Normally, surviving 7 days of school is a big deal. The change in routine, the loss of your comfy summer attire (jammies til 10am, anyone?), the intense HUNGER because you can't snack all day long...
But this year....this year, surviving seven days of school us a HUGE deal.
Has it been crazy? Of course.
Is it hard to know if we're coming or going? Definitely.
But are we back at school, IN PERSON, learning and laughing together? YES. And it's beautiful.
There's not much to report here, honestly, but I would like to give a huge shout out to everyone for making this possible. Parents, we know this is hard for you, but we appreciate your support. Kids, we know this is really hard for you, but you're doing a stand up job. And teachers....well, you know that you're struggling but rocking it at the same time.
So let's get down to brass tacks.
We are seven days into school, and we've been reviewing tons of things from previous ELA years. Plot maps? Check. Vocab words? Double check. Parts of a story? Main idea? Supporting Details? Check, check, check. A lot of review can be annoying, but the more we review quickly now, the less momentum we will lose later on when we get to jump into our first novel.
Speaking of! It's almost time to start our first novel! The first one is called The Darkest Hour by Caroline Tung-Richmond. It's historical fiction that takes place during WWII, and it's one of my new favorite books. Espionage, explosions, deception...this book is action packed and shocking, and the best part is that we get to learn about WWII while we read it. I can't wait to share this book with your kiddo!
To prep for it, we'll be doing some frontloading of WWII history: dates, locations, major events. The kids will be spearheading a lot of this through a quick independent research task they'll do this week while remote learning. (Next week if you're a SILVER family!) Through this, we're going to discover that really good readers draw on their background knowledge and schema to better understand the stories they read. Well also get to compare and contrast the authentic history with the fictionalized version the author presents. We'll be reading nonfiction articles about the real-life female spies that helped us win WWII, and then glean a better understanding about the invented characters in the book - and we'll be able to see that some of the crazy things the girls do really aren't that far off from real life.
Do I have you hooked yet? If you want to tag along on our historical adventure to war-torn Europe, be sure to check it out on my YouTube channel. I'll be posting the nonfiction articles there, and the novel will be there, too.
I know the year is going to be challenging, but, to quote the famous Winston Churchill:
“We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. ... We shall never surrender."