Skip to main content

WEEK SIX

Vocabulary Station (They're hams)


We are finishing up our short story unit this week.  I love the short story unit, because it provides a great opportunity to talk about author's style, literary terms. elements of a story, and so much more!  This comes in handy later when we read novels.

We began the week with stations.  Students visited five stations and completed a variety of tasks.  We had just finished reading "Rikki-Tikki Tavi," so a few stations involved learning vocabulary from the story and finding textual evidence to support whether or not Rikki was a brave and likable
Working on textual evidence questions
character. Another station  allowed students the opportunity to practice grammar on noredink.com.  Students enjoy this website.  It allows them to create a profile and actually personalizes the sentences for each student!  They also receive instant feedback, as well as explanations of wrong answers.   

Working on a Plot Diagram
We also began reading "Monsters on Maple Street."  Students are looking for how the author conveys theme in the story.  For this story, students are focusing on how the writer uses setting, symbols, motif, and characters to convey the theme of the story.  They will find and analyze textual evidence from the story to support their theme.  Finally, the will create a digital presentation using Powtoon, which will include their chosen theme and evidence to support it!  I can't wait to show students this exciting way to create presentations.  






Looking pensive!

Finding textual evidence

We will be having a literary term test on Monday, so I created a Kahoot  game.  This allowed them to practice for the test.  Ask your student about it.  We played in class, and the kids had a blast.  
Once we finish our theme presentations, we will begin The Outsiders.  Students will be writing an informational essay.  They will also read a variety of non-fiction to supplement the novel.

As always, it is a joy teaching this age group!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

TQE: Get students Engaged and Digging Deep

I've mentioned before how Twitter has helped me grow as an educator.  Edutwitter is a valuable resource for book recommendations, new teaching methods, lessons, and articles.  One of my favorite educators to follow is Marissa Thompson, a high school teacher at Carlsbad High. This summer I read about her TQE(thoughts, questions, epiphanies) method for discussing literature.  I'd always longed for having discussions like the ones I had in my college literature courses, but when I try fishbowl or Socratic seminar with my students, the discussions felt forced, flat, and awkward. That changed today when I tried TQE for the first time.  Sharing homework in small groups Students writing their TQEs on the board When I listened to Marissa's podcast on Cult of Pedagogy ( check it out here ), I was intimidated. After all, her students are in high school and have a rock star teacher.  I think I read the transcript twenty times before finally trying it.  Here's h

Writing an Essay...with a Partner

I love technology for collaboration! Teaching writing to middle school students is not easy.  All students come with different skills and knowledge.  With 35 students in a class, it's impossible to sit down one on one and assist students with the writing process.  Teaching students to write a literary analysis is particularly challenging because most seventh-graders have little, to no experience.  Students need to learn to  develop a thesis statement, find evidence from the text to support it, provide the context of the selected quotations , and write insightful commentary on the evidence they selected. Remember, these kiddos are twelve! Graphic organizers are particularly helpful to these young writers. The biggest challenge is providing feedback to students as they are writing, rather than after they turn their work in for a grade.  Students need to be able to use the feedback they receive and see the difference it makes in the final product.  I was adamant that I was not go

The Outsiders

Anyone else remember reading The Outsiders in middle school?  I remember reading it in 7th grade in 1981. Oh how I loved that book!  Then came the movie!  Rob Lowe, Tom Cruise, Leif Garret, Matt Dillon, and Patrick Swayze were some of the actors in this Francis Ford Coppola film.  I have to admit that it was a little depressing this year when I mentioned that Tom Cruise was in the movie, and only one student said, "I think I have heard of him."   Yet, here it is 2014 and my students are enjoying this book as much as I did.  On the surface the book is about two rival "gangs," the Socs and the Greasers.  However, the book is about so much more.  It is about stereotypes and prejudging people.  It's about true friendship, family, and loyalty.  It's about courage and growing up.  That makes it the perfect book for middle schoolers. I started off the unit with a web quest about the 1960s to get the students acquainted with the setting of the novel.  They