Busy Beginning

The school year is in full swing! We have officially completed three weeks of school, and I survived picture day (I'm in charge of picture day - it goes with yearbook territory). These weeks have been a HUGE success! I am unbelievably proud of my students and their hard work. 

We started off the first week with the general 'getting to know you' activities, but by the end of the week, we had jumped straight into the deep end!

My students deconstructed their standards. We worked through the Common Core/College and Career Readiness Standards to make them understandable for everyone. Now we are all on the same page about what needs to be accomplished this school year!

By the end of the first week, we began Close Reading. I was VERY hesitant about attempting this with my eighth graders, but I was also VERY wrong. They rocked it! Completely took over and ran with their thoughts! We barely scratched the surface on day one, and day two was even more incredible. I teach a regular ed class and an inclusion class. Both classes were remarkable. They really took the texts and made relevant, interesting connections. Many that never occurred to me!

During the second week of school, we began our first PBL unit: "How can we use history to solve a current issue?" Students will end the unit by creating a proposal to solve a current issue in society. 

We kicked it off with QFT (Question Formulation Technique)). My students ran with this activity too! They got so much out of it. Their ideas and creativity were more than I could have ever hoped for. 
They worked in groups to narrow down their questions to their best open ended questions. Then they worked as a class using "Keep it, Junk it, or Cloud it" to narrow down their final questions. 
Their final questions go into the "Want to Know" column of our unit K-W-L. (They were so enthralled and ON TASK with the QFT, we never made it to the K-W-L that day - and our class period is one hour forty-five minutes long.)

This year has so much to hold! It's fantastic!

As a part of our first unit, we are reading The Diary of Anne Frank. