Skip to main content

Short Week!









This is what I call TEAM work!


English 7 College Prep

This week students chose a character from the novel and created a "report card" for that character. They chose traits to evaluate, made a comment as "the teacher," and cited evidence from the book to support their grade.  I like this activity; if forces students to refer to the text and find evidence to support their grade.  It also helps them discuss and see how a character may have changed throughout the novel or may have more than one side to his or her personality!  




A Report Card for Darry (not finished)

 Not finished yet
Add caption

Love to see students referring to the novel!

English 7 Honors

This week students chose a character from the novel and listed as many traits as they could about that character.  They then created a poster in which they had to compare their character to an object, place, animal, and one other category of their choice.  They had to explain why they made the comparison, as well as provide textual evidence to support their choice.  This seemed to be challenging for them, as it forced them to think metaphorically about their character.
Looking for Textual Evidence

  
Love These Gals!
Interesting Comparison!



I couldn't resist including a few pictures highlighting one of the many talents of my 7th graders!  This is what happens when you give a 7th grade boy markers!  



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....

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...

Mock Trials-Periods 0 and 2

MY Ethan Couch (notice the shirt) Wow!  What a fantastic week it has been for me as a teacher!  My students have been working hard preparing for their assigned cases and getting ready to go to trial.  Each group was assigned a case based on an article we read in class.  One case was about a sixteen-year old  boy named Ethan Couch.  He had a blood alcohol level three times over the legal limit when the car he was driving hit a disabled vehicle and killed four innocent people.  He receive one year of rehabilitation in Malibu and ten years probabtion as his punishment. His attorneys blamed his behavior on what was called "affluenza."  Please ask your child about this word and how it was used to defend him in court! The other case involved for teens who threw an eight pound rock over an overpass and struck the passenger side of a vehicle.  The passenger was Sharon Budd, a middle-school English teacher and breast cancer survivor.  Sh...