Wow! The first semester has officially come to an end. It’s hard to believe that the school year is halfway over. It has been a great journey of learning throughout this semester. Students have worked really hard to accomplish their goals. While the break is welcome, I will miss all the students over the holiday. I hope that you enjoy this time with family/friends, and I wish it to be full of laughter and love. May this break allow the students to be rejuvenated and refreshed for the next semester. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or praise, please email me.
Reminder: If students are missing any work, please know that tomorrow grades will be finalized.
Students should be reading 20 minutes everyday including the weekend.
7th:
The students just completed a unit called Lessons From Text. In this unit we examined a variety of short stories, speeches, and songs. We evaluated them for connections the author would use and found the implied theme(s) of the text. Students were able to see how connections are used by the author to get a specific message across to reader. Students used a specific analyzing strategy called TIEA. Please ask them what those letters stand for. They picked up the format quickly. For their summative, they wrote two different TIEA paragraphs. Then they moved on to the creative part. They had to write and perform as song or speech that would inspire others. I was very impressed with their topics and their performances. Check them out on their blogs!
8th:
Students recently finished a unit on cultural stories. Throughout this unit, students examined folklores, fairytales, proverbs, and myths from around the world. Their goal was to determine the value, purpose, and importance that cultural stories have in society. After analyzing these types of stories, students wrote two TIEAs for part 1 of their summative. Please ask them what those letters stand for. For many, this was a review of TIEA and for others it was a completely new way to analyze a text. Once they finished that, they got very creative. They had the choice of writing a folklore, fairytale, myth, or urban legend. They designed a poster and then did an audio recording to focus on how cultural stories were told orally. Check out their awesome stories on their blogs!
In both 7th & 8th grade units, students had a strong focus on annotation. The purpose of annotation is get students to read the text closely while looking for certain elements. We will continue to work on that throughout the year. As a way of reflecting on the semester, students created a screencast where they analyzed and evaluated what they had learnt throughout the semester. You can also check those out on their blogs!