Citizenship Test
12/21/2017
Students are still working hard to make flash cards for students preparing for the U.S. Citizenship test. After taking the practice exam online, students realized that the questions were not as easy or common sense as they had previously thought. Lori from the Alaska Literacy Program came to speak with the class about the requirements that immigrants must meet for citizenship as well as her role in helping students pass the exam. She was extremely knowledgeable and had us all engaged in new information. From her discussion of the program's needs, we are making study aids and flash cards for students going through their program. Students are working through partners to ensure that each question of the 100 possible is represented and finding creative ways to represent the information. This project serves a few purposes in our class. First of all, we are able to contribute something to the Alaska Literacy Program while learning how much they are doing in the community. We are also reinforcing the information from our earlier Constitution unit as most of the information on the citizenship exam was covered then. And finally, we are working on learning about immigration. By learning about the process today, we are able to accurately compare it to the information we are studying in History and see parallels and differences in how the United States has embraced or discouraged immigration over time. This week students also finished Letters from Rifka by Karen Hesse. They followed Rifka's journey of leaving Russia and immigrating to the U.S. in 1919 and learned a lot about the struggles and barriers that were prevalent at the time. To finish out that part of the unit, students created One Pagers to show the depth of the understanding of the topics in the novel. It is always interesting to see how each student interprets different parts of the reading as "most important" or "most meaningful". For this assignment, each student needed to pull two quotes from the book, visually represent a main theme, ask high level questions, and respond to someone else's work. They turned out great! ReportsHopefully, I have figured out how to keep everyone up to date on assignments and scores. I will go through an make the changes that have already been suggested and we will keep in touch over progress. Please let me know if you need more information or if any more questions come up. This is going to be a great way for us to constantly communicate!
Holiday Helping
12/17/2017
We started out our week completing the toy drive for The Salvation Army. It was incredibly successful and we all really enjoyed collecting the gifts. Even after these pictures were taken, we collected more that afternoon and the next day and hopefully were able to help someone's Christmas. Once the toy drive was complete, we worked at the Neighborhood GIFT program that is collectively put together by the Alaska Food Bank and The Salvation Army. Our 6th, 7th, and 8th graders worked very hard that day. They helped with registration by collecting clipboards and handing out paperwork. They also worked as personal shoppers and carriers getting everyone through the lines and to their cars. As we were leaving, we got lots of compliments about how our kids were so happy to help and eagerly did anything that was needed. It was amazing to watch. We also got a lot of school work done this week. Groups from our class presented lessons to the 2nd grade class. Over three days, our students did lessons about earthquakes, volcanoes, and mountain formation that they 2nd graders really loved. They were very engaging lessons that they learned from preparing and from helping each other.
This coming week, will finish Letters from Riftka and begin our immigration unit. We are really liking the book and the material has encouraged a lot of questions and discussions about immigration and WWII. Mapping a Future World
12/7/2017
This week we finished our unit on plate tectonics. Students worked with partners to predict where the continents will be in 100 million years by using an assumed constant motion for pieces of the lithosphere. This project incorporated different manipulatives and topics that brought everything from the unit together; it also helped students see that the movement being discussed is constant and that Earth will continue to change. Students chose a city on each continent as their focus point and used their map's scale to measure distance. They had to plot the changing latitude and longitude as it moved. We also spent a lot of time discussing how to take numbers from centimeters to kilometers and how to do long division with large numbers which was a great way to show a connection between their math and science. Overall, I think this unit went well and we covered a lot. Next week our science time will be spent with the fabulous 2nd graders. Groups have worked hard to make engaging and exciting lesson plans that they will share starting Monday afternoon. Hopefully both 2nd and 6th grade will learn a lot during this shared experience. Author's PurposeDuring our English time, we are discussing how to determine an author's purpose for writing a text. Students have spent time reading, completing task cards, and sorting different texts while looking for keys words and phrases that show the writer's intent.
Next week, we will continue to look at author's purpose by comparing informative and persuasive texts related to the same basic topics. We will also begin to read strictly persuasive articles looking for key words that show the author's opinions and potential bias on opposing sides of different topics. |
AuthorCharlotte Woodside recently moved to Alaska from Central Texas. This is her 8th year teaching middle school. Archives
April 2018
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