Saturday, January 24, 2015

Friday (really Saturday) 1-23/24-15

We had a great exhibition on Friday. Thanks to the parents that could stop in. I like to provide us with a production to help us have an authentic audience. You helped provide that (as did we and Mr. Cole's class that stopped by.)  I can confidently say, everyone learned a lot about researching and presenting. I will let you know of future visiting opportunities.

Our next research writing will start Monday with us all reading Joy Hakim's The History of Us The First Americans. This book will give us a good mentor text for narrative non-fiction writing.  We will each create a codex about a a tribe and write a report on one tribe after reading this text together. This will apply all of our note taking and research skills that we practiced with our Vermont History Day Leadership and Legacy project.

At the same time, students are deciding a science fair project to complete alone or with a partner.
Here is a link to the requirements

Science Fair Isearch Requirements

If you are wondering what an Isearch is, check out this article:
http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/mary.warner/Book-Teaching%20Writing%20Chapters/Chap%206%20final.pdf

(Now I'm starting to give you homework.)

Don't feel overwhelmed. The majority of the Native Americans report will be done in social studies class. The science fair will also be done at school and as an anchor activity when student have spare moments in the day. You should not that the actual tests and experiments will be done at home, but I will warn you in advance.

Students are encouraged to go to the school science fair in March (around the 10th-15th, date tbd), but not required.  (There's nothing like a performance deadline.)

Next week we return to regular journal homework, focusing on finishing our novels, and word study.  Progress reports will come home on Friday.

Good work everyone.

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