Our New Site

Our new classroom site is up and running - It's a Weebly, and seems much more conducive to parent and student use.

Please visit www.scholarsrm239.weebly.com for all the fun!

Genius Hour Presentations

Update to previous post:

We are pioneers at Thomas Middle School! Our hope is that we have learned life skills - persistance, determination, and how to be a life-long learner through this Genius Hour time we've had.

Some presentations can be found for a limited time on YouTube. Type in "2013 Genius Hour" and then your LA block (2/3, 5/6, or 8/10) to see some of them again. Some of them did not get recorded, or were of such poor filming quality that they were too hard to hear or understand, and so were not posted.

If you haven't already, please fill out this survey so that next year can be an even better experience...
THANK YOU!!

Frederick Douglass

For the rest of the school year, we'll be reading The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and working on our Genius Hour projects until we present them!

Although it may seem we are flying through Frederick Douglass, we are actually reading each chapter very closely, while annotating our text. Students are looking at specific sections and passages after reading each chapter. Determining what Douglass REALLY meant is tricky, but we are accepting the challenge! If your student says it's easy, it's because we were successful that day. If your student says it's difficult, believe him or her!

Note: ** ALL Frederick Douglass resources (including full text online) are on Edline.
          ** You are invited to see our Genius Hour presentations the week of May 28-31!

Author Skype!

Before Winter Break, Mrs. Kirr won a Skype visit with Lynda Mullaly Hunt, author of One for the Murphys! She'd read the book (which came out in the spring of 2012) in the summer and thought it was perfect for middle school readers. So... she started rounding up readers, and had nine readers ready to join us today. We had Molly, Morgan, Maddy, Sammie, Hannah, Katherine, Elise, Mr. Hillmer, and Mrs. Lott in attendance, and enjoyed answers to our questions. We asked about what made her want to write a book, why it started in Vegas, what was her inspiration for the characters, why she made the ending the way she did, and what happens when they go back to Vegas... Suddenly, we were given a sneak peek into her next book! Oh, the girls were overjoyed!

Check out the interaction between Ms. Hunt and her audience of 7th graders...

And here are our tweets back and forth...

The Outsiders

We are beginning fourth quarter with The Outsiders, by S.E. Hinton! This classic middle school novel will give students a chance to do some close reading (see the Common Core standards) with text that isn't too challenging. There will be a bit more homework for this quarter, and students are expected to bring their own copy of their book back and forth to class each day. These books are theirs to keep, and they are expected to write in them (favorite quotes, important events/quotes, "aha" moments, questions for clarification or wonderings, vocabulary, etc.), or put these ideas on sticky notes throughout the book.

Grades for this unit will be based on group discussions (students cannot participate in group discussions if they have not read the required chapter), comprehension questions, participation in paraphrasing activities and writing prompts. The final assessment will be a writing activity but will be graded on reading comprehension. Approximately one chapter will be assigned per night, with some time to begin each chapter during class time.

Here is the timeline for homework as it stands now (this site will be revised if we get off the schedule):

     4/3 - Chapter 1
     4/4 - Chapter 2
     4/5 - Chapter 3

     4/10 - Chapter 4
     4/11 - Chapter 5
     4/12 - Chapters 6 & 7

     4/16 - Chapter 8
     4/17 - Chapter 9
     4/18 - Chapter 10
     4/19 - Chapters 11 & 12
                                (finish)

As for the first day of each week, we will be working on our Q4 Genius Hour projects - please see the letter home that your child should have showed you - there is also a copy on Edline. Students & parents may look at the LiveBinder for the explanation we'll have in class on 4/2/13. The LiveBinder is here - http://www.livebinders.com/play/play?id=837375 . Due dates, rubrics, and short examples of what students can do are on this site.

Give us the evidence!

Phew! ISATs finish this week, and our polished pieces for Phineas Gage are turned in and graded... Redos are due by Monday, 3/18 - please schedule a time to come in before school, during lunch, or after school if you'd like more guidance.

