Tuesday, November 27, 2012

Guided Reading:  We reviewed dependent clauses, simple sentences, and compound sentences.  Tomorrow we will have notes on complex sentences.  The rest of the time will be silent reading.

Advanced Math:  We didn't quite finish 4.3 today.  We'll continue that tomorrow and then review for the test.  We will also review on Thursday, and the test will be Friday.

Debate:  Students in my debate room (the crane hunting teams) continued researching the arguments for and against the hunting of cranes.  Tomorrow, teams will get together and create one unified list of pros and cons.  Half-way through the debate time, students will be shuffled into their actual debate team rooms and start working on the different debate roles.

NHD: Biggest goal this week: pick a topic and start to research.  If students need a library card application, I have several. 

Monday, November 26, 2012

ADVANCED MATH: Students learned the definition of rational and irrational numbers and were given a number of problems to practice their understanding of the concept.  The test on Looking for Pythagoras will be this Friday.

LA/SCIENCE:  Students will be will be working on the debate unit, which covers a myriad of science, language arts, and social studies standards.  Today students saw the breakdown of a recorded debate and found out their topic (but not their assigned stances.)  They should be looking for strong resources to support both sides of their topic.  My particular group should read through the articles posted on Edmodo and use the graphic organizer to organize the information shared in the articles.

NHD:  We switched groups for social studies, and I have Group B.  Today we just discussed the basic layout of NHD, the options for projects, and the theme.  I also showed them several examples of exhibits from last year. Tomorrow we will go into a bit more about topic selection, project guidelines, and primary vs. secondary sources.

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Today we had our "Dungeon of Doom," a time where students were able to get caught up on some missing work and, if everything was turned in already, work on their NHD project research.  Students also viewed A Christmas Carol, which will be the play that we view on December 7 at the Commonweal Theater in Lanesboro.  The students will later be asked to compare and contrast the two forms of this classic piece of literature, as a focus of the following Common Core Standard:  CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.7.7 Compare and contrast a written story, drama, or poem to its audio, filmed, staged, or multimedia version, analyzing the effects of techniques unique to each medium (e.g., lighting, sound, color, or camera focus and angles in a film).

NO NEW HOMEWORK!  When you come back from break, we will be focusing on our two-week debate unit, which will ask students to employ many skills that the Common Core asks of them.  Students will both read and speak with a critical focus, analyzing the information they have before them and composing sound arguments.

Have a good break!