The Joy and Pain of Technology

Today we attempted to complete our reading assessments. Classes had various degrees of success, depending on how the technology was cooperating. We did make some headway with "Touching Spirit Bear" however, completing at least the first chapter in each class and with a few classes moving on to chapter 2. Tomorrow we should be moving on in this direction, beginning our analysis of the book in earnest. Yay!!

Today kids wrote a brief response to the first chapter. These should have been handed in today. If they did not hand them in today, they can get the question again here: "TSB Reflective Question, Chapter 1"

Monday, a day late

The week started out with a whimper when my technology hit a blip and plans were re-written. Such is life! But, it also ate up some of my blog time, so I am sorry for the day-skip.

Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of this week will be spent on two tasks:

1. Taking two reading assessments. These will be used to find any struggling readers and to determine the nature of their needs. For my accelerated kids it will be used as baseline data or a different nature than the NWEA scores.

2. Reading and reflecting on the first chapter of "Touching Spirit Bear". Students will read and then complete a short written response.

Students have been given their next vocab assignment, Lesson 2, which is due 9/28. The quiz will be on 10/1. SL students can access their assignment by clicking on this word. HL students can find their work sheet by clicking here.

Kids To Do: Vocab Lesson 2, due Tuesday 9/28

Adults To Do: Come to Open House tonight!!! Hope to see you all there :)

End of the week!!

We have made it through our first full week of the year!! Whoo hoo!!!

Kids took their vocab quiz for lesson 1 today. We will grade these next week to see how we all did. In order to encourage getting their lessons done and to build some class community, I have the kids compete with the other classes on their vocab assignments and quizzes. For the 1st vocab assignment, most hours only had 1 or 2 missing assignments and 4th hour had the best overall average. Congratulations 4th hour students!! I know that we can continue to improve our averages in all the classes!!! The best key to a great class average is to be sure that EVERYONE hands in their work!! We will do the same thing with the quizzes once we have graded them.

We will get a new vocab assignment next week, and begin to read "Touching Spirit Bear" in earnest.

I hope everyone has a great weekend :)

VOCAB QUIZ FRIDAY

Please remind your student to study for their vocab quiz tomorrow!!! It is important that they have success on this first quiz in order to get themselves off to an excellent start in 7th grade language arts! Please let me know if you have questions or concerns.

Today we finished our word splashes from Tuesday.

Kids To Do: Study, study, study!!!

Vocab Correction

Vocab correction took place today. This is a bit of a process as I have the kids figure out the class average and keep it in their notebooks as a means of working in some math. We will get faster as time goes on, but for today it took most of class. Please remember to study with your student for Friday's quiz!!

Kids To Do: Quiz Friday!!!

TSB Word Splash

Word Splash is a pre-reading activity that activates prior knowledge, helps students make predictions and allows them to make inferences and connections within the book before even reading it. We worked on one today for TSB. Kids are working with an assigned partner and putting the words into their own groups. Once they have identified the groups they will create a mobile to display their groupings to others. Below you will find some of the words on the list. I encourage you to choose a few to discuss with your student at home.

Word Splash for TSB: Circle of Justice, Tlingit, skiff, banishment, punish, patience, probation, detention center, depositions, survival, anger, soul, convicted, innocent, healing contract, Spirit Bear, sincere.

Kids to do: Remember, vocab quiz Friday!!!

Touching Spirit Bear Pre-Reading

Hello!

I hope everyone had a chance to enjoy the beautiful weather we had this weekend!

Today all classes did a pre-reading activity for the novel we are going to begin this week, "Touching Spirit Bear" (TSB). This is one of my favorite units to teach and it is a great way to start the year. In tandem with reading the novel we will also be looking at ourselves as individuals. We will work with some of the same curriculum used in health class this year to complete this unit.

Kids to do: VOCAB 1 IS DUE TOMORROW, TUESDAY 9/14!!!