Post date: Jan 09, 2016 7:51:19 AM
Happy Sunday Y'all!
Vacation: This three week vacation has been very relaxing and rejuvenating, focussed mostly on the meanings of the holidays and happy times with friends, family, neighbors, and strangers. I've spent a bit of time at school as well, cleaning, organizing, grading, and building. It is all too quiet there during vacation and I'm looking forward to a full classroom and bustling alley again.
A Hundred Days: I looked at the calendar yesterday and discovered there 100 schooldays left; twenty weeks. I wonder how we can best spend them. What activities, attitudes, and interactions will be the best use of our important, adequate, but limited time together before graduation? The time is evenly split between intensive sessions and "homeroom all morning" weeks, and includes our SF trip in February and the all-eighth grade rafting trip in June. During the first week back I'll be posing those questions to the class and facilitating discussions and (hopefully) plans for action. I just want to make sure that when school ends we will all look back on the year with excitement and exhaustion!
Upcoming Science: The topics of forces and motion (chapters 5, 6, and 7) went well, but not great. The kids read the book, did the in-class activities, and seemed interested (but not thrilled). My goal is to amp things up a bit for the next topics of work, machines, and energy (chapters 8, 9, and 10). They'll still be doing the nightly reading and daily quizzes, but I'd really like to have the daily experiments, tinkerings, and investigations be more intriguing. I'll work on that.
Upcoming English: In addition to the continuing vocabulary stuff and book club readings & meetings, I'll be adding an "infographic" project over the next few weeks. An infographic is a combination of data, text, and graphics that provide information on a topic, relying more in visual exposition than textual exposition. The kids will browse many, discern/define/discuss their elements and then set about on the formation of one of their own. There will be research involved, data collection involved, and lessons on graphic design involved. I worked on this stuff a lot when I was getting my masters in instructional technology, so I'm eager to revisit it with the kids.
Curiosity Slides & Target Topic: Every week since the beginning of school, each kid has created an online slide covering a topic of personal interest. I'm sure you've seen them before. What you may not have seen, however is their "Target Topic" choice and the questions that they've decided to investigate about it. Please ask your kid about theirs and/or find the topic underlined in their row of this spreadsheet. Tomorrow afternoon I'll revisit the project with them and begin taking sign-ups for presentation slots. Those presentations, by the way, will serve as their second public speaking task of the year, the first being the me-in-a-bag project from the opening weeks of school.
Thank you for reading, thank you for all the great Christmas and birthday wishes/gifts, and thank you for being for/with whom I simply love to work.
Chris
Calendar:
January 11 (Monday): Civil War intensive starts
January 14 (Thursday): Mathemagic at Westgate Church
January 18 (Monday): No School, MLK day
January 22 (Friday): Family dance
January 26 (Tuesday):8th grade class photo
February 1-3: Room 29 Walkabout (no intensives)
February 5 (Friday): Semester 1 ends
February 6 (Saturday): DCS 10 Year Celebration
February 15 to 19: February Break
February 23 to 26: Room 25's San Francisco Trip
March 4 (Friday): Laps for Learning
March 18 (Friday): Staff Development Day
March 23 & 24: Evening and morning science fair exhibits
March 29 (Monday): Chemistry intensive starts
May 7: Spring Auction