It's time to put what we've learned about providing relevant evidence to the test. We'll be in groups this week, debating issues of relevance to us. For a debate to be successful, students must come up with strong, convincing evidence that their claim is the one we should listen to. (If you'd like more reason as to why we are doing debates in middle school, see this "Debates in the Middle School Classroom" site.) Tuesday we'll be introducing the concept and dividing into groups. Wednesday, Thursday and Friday will be used for finding the most convincing argument, coming up with a hook and a conclusion, and figuring out logistics. (On Friday, we'll also be hearing about good books from Miss Jergens!)

Next week Monday we will have our debates in class. The audience will participate as well as the debate members for each group. We'll wrap up the short week before Spring Break with Genius Hour on Tuesday and Career Day on Wednesday. Enjoy your two weeks and then your break!!

Paraphrase

Since we will be doing more of this particular close-reading activity throughout the year, it was time to blog about it, as it has "success" written all over it...

This week, we read a NewYorkTimes article about the teenage brain to accompany Phineas Gage and get us ready for The Outsiders. We read it aloud first, discussed any questions students had, and then tried a couple of close-reading activities. One of the activities we completed was a seemingly simple paraphrase of one sentence. We took the following sentence:

     "These (studies) show that the brain systems providing for impulse control are still maturing during adolescence."

Students looked at this sentence for a minute, then they were asked to put this sentence into their own words.  After a few minutes, I collected a few samples, and put them on the board, under the original sentence.

One class looked like this:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1                                             2                                              3                                         4

closest to the 

author's meaning

     "These (studies) show that the brain systems providing for impulse control are still maturing during adolescence."

A = During adolescence, your brain is still maturing and the way 
       you react during adolescence will not be the same reaction 
       as an adult.
B = During maturing of the brain, impulse control isn't developed.
C = Teens aren't fully developed when it comes to making social 
       decisions.
D = These studies show why teenagers are impulsive.

What did we do with these? Looking at one answer at a time, students took turns discussing where they would place it on the line and explain why. Students listened to each other, commented on each other's comments, along with adding their own, and we came up with a number range for each one that they were satisfied with. By the time we reached the fourth response, "D", students were demonstrating deep understanding of the original sentence. They knew which parts were the most important ("impulse control," and "still maturing during adolescence"), and they had strong discussions about the true meaning of the words "impulse" and "adolescence." Some expressed that their brains hurt when we were finished. Mission accomplished...



We did this as a class today, and will be doing this again as a class, in small groups, and students will also rate their own words on a similar scale.

This activity was adapted from Wireless Generation's lessons on The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass. We use Wireless Generation / Writers' Express as a writing curriculum, which closely aligns with the Common Core Standards.

February

This week, we are transitioning from our nonfiction reading of Outliers, to responding to nonfiction using Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story About Brain Science, by John Fleischman.

This book is the third book in the WEX curriculum, and yet we are not just writing in response to what we read, but we will continue to take notes in our reading journal AS we read, and also partake in close-reading activities that are in direct correlation to the Common Core Standards. This book will likely take us into the first week of March, as we dissect portions and really look closely at the author's choice of vocabulary, structure, and purpose.

This blog will not be updated until we transition out of Phineas Gage, but writing prompts and activities that can be completed at home will be posted on Edline. Be sure to check the Posterous page for activities that vary from our classroom "norm." Any questions? Please don't hesitate to ask!

A Short Week

Due to Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday and a S.I.P. day (where LA teachers will be learning how to apply Common Core Standards to our WEX reading materials and "core" books), we have a very short week of school.

Wednesday we will start by re-fueling discussions about our passions, so students who need more guidance choosing a path for their independent projects can hopefully get their passions reignited. We will also continue with our projects and one-on-one conferences regarding individual goals. Thursday and Friday we will complete our close-reading of Outliers, by Malcom Gladwell. Grammar and Root Word study this week will be a review of what we've learned so far. (We hope to begin Phineas Gage: A Gruesome but True Story about Brain Science next week.)

Outliers & a visitor!

Last week, and the week coming up, our LA classes are taking a glimpse into the book Outliers, by Malcom Gladwell. We are doing some close-reading exercises, which align with the Common Core State Standards, along with writing about what we read. Last week we read chapter one, and this coming week into next week, we'll be reading and responding to chapter two.

We will have a visitor on Tuesday, 1/15 - Miss Julie Jergens from AHML will be coming and giving book talks to our classes and Mr. Slowinski's classes! Miss Jergens could entice a BEAR to read the books of which she speaks!!

