Good morning!
I cannot believe that it is already almost Thanksgiving! Of all the holidays (besides Christmas, of course), Thanksgiving has got to be my favorite. There is nothing more awesome than being able to spend time with family, eat delicious food, and nap on the floor after consuming at least a turkey and a half-worth of food. While Thanksgiving is considered an American holiday, it is such a blessing that we as Christians are able to celebrate the holiday, thanking God for all the things that he has blessed us with.
Important Dates:
November 23-27th - Thanksgiving Break!
November 29th - Hanging of the Greens @ 6:30 p.m.
November 29th - Student Council meeting @ 7:05 a.m.
December 2nd - Mid-Quarter!
The next 2 Weeks
6th Grade ~ Last week, the 6th graders continued to peruse the novel of Drums, Girls, & Dangerous Pie. They turned in their first Reading Strategies packet for Section 1, and were assigned the Section 2 packet. This packet will not be due until at least the 1st week of December, if not later. For this novel, I have been having the students read together as a class, in partners, and in small groups. I have found that the students are really grasping the concepts, especially the reading strategies portion. On Friday, we discussed character traits and the specific traits assigned to the characters in the book. As a support for this concept, the students were given the task to pick one of the characters from the novel, draw them using their physical traits, and then describe them using character traits. We will continue to work on these drawings today (Monday), and they will be due Tuesday. In grammar, I introduced prepositions and prepositional phrases. This is definitely a more difficult grammar concept, but we will do lots of practice with it in the weeks to come!
7th Grade ~ Last week, I explained the Among the Hidden final project. For this project, the students are making a movie poster for the book on Glogster. The requirements are listed on the rubric which can be found in their Language Arts folder in Google Drive. This is definitely one of my favorite projects of the entire year, and it appears that the students are enjoying it thus far. This project will be due the Monday we come back from Thanksgiving, and the students will be given both days this week to work on it (unless they magically appear to be finished early?? haha). In grammar, I introduced prepositions and prepositional phrases. This is definitely a more difficult grammar concept, but we will do lots of practice with it in the weeks to come!
8th Grade ~ Last week, the students finished presenting their WWII projects. I was very impressed with the hard work and detail put into these projects, and hope that the students have a better understanding of what was going on in the world during the time/setting of The Book Thief. To finish off the historical aspect of the introduction to the book. I had the students do a simple crossword puzzle about Markus Zusak (the author of the book). I always feel that it is important to study the authors of the books/stories we are reading, because you can often see the inspiration to the book from the author's life and interests. On Friday, the students then took a short "quiz" on figurative language to show me how much they remembered from last year's poetry unit. There is A LOT of figurative language in The Book Thief, and this will show me how much I need to review before reading (which won't be much because they all did fantastic!!!). This week, the 8th graders will do a grammar lesson on prepositions and prepositional phrases. This is definitely a more difficult grammar concept, but we will do lots of practice with it in the weeks to come!
I hope all of you have a blessed Thanksgiving break!! Save travels to those traveling for the holiday!
Grace
