October Newsletter

October

This month we finished our Narrative Writing Unit, and started our Informational Unit. In reading we continued our Deep Study of Character Unit. In History we finished our Mesopotamia Unit and began learning about Ancient Egypt.

This month was also Hispanic Heritage Month. Every Monday in October we learned about a different Latin X change maker. We call this "Change Maker Monday."

Change Maker Monday

Part of October was Hispanic Heritage month. Each Monday this month we spent time learning about these four hispanic change makers.

Cesar Chavez

Sylvia Mendez

Roberto Clemente

Justice Sonia Sotomayor

Writing

This month we finally finished out Personal Narratives. The students have been working hard to learn and incorporate various writing techniques into their work.

This month we focused on leveling up sentences and dialogue by adding descriptive adjectives that give the reader a deeper understanding of the character. We worked on replacing "boring words" with more precise vocabulary. We also learned how to punctuate dialogue, create new paragraphs, format our papers in MLA, and edit our work.

At the end of our unit the students recorded their narratives on Flip Grid and we got to listen to them and celebrate their hard work.

At the end of the month we began our Informational Writing Unit. In this unit students are going to write two informational articles. We will learn how to decipher authors meaning by decoding the text structure of expository non fiction. We will do research and incorporate our finishing into an informational piece.

First Chapter Friday: October

Red, White and Whole, by Rajani LaRocca

Restart, by Gordon Korman

Melissa, by Alex Gino

Inside Out & Back Again, by Thannai Lai

Reading

This month in reading we finished reading our class novel, Freak the Mighty. Students will continue to work with this text for a while longer as we dig deeper.

In October we worked on better understanding the influence of setting on the mood and atmosphere of a piece of writing. We will continue this work and learn how to identify motifs within the text and turn these motifs into theme statements.

Later, students will write a response paragraph proving their theme statement is true. This work will support them as they journey on to seventh and eight grade,

Freak the Mighty, "one-pagers"41 new items added to shared album

Freak the Mighty "One Pagers"

For this assignment students created a one page representation of the themes and repeated ideas in the novel, Freak the Mighty.

Pride Month

During October Stanley Middle School also celebrated Pride Day. On this day in class we learned about the origin or Pride protests and briefly discussed the significance of the Stonewall riots. After engaging in this activity students wrote one thing that they were proud of and put it up on our shared flag. This flag serves as a reminder that we should never shy away from the parts of ourselves that make us who we are.

History

This month in History we completed our Mesopotamia Unit and began learning about Ancient Egypt.

We started by learning about the geography of Ancient Egypt and how it shaped their way people lived. We completed a map activity wherein studnets labeled and colored a map of Egypt to show the growth of the civilization throughout its three main kingdoms (Old, Middle, New).

We later moved on to learning about the Pharaohs that ruled throughout the kingdoms. We discussed the monuments that they left behind and the attributes they had. The students engaged in a partner project where they created instagram profiles for the four pharaohs discussed in class.

The Tonight Show: Ancient Egypt Edition

We also learned about the social pyramid of Ancient Egypt. To engage students in this conversation they were assigned a social class. As a group they researched this class and prepared notes for the class. They were then invited onto the "Tonight Show" and interviewed about their role in Egyptian society.

Conversation Starters

Tell me more about your Pharaoh Instagram project? What pharaohs did you choose?
What did yo

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