Other points of interest coming up... Our MAP LA test was on 1/11. This is used primarily as a screener for advanced LA. Our winter MAP Reading test will be on 1/17. This is used as a check-point. It is the shortened version of the full MAP test (only 20 questions), and is not one teachers tend to look at when we're looking at data points, as it is so short. Our full 40 question test will, again, be in the spring. Please note that LA teachers do not "teach to the test." This is just another number we can use when looking at the whole picture of your child's progress. In fact, Mrs. Bingaman let me know a few weeks ago, that the high schools in the area have found that test scores do not indicate success in high school - student grades do.

Two weeks of quality writing...

We are all sensing the vibrations coming off of each other in room 239. It seems as if winter break can't get here fast enough, but we really need to hold on! We have finished reading Out of the Dust, and we have begun the process of writing our final polished piece for response to fiction. We will be using all of our resources to get through - the marble behavior plan, examples of student writing, quotes from the book, the timeline of events from the novel on two walls, and our patience.

Schools Clipart.com

This week: All week - Grammar and root word warm-up exercises
                  Monday - Genius Hour (many new ideas brewing!)
                  Tues-Fri we'll be writing different parts of our polished piece!!
Next week: All week - Grammar and root word warm-up exercises
                  Monday - Genius Hour (Have you asked your child what he/she is learning?)
                  Tuesday & Wednesday - type and edit our polished piece
                  Thursday & Friday - watch the PBS special about the dust bowl
                  Saturday - time for family... Enjoy!

Classroom Conversations

We ended the week by having a classroom discussion - about whatever each class decided was important. Many topics were raised, and we started to come up with solutions - to behavior issues (talking over each other, following directions) and use of "special" chairs (such as yoga balls). We talked about some of it aloud, and we wrote some of our thoughts in blurbs on Today's Meet.

We will be addressing these issues more this coming week, while we realize that we still have many choices in this class. This class is run much like a democracy - where students have choice. When asked what choices do we have in this class, one student said the following:

I hope this transcends to Genius Hour on Monday. I hope more students will begin to see the value in choice of what they read. I have a feeling we'll be having some presentations soon that show what students have been researching... My next goal is for those to be inspirational to other students so we can continue this trend of learning what we choose to learn.

Happy Thanksgiving!

So thankful...

   I am thankful for our 7th graders.

   I am thankful we take quality time with lessons.

   I am thankful we have students owning their own learning.

   I am thankful we are focused on learning, and not grades.

   I am thankful we have caring students in our midst.

After this week of Out of the Dust, reading about the sorrow in Billie Jo's life, I just wanted to say how thankful I am for what I have in my life. May you and your families have a beautiful Thanksgiving week. 

Maybe I'll see some of you at conferences!

          Sincerely,

                  Mrs. Kirr

Taking it slowly...

We began Out of the Dust this week, after Genius Hour and Election Day. We've only read 33 pages so far, and it's an easy book. So why are we taking things so slowly?

We are practicing critical reading. We are delving into small sections, bit by bit, finding out more about Billie Jo (the main character) and her situation in this historical fiction set in the 1930s. Students are being nit-picky, finding tiny pieces of text that show what is truly happening in the novel. Here's an tiny glimpse into our room (thanks to photographer Martina)...

This coming week, we'll continue to focus solely on Out of the Dust - reading critically, and then writing about what we've read and discussed.

The end of one thing, the beginning of another...

We are finished with our narrative writing unit! What does this mean? It means we're on to "Responding to Fiction," a unit that will blend our LIT class and LA class very nicely. Beginning Wednesday, we will be reading Out of the Dust by Karen Hesse. This will be a read-aloud novel in class, as we only have enough copies for a class set.

This unit will lend itself to great questions for our reading journals, and text-supported evidence for our writing prompts. This is a fairly easy novel, written in prose, but we can extrapolate many meaningful lessons from it. This is part of the WEX curriculum, and we are adding to this unit to make it fit our new Common Core Standards as well.

In addition, students will be starting grammar warm-ups and root word warm-ups. We will do these at the start of each class. We will focus on one sentence a week for our grammar warm-up exercises, and one to two root words per week. We will treat them both as puzzles for us to get our brains working right away!

