Sir Henry Mill Pellatt’s residence, a gothic styled home, now stands as a museum on Torontonian history and a lovely landmark overlooking the CN tower. Students spent a few hours learning about Toronto’s recent past and walking through the gardens.
As part of the in-class component, students must learn about the various aspects of leadership and preform tasks and activities to put what they learned into practice. Today, the activity entailed leaving the class for a short walk to the nearby square. An open space where many stalls were set up to sell and give away locally grow flowers. As part of today’s lesson, students had to say something nice to a person that didn’t seem happy. This demonstrated the importance of helping others but also the positive effect these simples acts of kindness can have on their own self-esteem. Taking note of how much kind words effect others, the students enjoyed the day and walked away with beautiful flours in hand!
Many groups had the day off to choose the activities that they wanted to do- the beach being a popular option to head to and play sports or relax. Meanwhile ‘Greensystem’ went to see the new Ghost Busters movie in 3D at the IMAX theatre.
Tonight everybody put their dancing shoes back on and enjoyed an evening moving to lively beats and the soothing waves of Lake Ontario. All groups came together, filling up the boat with great energy! The party started as soon as we left shore and continued as we travel around the lake, seeing Toronto’s beautiful skyline as the sun set.
During the past week in the intermediate class, students learned and practiced using reflexive and reciprocal pronouns. In terms of vocabulary, the week’s focus was on words and phrases used in relation to sports, With the use of place-mat activities, student’s worked in groups to discuss various types of extreme sports and the risk factors involved. Students also worked on peer editing writing exercises to improve their writing skills. Working in groups to share and present topics, working towards improving their understanding of written and spoken English.
In the high advanced classroom, students read articles and discussed sentence integration and specific parts of speech to correct grammatical mistakes in sentence formation. For the oral portion of the week, students learned to apply vocabulary relating to natural disasters (they created a PSA), adventure travelling and the supernatural (came up with a related reality TV show). The class also included many debated on a variety of topics, such as the question of, “whether or not athletes are overpaid?”
Taking a glimpse into two classrooms…
Today many students had free time and the chance to choose how they’d like to spend the afternoon after classes. Meanwhile ‘Greensystem’ took a trip back to Vaughan, right by Wonderland to go to one of Canada’s largest shopping centres. Vaughan Mills is a GTA favourite with its outlet mall setup and “neighbourhoods” which are intended to divide the mall up by category (high fashion, sporting goods, decor, etc.) As shown in the picture, the students definitely didn’t have trouble finding things they liked!
Today Quest had a huge presence at the amusement park with all students either screaming on the roller coasters or splashing in the waterpark. It was a fun, thrilling and beautiful conclusion to the weekend.
Today Greensystem, She Herencia and Sheffield spent the day at Niagara Falls. We left Toronto early and went straight to the boat tour upon arrival. The boat was a lot of fun and getting close to the falls allowed the students to truly feel the power of the water. We even spotted quite a few loons bathing!
EEC spent the day back at Toronto island, while STEP attended the festival on waterfront and CIA is on their multi day trip in New York City, which they embarked to yesterday. It is another eventful weekend in and around Toronto!
Other students spent the day either roaming the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM), learning about the animals at the Toronto zoo or celebrating their last day at Medieval Times- a castle-like setting where the students dined while watching horsemanship and jousting matches!
