Students choose a topic to investigate and created their own magazines. They wrote a feature article, a creative piece, a photo essay, 2 advertisements, an editor’s page, and conducted a survey as a part of the project. These are some of the finished products.
This week students wrote and typed pages for their magazines. Most students have their feature article with a bibliography and a photo essay done. Now they need to work on a creative piece, a survey or an interview, and advertisements.
In reading, students are learning how to participate in literature circles. They practiced using a fairy tale and a picture book. The books that the students are reading have a similar theme: Succeeding in the face of Disaster. The first day of reading books was Thursday (yesterday) and today students discussed their books using the director papers they completed.
The titles for the literature circles are:
Flight #116 is Down!, Lupita Manana, The Cay, Hatchet, Island (Shipwreck), A Girl named Disaster, Money Hungry, and Witness.
Our school has been on spring break this week. Lots of teachers and students are taking vacations. It seems like we all needed a break from each other and the stresses that come with middle school. When school resumes on Monday, there will only be 8 weeks left. Students will be finishing their magazine projects for the “Did you know?” unit and in reading they will be starting to read novels for literature circles with the theme of “How do you survive disasters?”
The end of the quarter is approaching. All missing assignments need to be in by March 25, the last day of the third quarter.
Our class has launched a magazine project where each student is investigating a topic to write his/her own magazine. The objective is to use reading and writing for learning and communicating ideas that are of interest not only to the reader but to an audience of peers. The group that is researching ghosts seems to be quit engaged, as do most of the students. The work starts with texts, but will include internet searches. The magazine will have a feature story, a creative piece, a photo essay, an editorial, a survey or an interview, and advertisements. We will probably be working on this project for about 6 weeks.
Our poetry workshop will continue in 4th quarter and students will publish a poetry book with 12 original poems. The students write their poems every Friday. Some students have almost all of their poems written and some students are struggling with the first poems.
In reading class our selections are articles that are accompanied with primary sources. The theme of the unit we are studying is “Did you know?” The class has read about prison reform and Henry Ford.
Did you know that a Model T cost $1000 in 1903?
Today was the first day for CRT (criterion referenced tests). Students tested in their first period class. They completed part one of the reading and math tests. Everyone was very serious about the test and did their best.
Our schedule was messed up, but everyone adapted to the changes.
In reading, my students were given a short passage from a story that we read to interpret. They worked with a partner to come with a pose and then I took their picture. Now each pair needs to add speech bubbles or thought bubbles to the photos. Then I will assemble all of the parts into a power point to retell the story.
