TOTEM (Cirque de Soleil)

The first Saturday of the holidays was one that will go down in the book of awesome things we've done. The day started off pretty lazy with some grocery shopping, errands, and chores. That afternoon, I did some marking while Mark worked some on his latest paper both of us trying to distract ourselves until it was time to get ready for our first Cirque de Soleil performance.

This is something that I've really wanted to see for a long time and although they have come to Saint John, we never took advantage of the opportunity. A few weeks ago, we decided that since the performance was within walking distance from our house, we should just do it. We went online and booked our tickets sitting in the second section back from the stage.

Once we arrived to the Big Top, the first thing we both noticed was the Canadian and Quebec flags flying high and proud. Such a little piece of home, but it made us both smile.

After being ushered into the area with all the merchandise, and buying our magnet we entered the big top. From the moment we sat down, the show had already started as many of the comic relief performers were out and about greeting and interacting with the audience. One of our favorite characters was a clown that really took being a clown to heart. He was goofy, silly and adorable. He was eating popcorn (from patrons buckets), ushering people to the wrong seats, and running around trying to get the kids involved in pranks.

Once the show started we were both mesmerized. The talent, strength and entertainment value were all immensely high. The basic story line of Totem was the evolution of man. It went from little jumping and acrobatic frogs that were in such amazing glitter suits to moneys and apes, neanderthals, cave men, first nations, men of the 80's with music and boomboxes, life guards of the 90's and eventually the business man of today complete with ringing cell phone. There was also a scientist (Darwin) in many of the scenes taking notes and observations and conducting experiments with glowing lights and many slight of hand tricks.

The acrobatics was amazing. There were several done on rings, some on beams, there were acrobats flying through the air as well as using many stage props to fly around the set. One of my favorites was a love story that was done on a bar hanging from the air. The strength of the acrobats was amazing and their love story choreography and music was enchanting. It also helped that their suits were a beautiful soft yellow and covered in glitter. There were china women on unicycles throwing bowls onto each others heads, There were also strong men, another duet done on roller blades and so many other acts. In addition to all of these scenes there was also comic relief done by a duet - a clown and a francophone of  Italian decent. They were both silly, exaggerated and so very funny.

If the show heads to north america after it is finished here in New Zealand and Australia, we highly recommend that you see it.

Another Ten Week Term almost Finished

I can't believe that next week will be the END of TERM THREE!?!?! Where has the time gone and how did it manage to slip away so very fast?

As we look back at what we have done the last term weeks, I can honestly say that we pretty much just focused on the day to day grind but do have some exciting stuff planned for the holidays just around the corner.

At school, it is always busy, but we've had a very fun term working on statistics and probability. I think the kids really enjoyed creating and interpreting the graphs and they are really mini statisticians in their own right now. We've done lots of cutting and pasting too into our notebooks with pretty coloured papers for notes and the kids have totally fallen in love with being able to find their notes quickly since the coloured papers are easy to find in the sea of looseleaf.

This is  sample of some notes we did. I printed this one on white paper so we could use colour with a purpose.

I've also introduced "colour with purpose" this term with my kiddlets. I found that when we started to do handout notes a lot of the kids wanted to highlight EVERYTHING. Part of this is the whole "I'm new to highlighters" and the fact that "the highlighters are so pretty" and part of it was their inability to determine what is the most important parts in a set of notes.

They are getting better at colour with purpose and I know now that my kids are actually READING and THINKING about the notes. I usually give them a sheet and will tell them there are 4 important points (or however many points I need them to find), so they need to read the notes, think about them and decide which are the most important points and highlight them. We then go over them with the class. It's a bit more money on my part - providing coloured paper and highlighters - but I think that the cost is totally worth it as the kids are conversing about math in a much better way, with proper vocabulary AND they are referencing their notes first instead of asking me every time they get stuck on something which frees me up more to work with kids one-on-one.

