Jigsaw Presentations

We began presentations of the jigsaw work that students had been working on today. It was good to see students taking charge of the classroom. We will continue these tomorrow. No homework.

Success Day

Today was Success Day, so we did not meet as a class. I did have the chance to work with some students to revise their work.

Tomorrow, we will begin presenting our jigsaw responses from The Breadwinner. Come to class ready to present.

Jigsaw cont.

Today we continued working on our Jigsaw tasks. These need to be completed on Thursday when you come to class. I look forward to hearing your presentations!

If you have not yet been signed off for Success Day, you are welcome to work on missing assignments and revision at home. Find me in the morning, I can sign it off before school.

Jigsaw

Today we broke up the chapters of The Breadwinner for a jigsaw activity. Students are responsible for reading their chapter, then completing several tasks, then teaching the class about that chapter. We will also work on this tomorrow. Presentations for this project will start Thursday (after Success Day).
Students may or may not have homework. It was up to each group to decide if they needed to work on this at home.

Vocab Taboo!

Today we played a fun game of vocabulary Taboo to prepare us for taking a vocab quiz.

After that, we began to discuss human rights, a topic that will guide our class for the next several weeks.

We have no homework - enjoy your weekend!

Breadwinner, Ch 4

For homework: Please complete your role. Also, look over your vocab words. We'll have a quiz tomorrow.

Questioning and Vocabulary

We opened class today with students discussing the questions they wrote for homework. It was great to see them guiding their own conversations about what they found interesting in the story.

Then, we continued to look at vocabulary from The Breadwinner. We previously defined these words. Today, we practiced using them in our own sentences and then drawing pictures of those sentences. Using words yourself is the surest way to master them.

For homework, complete sentences that prove you know the meaning of words AND draw a picture depicting the sentence. Click here if you lost the worksheet. We will have a vocab quiz on Friday.

Oh, and sorry I didn't post yesterday. I got my eyes dilated and couldn't see a thing!

Another three day weekend awaits us...

Today, we summed up The Breadwinner through the end of Chapter 2. We read aloud from the end of the chapter as Parvanna's father was taken away by the Taliban. It was a scary situation. I certainly wonder what Parvanna and her family will do next!

We had an interesting discussion about a passage from the book. After he describes the story of Malali, an Afghan folk heroine, Parvanna's father challenges his daughters to be brave and fight the battles of the future. His oldest daughter, Nooria, comments that she is sick of war and does not want to fight anymore. Father responded, "There are many types of battles." We discussed what he meant by this - what types of battles might await Parvanna? Maybe mental, psychological, verbal, economic, political. We ruled out intergalactic. There's a lot awaiting our young heroine.

Enjoy the long weekend. See you Tuesday.

The Breadwinner, Ch 2

Today we reviewed the roles that we completed last night. Students compared their progress and made posters which we will use to teach others about how to do these roles.

Then, we worked on independent reading of Chapter 2. We will finish that up tomorrow.

For homework, students should complete their role, which they should have written down in class. Use the instructions from yesterday for guidelines on how to craft your response.

The Breadwinner

Today we began reading our novel. We finished Chapter 1 (well, almost in 7B) and discussed issues relevant to the text.

For homework, students have been assigned a role. They need to complete the requirements of that role and come to class tomorrow ready to discuss what they have done.

Predictions

Today we finished our pre-reading activities for The Breadwinner.

Students taught each other about the topics they read about yesterday. It was great to see students taking charge of class and teaching each other.

And tomorrow - we start the novel!

For homework, students need to read over the unit overview, which tells us what to expect in the coming month. From the last section, please choose one thing you are most excited about and one thing you are least excited about. On a separate sheet of paper, tell me why.

Research and Predict

Today we worked on doing a bit more research about Afghanistan in order to better understand the book (The Breadwinner) which we will start reading later this week.

Students read packets, answered questions, and prepared to teach their classmates about landmines, the Taliban, and an Afghan folk hero names Malalai.

For tomorrow: Finish answering questions 1-5. Come to class prepared to teach others about what you learned today.

Let it Snow!

There was a lot of excitement at the end of class today as the snow started to fall. We'll see if it sticks!

Today in class, we worked on the WebQuest (linked below) and filled in this worksheet to explore those topics.

For homework, please complete the remaining sections of this work, including the Reflection sheet on the last page. Make sure to write in complete sentences!

Don't forget: No zeros in Language Arts - so if you don't do your homework, you will at lunch time!

Don't know if we'll see each other tomorrow because of the snow. Either way, enjoy your night!

WebQuest!

We will use this process for the WebQuest we complete today. Enjoy!

Welcome to a new year!

Hello students and parents. I would like to again say that I am very excited about my new role as the 7th Grade Language Arts teacher. Please take a look at this letter from Principal Underwood and myself that went home with students today.

In class today, we completed a K-W-L chart to determine what we know and what we want to know about our next unit of study. We will be studying Afghanistan. It was very interesting to hear so much debate about prior knowledge of a country which is always in the news.

If you are reading this, good for you! You get 5 points of extra credit for visiting our class blog on the first day! Tell me the secret word tomorrow (Breadwinner) to receive your extra credit!

Please continue to check the blog for relevant announcements and info about class.