Good morning!
I hope all of you have had a blessed weekend and a Christ-filled Sunday! Just another week down of this 1st quarter. Soon, it'll be the end of October, fall with most certainly be upon us, Halloween/Reformation will be here, and 1st quarter will be over. Not to rush the month or anything like that... :)
Listed below are some important dates to remember for all grades:
Important Dates:
LEA Conference - No school - October 13-14th
Book Talks Due - October 17th
Student Council meeting - October 18th @ 7:05 a.m.
Box Top Clipping Party - October 20th @ 2:45-4:00 p.m.
Red Ribbon Week - October 24-28th
End of 1st Quarter - October 28th
Student Council Leaf-Raking - October 28th
Last Week
6th Grade ~ Last week, the 6th graders did a Monday Meditation which involved story telling and humor. Remember that each Monday Meditation is due the following Monday! Therefore, there is one due tomorrow. Throughout the week, we reviewed the 6 Traits of Writing and a 5 Paragraph Essay. In grammar, we did a lesson on how to write a proper sentence and use the parts of speech we have learned so far correctly. The rest of the week, I introduced Patriot's Pen and we began our brainstorming on this year's topic: "The America I Believe In." For brainstorming, I like to get the students just thinking about the topic first, then show them some YouTube videos about the topic, and finally have the students start organizing their ideas into a graphic organizer. We will finish up our brainstorming this coming week and set up our outlines as well.
7th Grade ~ Last week, the 7th graders continued to read/discuss Among the Hidden. To embrace the "shadow child" identities that they have been assigned, I assigned two "blog posts" to them where they were to answer questions and then comment on their other classmates' blogs. No worries, we are not actually blogging, but taking advantage of Google Docs sharing and all writing on one document (it's actually pretty cool to watch all of the students writing on one document!). In grammar, we did a lesson on how to write a proper sentence and use the parts of speech we have learned so far correctly.
8th Grade ~ Last week, the 8th graders were given their 4th Latin/Greek roots list on Monday, and took their quiz on Friday. Once again, I continue to be amazed at the studying that goes into these quizzes and the wonderful grades that they are getting. Makes this teacher proud :) We also finished up discussing Poe's "The Masque of the Red Death" and I had them do their first Socratic Discussion on the story. This is the first of many Socratic Discussions that the students will have this year. Basically, a Socratic Discussion is where the students are put into groups and given higher-order thinking questions to discuss together as a group. They are encouraged to invite members of their group to participate in the discussion at any time (it's fun to see how they feed off of each other, rather than me leading the discussion). On Tuesday, we did a short lesson on irony in preparation for our final Poe story, "The Tell-Tale-Heart." In grammar, we did a lesson on how to write a proper sentence and use the parts of speech we have learned so far correctly. The rest of the week, we read "The Tell-Tale-Heart". The 8th graders LOVED this story (go figure... haha) and I couldn't get them to stop talking about the story!
Reminder to all: Book talks begin next week (October 17th). Please be checking in with your child/children to see where they are. Most students seem to be on track/almost done, but a few always try to put off the project, which is NEVER a good idea :)
I hope you have a great day! Enjoy the fall weather!
God's blessings!
Grace
