And now it is Christmas holidays!

Well I thought I would catch up a bit.  I can't believe four months have flown by!  We have had a lot of fun and a few adventures.
First I can't believe what skilled fundraisers Division One has been.  You have raised more than 1100 dollars this term!  Plus bringing in a great deal of food twice for the food bank and pennies for the Me to We Coins for Change project.  In two weeks you raised 600 dollars as part of the End Poverty Day Campaign.  Then you sold Paperblank Journals for three weeks and raised over 400 dollars for the Nepal Library Foundation and with hot chocolate and chai sales at the primary musical you raised almost 100 dollars in a day that was donated to the Food Bank to buy perishable food.  I think we have all been inspired by the novel I have been reading you by Joan Bauer, Almost Home, about a girl who loses her home, helping us understand a little what it is like to be homeless.  We have all fallen in love with Sugar who has taught us about gratitude and gumption.

We have also had lots of fun.  There were three sessions of skating with our grade one reading buddies, a book launch with Melanie Jackson at our school, and a day at Granville Island seeing The Wizard of Oz. We also had fun at the Writers' Festival in October there as well.  And have loved reading the Seven series of novels by the authors we saw there.

 You did a great job on your Remembrance Day projects.  And of course you learned lots of math and did lots of reading and writing.  You enjoyed researching Early Man and doing science experiments.  And of course learning more French and the occasional bit of Spanish!

And then there was Boys for Real and Welcome to My Life thanks to the volunteers from the YWCA. And then there was cross country, soccer, volleyball, and now basketball.  And you were busy being Hall Monitors and Peer Helpers keeping the halls safe and helping the little kids outside.  And of course we ended the term with a party and crazy games of Musical Chairs.  Sometimes we are so busy I forget to take pictures!

They wouldn't let us forget they were the first Trudeau Senior Boys to become city champions!

Here you are hanging out with the grade one buddies sharing Christmas presents!  Hohoho!

I can't believe it is December!

I have so many pictures not yet posted.  What a great term we have had!  I will catch up one day but not today!
Here you all are at Granville Island-Division One and Two after we saw The Wizard of Oz!

Jam Packed Weeks

It's been an exciting couple of weeks.  We had a great day at the Writers' Festival last Tuesday, even the rains stopped for us!

 And then you were busy raising money!  We now raised over $500 in our poverty project.  and we aren't finished yet!  Many of you were able to go to We Day last week and some of you will be going to the district Cross Country meet.  Peer Helper and Hall Monitor training took place yesterday.  And then most of you started Welcome to Your Life and Boys for Real yesterday and our Senior Boys are the city champions in soccer for the first time in the school's history-first time a senior team have been champions.  How exciting is that!  I am really sorry that I didn't have time to have a junior girls soccer team so you girls might have had a better chance but I know you had lots of fun at your games and you did well.  I promise to coach a girls' basketball team.

Our school is really special in that so many people give up extra time to be your coaches for cross country, soccer, volleyball etc. as well as sponsor Students' Council and Me to We clubs.  And there are many other activities such as Girl Guides, community link programs, and Sunset programs that you can attend right in our school.  Trudeau is a real community! 

Moodle is back in operation

I have begun posting assignments and forums on moodle.  The new link is at the side as well as here.

Poverty and Yeast and math and the Writers' Festival

In Social Studies we are learning about the age old problem of hunger in the world.  Unfortunately, even in a wealthy country we have poverty and hunger and even in our province.  To learn more please go to the Me to We blog link at the side.  We need to decide what we are going to do at Trudeau about poverty.

In Science we are going to be designing an experiment with yeast.  To learn more about yeast here are two sites.  Here is a video.  With a little more research you can find out more.  Here is some additional information on yeast.

I actually learned a good trick about lowest common multiples that I will show you today.  But to work on your math this site is excellent. 
And I am sure you are all excited about our field trip Tuesday, here is the event we are going to attend.  Here is more about the book series that is being launched and you can find out more about the authors who you will be seeing.

Field Study

Here are some helpful links
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How to identify a bug

http://bugguide.net/node/view/57

how to identify a tree

http://forestry.about.com/od/treeidentification/tp/tree_key_id_start.htm

Try leaf snap app on ipad

Week Two

We are all here and back at work!  Due to the current problems with our moodle site I will be using this site to post assignments so you may want to become a follower of this site.  In this life we all have to learn to be flexible!  Hopefully our new moodle site will work better than the last one!  Please find on links how to do a bibliography.  Also your assignment on The Day You Were Born is posted here as a page as well.  You should make sure you save your links for your bibliography on a word document as you go.  You can always e-mail yourself your links as well! 

Going back to school

I can not believe that it is already time to go back to school!  I hope you have had a great summer.  There has been a problem with Moodle so that I haven't been able to get on all summer. I certainly hope that they are able to restore the system soon.

