Skip to main content

It's April!

It is hard to believe that it is already April! Of course, April 1st would not be complete without a middle school prank! I was greeted by this little creature first thing this morning!  
The kids shared a few of their April Fool's jokes with me, and we had some good laughs. However, this one was my favorite:

Apparently, this young man's dad came up with the idea to play a little joke on Mom.  I would have loved to have seen the look on her face when he came home and presented her with this referral.  

On a more serious note, we started The Giver last week!  In English 7H, students have been assigned one of three focus questions to follow throughout the book.  In English 7CP, all students will be focusing on the same question.  Students must find passages from the book that address their question and complete quote responses.  These passages serve as a catalyst for class discussions, as well  require students to think critically as they read.  


In addition, students read an article about book banning and wrote a short essay about whether or not they thought books should be banned.   This topic certainly got them fired up, and they were able to find numerous reasons to support both sides.
We are continuing to use Noredink.com to practice grammar, punctuation, and usage.  This week we took a pretest on commonly confused words.  Once again, what I love about Noredink.com is that if students do well on the pretest they are done with that topic.  Kids who do not do well can complete several practice exercises and then take the post test.  It is so nice to not have to spend countless hours on something that many students already know!

I hope you all have a wonderful Spring Break!  

Comments

Post a Comment

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....
6 comments
Read more

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...
2 comments
Read more

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...
27 comments
Read more