It's an exciting week in room 315! As we begin week three, we are beginning to move towards independence. We spent some time over the past few days setting up all of our technology resources. Among them, the most critical is our Google Classroom. When students log in, they have access to two classes, Sharing the Planet and Math. This digital work space will house the majority, if not all, of the work that we do at school. I am very excited to use this tool, as it will allow for a more personalized learning experience for my amazing students. As I mentioned to the class, within our new inquiry-based learning style, much of our learning is student-led. Organization, time management, and responsibility are CRITICAL to our success. We will focus on strategies that support these habits and will continue to work to be self-directed learners. This week, we will continue our research of conflicts in American history. The goal is to complete the initial research phase by the end of the week, so that we can begin to synthesize and identify patterns within our learning next week. We are getting deeper into our study of Refugee by Alan Gratz. This week, students are beginning to learn the protocols of Socratic Seminar. We will use Socratic Seminar for our collaborative discussions of all texts that we read this year. As part of that protocol, students will write a weekly reading response using their text and highlights from the seminar discussions. I look forward to reading their initial responses and beginning to provide feedback! In order to practice important reading skills, students have also been assigned a character analysis project. They will work in groups of four to complete these projects over the next few weeks. Finally, this week marks the beginning of our vocabulary and grammar study. Students have been given their vocabulary list. Starred terms are terms that may be found on the weekly assessment. Students should focus on studying those terms. The grammar focus for the week is identifying simple subjects and simple predicates. In math, we began our study of order of operations today with an investigation using color tiles. The students were asked to represent 3 + 4 x 4. Students provided two possible solutions. We then discussed why we arrived at two different solutions and debated which solution was correct. Our discussion led us to naturally discover the order of operations. We will continue to evaluate simple expressions and will also move into "naming" expressions this week. REMINDERS:
UPCOMING DUE DATES: Friday, August 24 - Vocabulary Assessment One Friday, August 24 - Grammar Assessment (Subject/Predicate) Friday, August 24 - Finding Out - Research Check Point Friday, September 6 - Fictional Narrative Due Friday, September 14 - Character Analysis Project Due It's going to be another great week for teaching and learning in room 315!
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January 2019
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