We also had parent-teacher interviews this term and it was lovely to  meet so many parents. I was one of the lucky teachers as I was booked up full on both nights and had a handful of parents who just stopped by to see if I could squeeze them in between other parents. I redid the Hall of Fame for parent-teacher interviews and dusted off my decorating skills to put up a few posters that I've had laminated for a while but just have not put up.

This is the front of my room with a few posters moved around to make room for the algebra strategy posters in the middle of the wall. Here's hoping by the end of the term the kiddies can use all 8 of these strategies!

Just one of my favorite posters :-) It has owls, acronyms and MATH! 

The updated hall of fame - all in stars - these are my top students. To get your name on the hall of fame you need to get a Merit or Excellence on your test (sort of like a B+ - A+ range we are used to back home). The center posters are a "chance your words, change your mind" idea I borrowed from a blog I love (@math=love). 

This is my micro desk - the area that has the lesson plans, the photocopies and the day to day things. I bought this chair this term on a steal of a deal to replace my old, falling apart one. 

The day to day lesson notes, reminders and to-do lists 

This is my BEAUTIFUL table that was delivered just this week. It is going to be awesome and the kids already love it. It makes working with small groups so much easier as I can pull kids from all areas of the classroom without having to group desks in awkward ways....and each student still has their own desk for their own use once we are finished and I invite another group over for small group math. 

I decorated my filing cabinet and got rave reviews from the kiddies - even the boys- who thought it looked much better than the graffiti that was there. I inherited this from another teacher. I am so grateful to have it as it houses all my worksheets, tests, answer keys and other important papers on students (think IEPs, and such stuff). Yes, it locks. The buckets on the filing cabinet are assigned to each class for assignment collection. 

This term is also starting to heat up again (oh no!) and I've already had to pull the fan out of storage. You can just see it behind the chair on the desk. 

This is my little family of owls. There are three of them on the branch and my students have named them. Each class has different names for the family.

In the last week, the Year 10's wrote their Year 10 Term Exams, and the Year 9's finished up their statistics unit with a poster project and topic test. I've also graded all the Year 10 papers for those Year 10 students who wrote the Year 11 assessment. I was pleased with the results!  At the school I work at, each term Year 10 students are offered a chance to write some credits at Year 11. Each test in Year 11, 12 and 13 is worth between 2 and 4 credits and they need to get a variety of numeracy and literacy credits to graduate. If you pass the test, you get the credits. I've already got a handful of students who are just about finished their numeracy credits for Year 11, and they haven't even technically finished Year 10. Such an exciting opportunity for the ones taking full advantage of the program.

This term I've also attended a best practice math conference, my second math conference in NZ. The conference was great and it was a pleasure to network with so many teachers in the secondary schools. It was a blast to meet and talk about math, math curriculum development and interpretation. I left with so many ideas and so many things I want to implement next term, and some great ideas for next year as I've already covered the topics.

I've also spent some time getting ready for Term 4: ALGEBRA! I am so excited for this next term, as it is my favorite section to teach. We are going to play Algebra Survivor (adapted from coolmath) and the kiddies in my class are going to compete in algebra challenges.

We start our first challenges tomorrow with the designing of the team flag and a CSI/Clue inspired review of Order of Operations that will have teams competing to figure out "whodunnit" the fastest.

Milestones

Well, it has been a very busy last couple of weeks, with lots of writing, frantic processing of samples, and several wonderful excursions. Just last week though, there have been some very important milestones. Rob and Joanne celebrated a wedding anniversary, I managed to get out for the 6 month surveys of the mussel beds, and I passed 100 dives and over 72 hours (3 whole days) underwater. A very special birthday was also passed, to my Grandmother (Mary Wilcox). I coincidentally found a particular snack which Mary-Ellen and I enjoyed on your behalf.

As mentioned there were some exciting adventures last week and I will be posting about them soon. Mary-Ellen also has a vacation coming up so we will also be venturing out then as well, so stay tuned!

