Next Week's Plan: August 30-September 3

I can't believe next week is September! Wow, this school year is already going quickly!

How I love being a first-year teacher...you never get bored, because your plans are always changing...

After 3 weeks of planning, the 6th graders are FINALLY going to create their maps next week! We will start a latitude and longitude travel around-the-world project tomorrow in class (due Monday), and will start making our maps on Tuesday. I have been SO impressed with this group: latitude and longitude are difficult to understand, and they have all worked incredibly hard to grasp this subject.

The completed map projects will be doubly-special: not only will the 6th graders show me how they can apply their knowledge of maps and latitude and longitude, but they will also be visiting Mr. Rose's 4th grade class to teach them about maps as well! Both Mr. Rose and I are very excited about this class-to-class teaching and learning experience!

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The 7th Graders next week will be moving away from creating their own culture (it turns out this class are already culture experts, and have already created a culture of their own,) and so will be turning their eyes on cultures that already exist in the world. Keep your eyes open for the Country Culture Project Parade sheets that will be coming home tomorrow. The students will be creating a mini-parade float depicting the 7 Elements of Culture from a South American, Australian, European, Asian, or African country. This project will be completed mostly outside of class, but we will have two class periods next week to work on it as well. The floats will be due on Friday next week. 7th grade will also be learning about surveys, bar graphs, line graphs, and circle graphs. Fun!

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8th Grade is finishing this week by looking at Ancient Mesopotamia, the first of the Ancient Civilizations. (Ask them about how hard it was to be Hunter-Gatherers, to trade without words, and to decide how to create their own culture!) Next week we will examine written language, daily life in Mesopotamia, Mesopotamian jobs, and continue looking at the importance of trade.

8th graders: your first World History quiz will be Thursday, September 9.

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Seniors! How are you enjoying learning about research skills? I am working to gain access to the computer lab at least one day next week so we can continue looking at the positives and negatives of Internet [btw: always capitalize the word Internet. It's (for some reason) a proper noun :) ] research. If not, we will start practicing our summarizing skills! Plagiarism be gone!

Also, seniors: Don't forget about your weekly blog posts. Remember, this week you are focusing on one positive and one negative of your senior year! (Hopefully this communications class isn't the negative!)

Well, that's the plan...what will change? A lot, I'm sure! There are so many exciting and (I hope!) fun things happening in Discovery School Room #4 ... let's make next week as great as this one was!

KF