Category: Student Work

And the Winner Is…

April 23, 2021 / Mrs. Millar / 0 Comments

Congratulations to Anthony, Morgan, Imaan, Ilya, Erika, Zhennie Ann, and Willow!

They have emerged the Battle of the Books Champions for Sperling! We congratulate you on your team spirit and enthusiasm for reading. Great job to Morgan and Anthony for being great team leaders as well! Their team will represent Sperling in the district battle this Tuesday, April 27 at 1pm. Best of luck!

March 4, 2018 / Mrs. Millar / 0 Comments

This term, we participated in the CSA/NSERC “Inventions for Space” challenge. The students learned about some of the challenges of living in space, particularly aboard the International Space Station (ISS). We designed some inventions to help astronauts with their quality of life in space. We submitted our designs last week and this week, some of Division 2’s designs have been chosen to be featured on the website!

Check them out here!

Good job to all of you designers/inventors! Another cool thing is that some of the top designs will be selected to actually be made! How amazing would that be?

CBC First Page Writing Challenge winners…and Shakespeare!

February 7, 2018 / Mrs. Millar / 6 Comments

The national winners of the writing challenge we entered have been published! Read their first pages here:

Sari Warshawsky’s Nameless explores how the pressure of perfection in the digital era has transformed the world in 2167.

Abby Robitaille’s The Greater Good presents a world changed by oppressive dictatorships and press censorship.

Coming in April 2018: CBC‘s annual Shakespeare Selfie competition!

The challenge: Grades 7 to 12 students write monologues or soliloquies in the voice of a Shakespearean character inspired by a current affairs event or trend from the past year (April 2017 to April 2018). Award-winning YA author Kenneth Oppel returns as judge. The competition opens April 6 to 27, 2018.

After our recent trip to the Young People’s Concert where we watched the play Shakespeare’s Dream by Monster Theatre Company, are we feeling inspired to dive into Shakespeare??? (Mrs. Millar is…)

Reducing Litter Presentation

February 7, 2018 / Mrs. Millar / 8 Comments

Division 2 recently did a presentation at the assembly about reducing litter on the schoolgrounds.

Here is a link to the slide presentation the group created (the video has been removed because the file size was too large):

Why is there so much garbage on the school grounds?

Some students have noticed that Sperling students are making more of an effort not to litter since our presentation! How should we keep track of our progress as a school? Post a comment with your ideas.

Guest Post by Jessica; “Word Nerd”

December 2, 2017 / Mrs. Millar / 26 Comments

Last month, our class had the pleasure of reading the wondrous book Word Nerd ingeniously written by author Susin Nielsen. We had just finished the book a few weeks ago, and it is easily said that it was one of the best books we’ve ever read. With thoughtful characters, in-depth description, and clever plot twists, Susin Nielsen engraved a lively world full of wonders deeply into our thoughts, opening a new world of imagination for all of us.
While reading “Word Nerd”, our class and I did intricate character webs of our most memorable characters, and I did Ambrose, Amanda, Cosmo, and Irene for mine. We also did visualizations, where we drew out the scenes and characters Susin Nielsen illustrated in our minds on paper. Lastly, we made connections to her easy-to-relate-to world of characters, and we absolutely had no trouble with coming up with at least 2. Late last month, we stapled all of those together and drew a title page, making an official “Word Nerd” booklet, and we pinned onto our class bulletin board.

-Jessica

Note from Mrs. Millar:

We definitely found the joy in reading while immersed in Word Nerd! Division 2 were on the edge of their seats, wondering what was going to happen next. One lasting memory I will have of reading this book with you was at the end of Chapter 23, as Ambrose is about to be dropped off at home after the best day of his life. It says:

I got into the back of Cosmo’s car, feeling like a million bucks.

I had no idea that just five minutes later, everything would come crashing down around me. And that this time the Higher Power was either helping someone else, or he’d gone to bed early.

Because this time, there would be no miracle.

This time, I was screwed.

I stopped and asked you (the students) to make predictions. You thought that either Ambrose’s mom was going to find out he’d been lying to her, or that Silvio was going to show up and hurt/kill someone. I asked them which would be worse? And the students agreed that it would be worse for Ambrose to face the wrath of his mom! I thought that was amazing. It still makes me laugh.

Here are just a few examples of the amazing work you did in your booklets.

Leave a comment and tell me your favourite parts or lasting memories of Word Nerd.

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Enter the CBC First Page Creative Writing Challenge!

November 15, 2017 / Mrs. Millar / 0 Comments

You have worked hard on your futuristic first pages! Grade 7s need to create an account (with parent permission) and submit their writing to the contest by November 30 at the latest.

Good luck!

Submit your entry here!

The best part of me

October 7, 2017 / Mrs. Millar / 0 Comments

The students wrote about their “best parts,” and produced unique, descriptive pieces of writing.

Division 2: I loved your writing. Some thoughts on your finished products:

Paragraphs are important. They guide your reader to understand your ideas.
Little details and description add a lot! They help us, your audience, to connect to your ideas and to visualize (with all our senses) what you are describing.
I will never write on your good copies. I feel like that would be the same as writing on your artwork. However, if you end up with little mistakes in your good copy, let’s think about how to improve our process for revising and editing so that you can reduce them this year. Buddy proofreading can be helpful.
The thesaurus can sometimes be a friend! I love that you are expanding your vocabularies. However, overusing a thesaurus can result in the loss of your “voice”; your writing might end up sounding not like you. Your voice is so important!
This one is from my favourite teacher of reading and writing, Adrienne Gear (she wrote the Reading Power/ Writing Power books). She is talking about the writing process, and how writers look at having conferences in order to revise their work:

“Make it shine!” What a great thought to share with middle-grade students as they begin writer’s workshop this year.

“If a teacher told me to revise, I thought that meant my writing was a broken-down car that needed to go to the repair shop. I felt insulted. I didn’t realize the teacher was saying, “Make it shine. It’s worth it.” Now I see revision as a beautiful word of hope. It’s a new vision of something. It means you don’t have to be perfect the first time. What a relief!” – Naomi Shihab Nye

Happy Thanksgiving, Division 2!