please check out our links below!

-- Mikaila, Beth & Laura

• Ian's War Poem
• Laura's Think About it Poem
• Sean's Look Around
• Today by Sirena
• Zac's Life
• Was it all a dream? by Lindsey
• Our Changing Planet by Teagan
• Once is Enough by Mikaila
• Life by Hector

ENJOY!

In my room poems

Students were asked to write a poem about their rooms. What better place to write about than their little havens! (activity adapted from Nancie Atwell's book "Naming the World" )

 In My Room      

In my room,

Under my bed,

There lives a monster

Who's name is Ed.

He comes out at night,

And steals my things,

But slips back under the bed,                        

before my alarm rings.                                             

Last night I caught him                         

Right in the act!

And I made him promise

To put all my things back!

My room was so clean,

But now it's all messed!

It's filled to the roof,

My Mom was not impressed!

Ed left my room,

And moved to another,

He said he was leaving,

He couldn't stand the clutter!

He went to a cleaner room,

One with more space.

He packed up his things,

And took my suitcase!

Now in my room,

Under my bed,

There is no monster

Who's name was Ed.

- Lindsey

================================================

My room dances with colors of lemon yellow, a soft light pink, a grass green and, a nice apple green

Pictures, trophies and medals float like stars in the night

And when I lay down, it's like falling in a meadow of clouds

My room is smooth and relaxing and smells like Ralf Lauren and other delightful smells

My room makes me, me , I could never think of changing the lovely colors , textures, scent, and stuff around it

What makes my room me is my sister because we share it!

-- Chynna

POETRY!

A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language.



W. H. Auden

We've begun a unit on poetry, and I've assured my students that I am determined to find their inner poets.
For the next couple of weeks, we'll be posting our best... our best poems, our thoughts, the work we are proud of!

Stay tunes for works from the poets of grade 7!

We're cheering for

See the following videos which tell of the athletes whom our students are cheering for!
(Each student was required to research a Canadian Olympic athlete, write a short biography about this person & record it for our Olympic unit.)









 

 

Katherine MacLeod's Journey

        Katherine Macleod is an astonishing runner, who ran with the torch. She was generous enough to take the time to explain to us the amazing experince she had with the torch.
        She was one out of a million to win the Coca-Cola contest to participate in the Olympic Torch Relay,In order to be officially picked she had to write a 500 word essay. After 8-10 months of waiting she got a call that she got to run 300 metres  in Scotchtown, Cape Breton.
        She was a given a suit, mittens, and a hat. She discovered the diference between her mittens and the Olympic mittens you would buy in stores is the white maple leaf has grips on hers so she can hold the torch better.
        The day of the run the local runners met in Glace Bay. They got on a colourful Olympic bus and shared emotional stories on how they were picked.
         When they arrived they were each given the torch to run with and after words if they wanted to buy their torch they could for $300.
          During her time to run she was told to walk because it was so short and you wanted to remember evry minute. Though when they told her to go she took off like the wind.
           She had an emotional but great time and it was 1 out of a million experince.

A graduate of our school was an Olympic Torch Bearer!

... and she visited our classroom to tell us her story!
We'll fill you in on her story in the next few days.
Here we are with her and her Olympic torch:

Thank you for coming, Katherine! You're one in a million

Our Olympic Run!

We're not really running for the Olympics, but we are taking a run at setting up a whole newscentre about the Olympics in our classroom!

This week we're setting up our classroom as a newscentre in preparation  for the upcoming 2010 Olympics in Vancouver! Each day students come into the English classroom and are assigned a role for that day:

By working collaboratively,  students will be immersed in the various aspects of the Olympics games!
Topics we've looked at this week to get us in the groove are:

• How an Olympic host city is chosen
• What is takes to be an Olympian
• the boycott of the 1980 Olympics
• an overview of the 2010 Olympics

Here, today's editors work on editing some of their classmates' work.

The studio/floor managers work at creating and fine-tuning our Olympic wall display.






(The poster template can be downloaded from Olympic School)

Stay tuned for more updates about our run at the Olympics!

Welcome/Failte

It's the start of a new decade, and the start of a new project for Dawn's classes at Rankin.

As part of the learning in my classroom, students are going to be posting projects, ideas, and news on this site for the world to see.

We hope you enjoy a glimpse into the kinds of things we're exploring in our little nook of the world!

Please be sure to comment on our site, as feedback is what makes most things worthwhile... and allows us to learn from what we are doing!

Questions and/or additional comments can be sent directly to the teacher, Dawn Gillis, at:
macdond36 (at) staff.ednet.ns.ca