It's hard to believe, but Friday (yes...two days from now...) is MIDTERM of 2nd quarter! And 4 short weeks after that it's Christmas break, which means we are HALF WAY THROUGH the year. Already.
Sometimes I look at the calendar and wonder what happened to the school year, but other times I look it over and feel more like a King surveying his domain: look at all we have accomplished!
We're part way through The Lightning Thief, and most of the kids are really enjoying it. (Some of the kids haven't read ALL of the required chapters...which may account for their lesser levels of enjoyment....but we'll get there...!) As we read, we've been applying our skills that we learned at the start of the year - analyzing characters, setting, developing plot maps. We are discovering holes in our knowledge and filling them in, and we've been working on vocabulary like a boss.
The Greek god projects were completed, and I was happy with the results, especially for a "first-time in 6th grade" project. The projects and presentations gave us some great jumping off points for future projects, and I'm eager to pilot a new project during our study of Ancient Egypt!
Let's see....what else are we working on....
INTERVENTION REVAMP!!!
The ELA teachers gathered together last week and decided to test drive a new intervention system, and I'm super excited about it! Did you know that nearly 70% of ALL WORDS in the English language are derived from Greek or Latin roots? And one SINGLE Greek or Latin root can create between 5 and 20 English words? These seemingly random facts all tie into this new intervention system we worked out: the start of each intervention time will be spent working with a new Greek or Latin root. We'll spend the next 6-7 days really developing an understanding of what that word means, and we will explore the many different words that it creates. Games, pictures, discussions....we'll do it all, in hopes that we can teach our students these basic roots and enhance their reading and word-decoding skills on a boarder scale. We can logically only direct instruct vocabulary on a very limited number of words, but by using intervention time in this way, we can open up volumes of new words to the kids that will inevitably help their reading and vocabulary abilities. I'm thrilled!
To compliment the vocab element, kids will have the opportunity to read a novel of their choice during the last half of the intervention time. While they read, teachers will be having short book conferences with them, allowing us to assess skills on an individual level and give more specific and guided feedback on skills and tasks. We did a short training on this last week, and I'm excited to hit the ground running with this after Thanksgiving!
We're looking at some changes during Reading class itself, too. I want to limit the load of homework, especially with those nightly skill worksheets, so I'm looking at a couple different options to change things up! My hope is that by lighting the pencil-paper load of work, students will be able to focus on the reading portion of the homework instead....and ACTUALLY READ THE NOVEL! It's too good of a book to miss, guys!
SOCIAL STUDIES!! We'll wrap up Ancient Greece right before Thanksgiving (with no test...there's just no time!) and will start Egypt when we get back. I imagine that Egypt will run us all the way until Christmas break, but if we have any spare time at all we will check out some Christmas customs from around the world and hopefully even learn about Hanukkah!
HOMEWORK: Wednesday 11-15
Vocab: worksheet
Reading: next chapter of the Lightning Thief
Math: Test tomorrow (Thursday)
HOMEWORK: Thursday 11-16
Reading: next chapter of the Lightning Thief
Math: Test
HOMEWORK: Friday 11-17
Reading: Comprehension WS and Web (review this skill)
Vocab: quiz