January Happenings

ELA

This month we brought the American Revolution into ELA! We worked on a Lit Circle unit, in which the students read Chains or My Brother Sam Is Dead. Both novels are set during the Revolutionary era and helped build background for what they are starting to learn in social studies. Students took turns being discussion leaders, historians (researching a Revolutionary War fact found in the novel), and literary illuminators (sharing and explaining significant cited text).  

We delved into grammar with prepositions, focusing particularly on troublesome ones (i.e. between vs. among). We also began studying gerunds and gerund phrases. In addition to thinking critically, understanding both types of phrases help with sentence variety in writing and language skills on standardized tests.

Furthermore, we continued Benchmark skills to help with reading skills. These included compare/contrast and making predictions from context clues.

Lastly, our month ended with Catholic Schools Week! Our class showed their spirit, from Minute-to-Win-It games to playing trivia, from working with our 3rd grade buddies on service projects to playing in the culminating teacher-student basketball game. It was a great week!

Religion

We delved into understanding the New Testament. This was largely a hands-on unit, with students paging through the books and reading passages. We learned why Matthew, Mark, and Luke are similar Gospels but John is quite different. We learned an overview of Acts, Letters and Revelation. The students loved the “scavenger hunts” of finding the name of the passage anytime I called out the book name, chapter and verse. By the end of this unit, everyone became more familiar with the New Testament, especially how the Gospels are our primary teachings of Jesus.

Next Up: In ELA, writing a literary analysis for our lit circle book and moving into a Revolutionary War research paper. In religion, the beginning of Jesus’ mission with His baptism and 40 days in the desert (perfectly timed for the start of Lent).

Top row: Historical fiction lit circle. Second Row: Prepositions. We actively began to understand prepositions by having a chair as the object of the phrase, and the students had to lie under the chair, stand on the chair, dance with the chair. It was fun. Bottom rows: CSW!