Learning, Laughter, and Love in Middle School English

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 ch...

This week my English 7 Honors classes finished analyzing ¨Nothing Gold Can Stay.¨  This poem appears in The Outsiders .  Before beginning our analysis, I asked students to think about the big question:  Why  do you think S.E. Hinton chose this poem to include in her book?  What connections can you make between the poem and the characters and situations in the novel?  Then we read the poem and students annotated the text with their initial thoughts, observations, and questions.  Next, I showed them a video of the poem  with images in the back ground and set to music .  They did a bit more annotating after that.  After that, we used a strategy called SIFT.  Much like a sifter used in gold mining, this strategy yields similar results!  Students isolate the golden nuggets of the poem.  Okay, maybe I am exaggerating a little, but the students liked the comparison.  They looked at possible s ymbolism, i magery, f igurati...

This week my English 7 Honors classes completed the Interview a Word Activity that my English 7 College Prep did last week.  Two of my stellar students took it upon themselves to create a video of their interview with Gallantly.  Check it out! Interview with Gallantly Words We Interviewed Meeting New "Friends"  Hmmm...Not Sure How These Two Will Get Along! This is Why I LOVE Middle School Looking at the Context of her Word We also began the analysis of "Nothing Gold Can Stay" by Robert Frost.  As usual, I was blown away by their ability to see beyond the obvious.  College Prep will be doing this next week. College Prep read an expository article called "How Stereotypes can Fuel Teen Misbehavior."  We marked the text, wrote in the margins, and discussed the article.  They will be using a template to create an expository summary of the article.   All of my students seem to be loving the book!