One Month Down, Nine to Go!!

Let me begin by stating that I now understand the challenge of keeping up with my blog, Instagram, Facebook, twitter, Pinterest, and TpT during the school year, but I promise I am going to get better with updating everything!

Now that the first month of the new school year has come and gone, and my new 6^th graders have reached the halfway point for completing their first quarter of middle school, it’s time for a new blog post! 

Over the past month we have explored our theme of foundation, created new words with affixes, built characters through characterization, started our literature circle novel, and even added some new books to our classroom library through donorschoose.org (and this is just an overview of my 6^th grade English class!). 

Above:  A picture of SOME of our new books added to our classroom library this year! We added over 50 new non-fiction and graphic novels.

As many of you know, I also teach 7^th and 8^th grade Journalism, which has gotten off to a great start as well.  My young journalists have started researching, taking notes, interviewing teachers and students around the school, and even started writing their first articles for the first issue of our school newspaper.  

Above:  These pictures are from my favorite lesson that I’ve taught so far.  About two weeks into the school year my young journalists were presented with a CLOSE reading activity of a newspaper article.  After reading the article, students were given the opportunity to move around the room with their groups in order to answer all of the critical think questions relating to the article.  After everyone had a chance to answer the questions, we discussed them as a whole group and then discussed the article in further detail, along with the many different elements that a newspaper article contains.  This lesson completely exceeded my expectations and showed me early on how creative my students are!

Beyond teaching, this year has been packed with some other AMAZING moments, both inside and outside of the classroom.

Above: Pictures taken from both of our community outreach BBQs that some of our amazing staff members put together in order to connect with some of our families outside of the school building.  The outcomes for both of these events were awesome and the families definitely appreciated all of the hard work and dedication that our teachers were doing for them and their kids.  We had a lot of fun at these events by grilling up some hotdogs for everyone who attended, one of our teachers brought their DJ equipment for entertainment, and we were able to connect with families through great conversation.  We were also able to help students gain access to their grades online, provide students with school supplies, and get the word out about some new changes that have been happening at our school.  These events were truly remarkable and I am so glad to have participated with both of them!

We also had a marvelous Back to School Night where parents were able to interact with all of us through some inquiry based learning activities modeled from lessons taking place in our classrooms.

Above:  This is a picture taken from our BTSN where parents were given the task of labeling a blank plot diagram with the different parts of a story that we read to them, along with labeling the different elements of a plot diagram.  Oh, and they completed this activity with everything being written in either French or Spanish.  We did this activity in order to not only represent the diversity of school population, but also to represent all of the different classes within our English, Reading, ESOL, and World Language department!  It was truly a magical evening of collaboration, high expectations, and inquiry-based learning.

Overall, I couldn’t have asked for a better way to start off the school year, and I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen next with my amazing students and their families through the remarkable things our staff does for them on a daily basis! 

Hope you all have a great day! :)