October Has Come and Gone

This week, we began with Genius Hour and beginning to wrap up our narrative polished pieces, then finished our Global Read Aloud book - The One and Only Ivan. I think this is best represented in the video below...This week, we began with Genius Hour and beginning to wrap up our narrative polished pieces, then finished our Global Read Aloud book - The One and Only Ivan. I think this is best represented in the video below...
Next week, we'll continue to polish our narratives as we head into November!! (Sneak peek - reading Out of the Dust, by Karen Hesse, using our Readers' Notebooks and WEX writing together...)

Skyping About The One and Only Ivan

This week was full... but our most exciting day was the day we were able to Skype with three classes in Canada (one in each of our classes here!). We asked a couple of questions about The One and Only Ivan, as each of these classes is on the Weebly that was set up to discuss this book, and they are reading the same pages we are each week. However, students really wanted to know more about their schools in general. We found out about recess, having two teachers for the day, French classes, and more!

We also touched base on WHY we were Skyping... it is NOT to "waste class time." It is a valuable use of time, if we are to learn about other kids around the globe. It was impressed upon the class that we need to learn about other people and find out their backgrounds, in order to understand why they do what they do, and in order to avoid conflicts. The stress this week is on communication - give and take.

Included in the week - visualization while reading, asking questions to ourselves about what we have read, writing about what we've read, and we also wrote more for our narrative. In fact, on Friday, we began the prompt that will lead to our polished piece for narrative writing.

MIddle of October?!

Last week, we were able to really delve into The One and Only Ivan, keep practicing our narrative writing, and also wrap up a few loose ends.

This coming week, at least one class will be Skyping with a class from Canada! We'll be chatting about zoos - linking what we're feeling about Ivan, Stella and Ruby, and also what we already know. Our students will be reading (and commenting on) blog posts from Mrs. Middleton's class regarding zoos, as well.  I wonder what their zoos are like in British Columbia and Ontario?? We'll find out Wednesday!

We'll have Genius Hour on Monday, of course, and I'll be asking a few students in one-on-one conferences about what really bothers them - I'm still hoping students will read about issues they are concerned about and then act on them some how, some way... The rest of the week, we'll be figuring out what our narrative polished piece should look like, learning/reviewing how to punctuate dialogue, analyzing the text of the Declaration of Independence... What else?!

Our Cardboard Challenge

What a week we've just gone through!

Since we'd finished Wonder, by R.J. Palacio, we wrote reflections about it - students had 20 choices about which to write! You'll find these on our student blogs (see tab above). In addition, we began the Global Read Aloud and read 74 pages of The One and Only Ivan! Ivan's "voice" is very much his own, and we can tell what type of silverback gorilla he is.

We had a visitor last week - Miss Tillander. She helped us figure out how to take notes for our monument projects in social studies. And, of course, we had Genius Hour on Monday. But I think students' most favorite part of the week was Thursday, when we completed the cardboard challenge set by Caine Monroy of Caine's Arcade. Students were productive, creative, and very cooperative! Some reflections from the day will be on our blogs, but students are turning them in in various forms. But you've GOT to see our video of the day! Enjoy the energy exuding from it!

The Global Read Aloud

HOT NEWS OFF THE PRESS:
Beginning October 1st, our class will be participating in the Global Read Aloud Project! We will be reading The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate (a fantasy narrative!) and sharing our thinking about the book with other classrooms from across the world. We will be connecting on a more frequent basis with classrooms in British Columbia, and Ontario, Canada! How's that for living up to the district mission statement of fostering responsible, caring citizens in a global community? ;-)

We will be using two primary forms of electronic communication - Edmodo and Kidblog. Students will share questions, answers, and thinking informally and formally, on two safe social learning networks designed specifically for classrooms. Students are not able to join groups unless they have been given a code, so only those teachers who have connected with me and shared our code can join our discussion group. In addition, we'll be holding Skype sessions to discuss the book as a class and share activities/projects on which we are working.

Mrs. Kirr is ecstatic about this project and the learning ahead!

Other things going on this coming week...
Monday - Genius Hour - our first grade for independent reading comes from the students themselves
Tuesday - How to extract information from articles, and stake a claim for their social studies monument
Wednesday - Review/reflection of Wonder, by R.J. Palacio
Thursday - The Cardboard Challenge!