Friday and the Red Flag Fleet

I lost myself in thinking ‘bout
That Red Flag Pirate fleet,
The captives taken to their ship
And trials they might meet.

I know ‘bout probability
Their chances di’n’t look great
Lingsi seemed sure to farkle* once
That sailor dropped that crate.

She risked it all; she summoned up
What courage she could find.
Surprised that dreaded pirate queen
With powers of her mind.

What lesson do you take from her?
That queen knew to take heed.
There’s nothing quite so valuable
As knowing how to read!

*Farkle is a game of chance played with dice in which to Farkle means getting a bad roll causing the player to lose points and lose their turn.

I look forward to seeing eveyone’s reaction to the story, your writing, your videos and all your efforts from this week (which is quickly passing by!).

Enjoy the poem in the video below (you should recognise the meter!), and spend some time on some poetry you might include in a card on Sunday.

Are April showers on the way?

Update for Friday, April 24th

Hubble Space Telescope

It is the 30th birthday for the Hubble Space Telescope (well, anniversary of its launch into space – it’s a telescope, not a living thing). If you could have that powerful telescope, with its ability to capture amazing images of almost unimaginably distant objects, look anywhere you wanted, where would you have it look? (answer in the comments)

It is Friday, so make sure you’ve finished (or sent me questions about) everything we’ve been investigating and working on this week, including a few new activities for today (Remember Fridays4Future?).

Remember that Monday is a professional development day, so if I don’t see you during office hours in Teams, I will see you all during our next meeting online Tuesday at 10:30AM!

Update for Thursday, April 23rd

Yesterday, for Earth Day, I asked you to spend time just quietly observing the natural environment. (Maybe you sat for 30 min in your back yard, on the front steps, in front of a window…). Today, it would be interesting if you would please leave a comment & share a little of what you could observe from your sit-spot and what it made you think about.

Monday will be a professional development day, so among the activities I am giving you today, I am asking you to think about what you might like a pro-D day for students to be like!

Notice that some of our Hearts for Healthcare Workers (see Monday) are now up in some slides. We’d love to add more, so keep them coming!

Hope to see many of you during my onilne office hours (check in; say, “Hello”; ask a question; make a suggestion…) See you soon!

Earth Day, April 22nd

rotating Earth from greatanimations.comPeople have been noticing some wildlife in cities these days where they would not have been seen before, maybe because there is so much less human traffic these days. (Check out these photos from CBC kids news.) What is the most remarkable animal you’ve ever seen in the city? Let us know in a comment.

Please revisit our activity list once again to find new activities added for this special day. Thanks to everyone for attending yesterday’s meeting (& sort of class circle). A new meeting has been set up so students can visit me during virtual office hours online to ask questions & get help. Students can find the link in their Teams calendar or school email.  These will be group sessions for those who decide to come; I’m not expecting everyone all at once, and we’ll see how well it goes. I’m still responding to questions in assignments and sent in via the ask a question form and via email, but sometimes it may be easier just to talk about it.

And keep creating those hearts so we can wear them on our houses (if not exacly on our sleeves) for our communities to have something to see as well as hear while we show our support for one another from our windows, front steps & balconies each evening.

Update for April 21st

We’ll meet as a class online later this morning. My applause and thanks go out to all of you who have increased the stream of work coming my way. I especially appreciate your questions (and your enthusiasm to get started early each morning!).

Today, I’m going to wait before posting an update to our activity list. I am anxious to give you part two of our story and other things, but I want to get us gathered together first. But you can count on there being more to do this week about tomorrow’s 50th anniversary. Do you know what it is? If you’re not sure, then get over to Ms Lea’s updated blog where you should get a good idea (and you’ll find a few things you’ll need to work on too).

See you soon!


Welcome to the week of April 20th. The flowers have been loving the sunshine, and I hope you have too. I’ve been appreciating the nice weather each evening when I go out on my balcony with a pot & lid (and sometimes some other musical instrument, perhaps you might guess which one!) to join the neighbourhood in giving a raucous Thank You Chorus for all the people working on the front lines during this time. And for me, that often means I have our healthcare workers front of mind.A request from the Burnaby Now

So, as you, my students, work on activities this week, I also invite you to share with me (perhaps by leaving a comment here) what sort of a cheer,  joyful noise or thankful thoughts you are sending up each night come 7:00 PM from your house. (And do you have a rain plan for when the days get a little soggy?)