Through the looking glasses

Hello again everyone. It has been a busy few weeks, gearing up for a presentation in Nelson, another spat rope swapping, and finally processing the first set of spat ropes. It was a bit more of an undertaking than one would expect for me to get a space and all the equipment I needed, but I got there, and had a blast going through the samples I had sieved.

To recap/explain, I set out these collectors with a piece of hairy rope in the cove where I dumped the 7 tonnes of mussels. I wanted to see if there were baby mussels settling out of the water column in the area, and hope to observe any patterns in this settlement over the next year. So every month, I venture out with my volunteers and divers collect the ropes, replace them, and then bring the dirty ropes back to me for analysis. I clean the ropes, sieve the contents down to 0.2 millimeters and then go through them with a fine toothed comb and count the number of baby mussels. Well this has been a smashing good start, and I am happy to say that there are indeed mussels. With their brown zig-zag patterns just starting to develop, something that will disappear as they grow old and take on a brown colour with a green band around the lip of the shell.

One wonderful feature of the dissecting scope I have is that I can either view them with light from above or below, as in the respective positions of the two photos. But what else is interesting are the various other organisms within the samples. I get a glimpse into a microscopic world that few get to see. A whole world of miniature organisms, and some who will never attain sizes much greater than that which I see through the looking glass of my microscope. There are many other bivalves within my samples, taking on many different shapes, some more close to my mussels, much to my dismay, and others are different yet very familiar, like the numerous baby scallops.

Brittle stars like the one just above and to the left of the leftmost scallop, are a rare but interesting find among the fibres of my hairy ropes. Much of the samples however are seemingly polluted with numerous crustaceans. From shrimp to amphipods, and the oh so misleading ostracods that look like bivalves except for the feet and antennae sticking out of the two halves of carapace (on the left hand side of the top most picture below). All kinds of different orientations of the same jointed body forms, it is truly amazing the diversity that exists, especially when one looks closely.

But sometime luckily, most of these crustaceans float, where as the mussels sink, making processing not so bad despite the high abundance of these critters. The problem comes when you look very closely, at the samples that are less than 0.5 mm but greater than 0.2 mm. These samples are heavily polluted with polychaete worm tubes, other small bivalves, and diatom plankton. But this is where the most obnoxious thing in all my samples can be found; Sand! Grains of sand bury the mussels, creating a scavenger hunt for me, picking at them with tweezers to find the buried treasures. As if lifting boulders that threaten to squash these pint-sized mussels, I sift through to find my little mussel babies.

It may not be all fun and games, but it certainly is an interesting world, our world, just smaller. I also am lucky to get to see some very interesting crabs, my other interest. There are numerous crab species, including some that would have just settled and still have their larval tails before the metamorphose to their adult form. Spindly legs and unusual shaped bodies that eventually become the robust and hardy creatures that have so successfully survived in almost every habitat, including land (Not that I found any of those species specifically).

I will continue to take pictures of unusual things I find in the miniature world and periodically post them. Until then, I will be off to a conference in Nelson to give a presentation on my work with mussel beds thus far.

Term Two Holidays

This term the holidays were quite. Mark and I started the holidays by celebrating his birthday in Matakana and Leigh. We then came home to a quite few weeks.

Mark was out on the boats twice, and did some diving for work. He spent some time working on his projects and writing. I spent most of time time knitting for the babies in my life who are making their grand entrance this fall, reading and generally doing things that make me feel content, like napping, drinking warm tasty tea and standing in the sunshine.

A hooded baby blanket for my newest nephew 

An itty-bity baby hat 

The start of the next blanket

Mark and I took advantage of the slow pace of life by cooking some adventurous meals that require a bit more time than either of us have to commit to during the school terms, taking walks up into the village to visit the butchers, the fish mongers and the tea shop I have discovered, and watching a few movies at home.

We also took advantage of the time off to visit with friends, dine out at one of our favorite restaurants (and Indian place up the street), check out a new restaurant that just opened in the village for a late breakfast, skype lots of friends from home, and hit up the library for some new books.

