Steal Away Home

Reading: We began the novel "Steal Away Home" about a young girl who is helping her parents turn a historical old house in Lawrence, KS in to a bed and breakfast, when she discovers a human skeleton in a secret room behind a wall. The novel provides insight to the plight of freeing slaves in the 1800's. We chose this novel to coincide with their Kansas History class in Social Studies. The novel will take approximately three weeks to finish.
Writing: The students are choosing a Kansas leader to write a research paper, complete with organizers and a presentation tool from Big Huge Labs website! You might need to help them with finding outside material on their person.
Helping Hearts for Haiti - My TA class began a donation collection for the Hatian victims of the recent earthquake. Please do what you can to support their aid in Haiti. We will present our collection just in time for Valentine's Day to the director of Star of Hope on Friday, Feb. 12th!

A New Year

Looking forward to a new year with my seventh graders. A few moved over Christmas break and I'm sad about that.
I am so excited to get started with reading and writing for the second semester. In reading we will focus on persuasion techniques, persuasive reading material, fact/opinion, understand bias and author purpose/audience. A few persuasive articles relate to seventh grade "real world" reading that I think they will enjoy.
In writing we will not only understand persuasion techniques but make a brochure depicting all 6 techniques and later work with a partner to create a product and make a 1 minute commercial. It will be a very busy two weeks especially since my students will take the third Common Assessment!