I will have but together the lists that have all the good things your classmates wrote about you by Tuesday so those of you returning on Tuesday will get them then.  If you are not, since Moodle isn't working,  I can't easily send them to you as I don't have all your e-mail addresses.  You can drop by Trudeau and pick them up or e-mail me and I will send to you!  You can e-mail me at mkezar@vsb.bc.ca.

If you new grade seven students want to get a head start on school supplies the list is on a page here!   I went to Kidsbooks yesterday and got a couple of new books.  I am thinking of doing a unit to start the year on The Titanic.  What do you think?  I know some of you probably followed my trip to Spain and Ireland.  I accidentally put one journal entry on this website rather than the travel one!  The travel one if you didn't is on the list of links at the side.

I look forward to seeing half of you Tuesday.  Grade Sevens, I wish you a great time at high school.  I am sure you are both excited and nervous!  Take care!

Santiago to Sarria

Well today after a really good night's sleep we set off to find the market. lots of locals were doing their shopping.


Here is the famous Galician cheese below.


This bakery has the famous almond cakes.


And if you need a walking stick...


And if you need flowers...


This seems quite typical architecture.





Then we were driven to where we begin walking so that we saw where we will be walking-twisty roads and up and down hills but very pretty. In Sarrio we have a very nice hotel but we miss our cathedral view.

Location:Sarria,July 4,2012

My Travel Blog

I hope you are enjoying the first few days of holidays. If you would like to read about my trip to Spain I will be attempting to blog about it on my iPad at this site

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad


 

Posted with Blogsy

. You can also use the link at the side of this blog!

And here you all are!

My happy little class!

And then some people thought there should be a boys' picture but we are not sexist here!

Grade Six

You are special too!



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Graduation Day

I am experimenting with writing this blog on the iPad today! I will try to post more later. First I made you a card with a new app we have on the iPads that you can try out!







 And here are pictures of our graduates waiting to make their grand appearance!













Division One








Division Two
















I think they are a handsome group!  What do you think?

Carnival Sports Day

I think everyone had a great time Friday.  I promised Inder and Alfred I would post a picture of the dancing MC's of the Cupcake Walk. 

Everyone loves a bouncy castle no matter what age he or she is...

There were many fun activities but the dunk tank seemed one of the most popular! 

And even back in the classroom the fun seemed to continue...

The tug of war is always fun but we have lots of brains but apparently not quite enough brawn!!!










And despite wearing all my rain gear when the water balloons came out I still managed to get wet... Happy Sports Day!  And thanks to Ms. Forsythe for organizing it all!

Balloon science...

 While the seventh graders were working away in the library the sixth graders were doing science.  First they had to blow up balloons

Then they had to attach straws so that they could string their balloon along a fishline or twine in our case.

And then the fun could begin. 













And to see some of the live action here you go

Human Eyes Last Session

What a great week!  Storytelling and Human Eyes.  Here are a few pictures from our last two Human Eyes sessions.

 The beginning of lantern construction

 Working on the figures

 The artists

The finished lanterns!

Story telling festival

Those of you who came Saturday had a great time.  Here is the video link and here are a few pictures of the event.  The first is of course the performers!  I think you can see Simran, Hardeesh's little sister viewing the performance!

Our onions are growing well in the garden...

A few of the performers at the end of the day.  Note the brave boys who attended and Kamal joined them for the photo.  I think the rest of the Grade Seven girls went to 711 by then.

Mayra's dad is admiring your drawings and writing!

Grade Six girls do a bit of sliding. 













Maybe we can tell our story to some classes at Trudeau and we are hoping that Naomi will be able to have a final visit with us!!!  I know that participation in this project is a memory you will all treasure!

Your big moment...

On Saturday June 9th from 4:00 - 5:00, Ms. Kezar's gr. 6/7 class at Trudeau presents ELEMENTAL:fire.

Come listen to a story, see the onions growing in the Moberly Herb Garden (7646 Prince Albert Street) and enjoy a cup of tea. Celebrate the work and vision of these children who will tell a tale about food security!

ELEMENTAL:fire is part of the 19th Vancouver International Storytelling Festival, "what stories are made of" www.vancouverstorytelling.org

UBC

I am way behind blogging here.  Today just thought I would add a few pictures from our field trip to the Michael Smith labs at UBC.  What a great day what with learning about mimicry, learning how science fiction uses real science, creating your own creatures, isolating your own DNA, and writing Choose Your Own Adventure stories it was great.  And I know some of you loved the UBC bookstore! 

Learning how to take a DNA sample!

Waiting to see what DNA looks like!

Working on the Choose Your Own Adventure flash fiction...

Now who would think you would be writing in a lab?!  You can see the creative juices simmering!

  Looking at examples of mimicry!

Graduate student is checking out your writing.  You met lots of scientists yesterday-maybe one day you will be studying genetics at UBC!

Rajveer and Alfred hard at work on their story...

Then we got to hear and choose the adventures!!!













And our last sighting at UBC was that giant blue whale skeleton