Science Week, and Eric Walters Visit

This has been an exciting week in Room 308!
We have been immersing ourselves in science activities all week. Today and tomorrow are the big Electricity and Conservation of Energy workshop days. All of the grade 5's in Rooms 308/310 got together, and all of the 6's teamed up for the whole day, and will do the same on Thursday. We continue with our investigations of Human Body Systems and Diversity of Living Things on Friday, and next week we will have activities to expand on what we have done this week.
Yesterday the 4/5/6 students at Churchill had a visit from Canadian author Eric Walters. Eric is a former school teacher who started writing as a way to get his students interested in Literature. He writes fiction about real life topics that are current, and interesting to students. Eric's presentation went heavily into the experiences he has had in the research for his books. He talked about his travels around the world that have been the inspiration for the stories he has written. It was an engaging, and entertaining presentation, and the students responded very well to it. The writers in the crowd definately were given some great advice for the future. He explained that beyond using their five senses to add detail to their writing, that they need to think about feelings when writing as well, in order to make thier work real for the reader. The main thing he left them with was that they should 'write about what they know' as it makes their writing honest.
As we look to the week ahead there are a number of special events on the horizon. Thursday we have Churchill's first talent show of the year, Friday we skate, next week we have daily holiday singing in the gym with the whole school, special activities with our writing buddies in Heather G's room, and, of course, our last day of 2010 on Friday.
The class has been talking about wanting to have a gift exchange next week. We talked about it, and agreed that those who are interested could bring in a gift, and hold a 'gift and take' activity on Friday. In this activity those who bring a gift, participate and get a chance to take a gift from either the pile, or from other students in the game. It is a fun game, and they class has enjoyed it for several years in a row now. The class agreed that gifts must not exceed 7 dollars, in order to make it fair, and affordable. If anyone has any questions feel free to ask me about it.
As you can see there is a lot going on. Just over one week left, but plenty happening.