Well, This week went by fast! In class we continue to read Schooled,and on Thursday the Grade 8's spent 30 minutes practicing meditation and learning yoga (the main character of the book is a 13 year-old grade 8 who does Tai Chi and meditation, but none of us actually know how to do Tai Chi so... yoga it is!) Our school counselor, Mr. Levin led the yoga and I led the guided meditation and relaxation.
Next Friday we are doing tie-dye (the main character wears tie-dyed clothing). To make everyone's life easier, we are going to tie-dye paper. Please have your student bring food coloring and shaving cream, along with a cookie baking sheet (needs to have edges to hold the shaving cream, so no edgeless chookie sheets please). Make sure that you label your cookie sheet with a piece of masking tape and your students name so that it gets back to you! The paper needed is card stock.
This great book addresses several key issues for students and is a great way to start the year. First, one of the central issues is bullying, and the idea of not being the bully, but being a person in the crowd who goes along with it.
The second is the idea of accepting peoples differences and looking beyond the surface of a person.
And the third is ethics. What makes something right or wrong?
All of these issues help us to address our Big Question for the first six weeks of school: Is the truth the same for everyone?
This week in History we also began to work on our big books. These are stories about people from our history textbook. There will be time all next week in class to work on these. The only students working on them at home will be stuednts whose groups are behind, or students who have an extra interest in the project.
Homework:
This was a light homework week.
Period 2 was assigned writing assignment #2. It is listed for download under 8th grade materials and is due on Friday, typed. Students will have time during the week to gather evidence from the book to support their opinions and should work on the essay a little bit every day. This weekend (if possible) students should make an outline of the essay. For help with this please download the power point "how to write an essay" from 8th grade materials.
All students are to read a minimum of 3.5 hours this week or 30 minutes every night.
Students will be assigned a 3 week project this upcoming week either on Tuesday or Wednesday. It will be a SMALL research project and will focus on notable immigrants. It will be due at the end of September, with small project check-ins along the way.
On a last sad note, every year many people are lost on these longer holiday weekends. Friday night my 23 year old cousin died in a car accident. He was riding with two friends and was in the back seat when they hit another car. The boy who was driving was legally drunk and my cousin, who was in the back seat, was not wearing his seatbelt and was ejected from the car on impact. Please, please watch out for other drivers, don't drink and then get behind the wheel- even if you are sure you are OK, and make sure you and your kids are wearing their seatbelts, it probably would have saved his life.
Mrs. Anderson
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