I am so proud of my students' growth in writing this semester. Like reading, learning to write well takes a lot of practice. We are writing narrative and persuasive essays right now, and my students are having a lot of fun choosing their topic and writing from their heart. I provide word lists for using different transitions and stronger verbs and adjectives. For some students who are learning English, I provide supports such as word banks and sentence frames. My goal is to encourage and support my students and to do it in such a way that they end up loving to write!
Our advisory class met with Mrs. Lawson's class today for Read Across America Day! This is Donovan and Daniel reading to second-grade boys on the porch. It's always fun to see our older students read and talk with the elementary students like this. We enjoyed it very much. Happy Birthday, Dr. Seuss! :)
A group of our advisory class celebrating Valentine's Day! They are all getting excited for their 8th grade promotion, too. The whole 8th grade class just voted for the promotion theme, and "Under the Sea" won!
#happyadvisorystudents
Our whole school is together on the R.A.C.E. writing strategy, and that is such a very VERY good thing! With students using this strategy year after year, they can't help but become better writers. This strategy will come in handy everywhere they need to answer open-ended questions. By using this strategy, students restate the question, answer the question, find text evidence to prove their answer, and then wrap it up by explaining how it all ties back and answers the question. Like one student said to our class, "Writing this way will help our writing make sense!" Well said!
These are students from period five reading a myth together from their SpringBoard books. They helped each other pronounce words, find the climax, and know which parts were in the rising and falling action. Students working together like this is a magic for learning and understanding! #StudentMagic
More book talk visuals! Please see the note below ...
I just love listening to student book talks. In fact, I'm reading a book right now called Counting by 7s because Aiden read it and gave his talk on it. I just finished another book that Tatum read called To All the Boys I've Loved Before. I hope students got good ideas on what to read by listening to their friends.
This picture is of some of the visuals students made and shared. Everette made the big one with the yellow background about the popular series called The Diary of a Wimpy Kid. He was so happy about working so hard. Me too! I'm proud of the effort and creativity so many students put forth on their book talks.
One of my goals is to help my students really love reading. I will never give up on that goal!
Kalai, Brennon, Tanu, and Max building their Marshmallow tower. See description below.
I really enjoy my advisory class!!
The 8th grade advisories had a marshmallow-tower-competition, and it was a lot of fun! Students worked in teams and had 18 minutes to build the highest tower with only tape, spaghetti, scissors, string, and one marshmallow to put on top. Wow! Our class teams had all towers standing ranging from 5 inches to 22 inches. Teamwork and collaboration all the way!!
This picture shows Daniel, Donovan, Xander, and Keiron with their tower.
I love to inspire my students to enjoy reading!