The less glamorous side of the holiday was filled with a big clean of the apartment, catching up on laundry, renting a steam cleaner for the carpet, finally hanging some photos on the walls,  and all of the household things that can sometimes get neglected in the busy term.

Mark is devouring another book

Mark has hung up the blank canvases so we know where to put them and he paints as he finds inspiration. There are a few painted already around the photos on the right hand side and one with the two photos on the left hand side. We have photo frames for the blank places, but we have to go and print out some NZ photos.

I think we can both say we feel refreshed and ready to tackle the next 10 weeks. If it is anything like term 2, it is going to fly by and we will be on vacation again before we know it. We are still debating on what we want to do for the Term 3 holidays. We've been throwing around going more North than we usually do as a lot of the things we have done are to the South of Auckland, but we shall see where we end up come October.

Mark's Birthday

On Saturday, July 5th, Mark's Birthday,  we went up to Matakana  and spent some time strolling through the farmers market.It was windy and chilly, but it was so lovely to see so many artisan stands and home-grown foods both fresh and canned. There were little bakeries selling sweets, a few cheese carts, lots of fruit and vegetable stands and some craft sections. I was a little sad that there were no farmers selling wool/homespun yarn as sometimes, from the research I have done, you can find wool artisans at the markets.  

After the market, we went to a cute little bar/restaurant place to have lunch called the Rusty Pelican. It is known for its wood fired pizza, so naturally, Mark and I ordered appetizers not related at all to pizza (think potato skins). 

Once finished lunch we perused some of the shops along the area, waiting for our movie to start. We spent the most time in the cutest little bookstore with fluffy over-size reading furniture and adorable coffee table books including one called "Stick Man's Really Bad Day". We flipped through the book, laughing at some of the signs, and recognizing others from our trips around New Zealand and North America. 

The movie theater, which Mark had blogged about before, was the most stunning place I have been. It was comparable to the Imperial Theater at home with massive fluffy seats that you can tuck your legs up and still have room, the fanciest wallpapered walls, a beautiful stunning chandelier, and a mini table by each chair rather than a cup-holder. The refreshment stand served wine, ice cream and other fancy movie snacks. No popcorn for this fancy theater. Mark and I both enjoyed the movie, How to Train your Dragon 2, and I fell in love with the soundtrack. 

We were welcomed with warm German arms at our friends place in Leigh for the evening to a Chilean styled feast for supper, too many hands of card to count, a snack of Maple Brie and Crackers (Mark and I take this dish everywhere as Maple is not that big in NZ and so many people are pleasantly surprised at the yummieness) and some fun conversation. The next morning we had a very-laid back stunning spread for brunch and then Mark and his friend played some tactical board games before we left mid afternoon. It was a lazy Sunday for all 4 of us, but it was a lovely day spent with friends. 

Mark and I did a cake later on in the week as he was really wanting to have an ice-cream styled cake. Unfortunately, we were unable to bring it to Matakana/Leigh as it would have melted on the drive up. 

A Visit from Aus

We were very lucky another Canadian accent (and a few Irish ones) around for a bit over the holiday term.

Martha, who graduated high school with us, has been living and working in Australia for the better part of a year. She and her two roommates, Laura and Emma, have taken off on a dream vacation that includes a few weeks here in New Zealand and then a few weeks traveling around Australia seeing all the sights.

They arrived in Auckland, picked up their camper van and headed this way. We were lucky enough to host the three girls for the evening and spent our time discussing all the things they want to do in New Zealand while they are here comparing it to what Mark and I have done, and what we would like to do in the coming time we are here. High on their list was Hobbiton, the glow worm caves, a Maori cultural experience and some of the geoformations unique to the area.

The next morning, after breakfast they were off to start their adventure. I know that Mark and I can't wait to hear what they get up to and add to our list of things we want to see and do in this most beautiful country.