7th graders went to Wild Life Prairie Park to enjoy the outdoors and receive some wildlife education! Below are some pictures of our trip!
My phone died (again) and then we went home...
What a great day!! Sad it ended!
#tear
-Mrs. Ritchie
7th graders went to Wild Life Prairie Park to enjoy the outdoors and receive some wildlife education! Below are some pictures of our trip! My phone died (again) and then we went home... What a great day!! Sad it ended! #tear -Mrs. Ritchie
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All of my students (6th-8th grade), wrote a letter to a Veteran by the name of Mr. Bernard Guiles. Mr. Guiles served on the USS New Jersey and was an electrician. My students were very curious about who he was and how he sacrificed his life to provide us the freedom we have now. Many of my students didn't know what Memorial Day was... It was nice last Thurs/Friday to educate them about it and provide them a real life service project to do! Below are some letters that were made in class! He should be recieving these by the end of the week! :)) There were more cards... But, my phone died. :.( My kiddos did great at making him feel special! I hope he likes them!! -Ritchie I'm convinced my 7th graders are ready for the school year to end! We've been working extremely hard on some inquiry projects for reading & language! I can't believe the year is coming to an end! We are/have been seriously working up until the last minute! Take a look at what we've been up to the past few weeks! 7th graders were able to choose any invention or inventor to research that they wanted! After brainstorming inquiry questions, students tried to find the answers to their questions by research!! ! (Following MLA format to document sources, they paraphrased & took direct quotes from the relible sources they found!) Once the research was complete, (which took a very, very long time...) they used those facts they inquired to write a Q&A as if they were the interviewer and interviewee! They of course had to included a works cited page! :) Shout out to Alyssa and Cora! These girls approached me with another idea for a research project. I was all for it!! They researched bullying, conducted interviews and developed a program called the "Butterfly Effect"! They presented their research to the class. This generated a lot of discussion and questions about school policies on bullying! Crazy amount of work for Language!! ;) My 7th graders arose to the occasion! They nailed this research project! Woah!! Soooooo What about reading? Students explored the dystopian genre by choosing a book (at their level) and responding as they read! Students created a monthly calendar in which they mapped out their daily readings and work they had to do! The picture below, are response journal ideas that we brainstormed as a class. (This is technically a close reading model but more open-ended.) Books recommended from my class: **Maze Runner **Divergent *Invitation to the Game *Cinder *Among the Hidden **Hunger Games *Unwind *Fire Fight *Matched The next few pictures are examples of cover art in their response books and various types of responses! I'm sure some of you were wondering... How did I assess all of these responses that are so vastly diverse? This is the rubric I used for grading! I'm sure after attending an awesome assessment conference I'll perfect this... But, it seemed to do the job this time around! Each response was 20 points! Students were to write at least 10 and take an AR Test! After each response, I glued on of these in there so the kiddos could have instant feedback! ;) I either wrote comments on the page itself or in the comments section of the rubric.( This one I did on the page and explained why I gave 20/20 plus some bonus points!) Any students that wanted to make corrections, COULD on any response page! I also held weekly conferences to "check in" on their progress! This was the first time I had ever did something like this. It was definitely a learning experience! ;) I'm extremely proud of my homeroom! Next week is our field trip to Wild Life Park! I know my kids will enjoy the break from all the work we've been doing! -Ritchie! I only had a limited amount of time this week with my 6th grade kiddos! Instead of giving in to the temptation of calling it "quits" early, I decided to do a small creative writing/description project with them. They seemed to enjoy this! Students were able to create their own ice cream flavors and/or cone creations! It started with on Monday reviewing adjectives and playing Pictionary with chalk outside! I wish I snapped some pictures... Next time, I'll remember to charge my phone. Tuesday we brainstormed " plain boring adjectives" then used Thesauruses to find much more vivid synoymns! After that during language Weds-Friday we created art and wrote rough drafts using the vivid adjectives we brainstormed! Also, we can't publish our writing without creating a final draft of the ice cream flavor descriptions! Check out some VIBRANT and BRILLANT work below! As you can see, the kids enjoyed this writing activity! Their writing has improved so much! It's all fun & games next week! -Ritchie For the past 3-4 weeks, 8th grade has been working hard on our end of the year research project the "Bucket List"!! Students completed mini lessons on a review of MLA Formatting, Works Cited, Research Skills/Note Taking, etc! As we learned/reviewed these necessary skills, we then completed portions of the project on class. These were the parts of the project: Bucket List, "how-to" (chose one item to research and learn how to accomplish it), Creative component, and works cited! It was very structured, but Trust me... It was a lot of hard work! My students' effort and creativity really impressed me! In the pictures below, you will see how each of these students have goals and dreams they want to accomplish. I hope they do. You only get to live once- as I always say! Take a look!! After grading, students were required to present one part of their project to the class! When everyone was done presenting, students recieved their own buckets to take home! I also included a little inspirational letter! Needless to say, we had fun sharing dreams and snapping pictures! -Ritchie Here's a shout out to Parkview's Drama Club Circus Performance! :) Congrats to Jeff Kluesner and the kids for working so hard and nailing the performance! Below are some highlights from Tuesday Night & Thursday's School Show! We have some wonderfully talented students!! :) I'm extremely proud of all of them! Way to Go!! "Lawn Boy" was about a boy who created his own summer job and after a series of events... It turned out to be very lucrative for him! ;) It is such a fun novel, especially so close to the end of the school year. Students learned many valuable, life lessons from the story (especially about hard work and saving money) ! We aldo did A LOT of math! ;) After reading, students created a summer business proposal with a partner! I was so amazed by all the creative ideas!! Many groups had to research the one time costs of equipment and recurring costs their businessess may have! They also had to create an advertisement of their business and "propose " it to the class! ;) Below, are examples of student's projects and a description of their business/shout out! Great job with the presentations 6th Grade!! -Ritchie What do you notice about the photo above??? Everyone in the class ENGAGED in our mini project and sharing their work with one another! WOW!! We had a great day in reading class! :) To let you know a little bit about what we are up too - we have just finished Chapter 9 of the Outsiders by S.E. Hinton. If you haven't read this incredible story... I don't want to ruin it for you but at the end of this Chapter.. We lose a character whose moral character shines through in a very selfless act he carries out! ;) As a tribute to this character, we created Epitaphs. Poems, quotes or phrases usually found on headstones. After showing some real life examples, students used textual evidence and thought from the perspective of other characters in the book to create a meaningful tribute to this character that died. Below, are some examples of student work! As you could see, they understood the purpose of the activity and showed me that they read and understood the severity of the passing of this character for our other characters in the novel! Super proud teacher! ;) Oh the picture below is my class finding out I was snapping photos. HAHA I got caught! Until Next week, Ritchie |
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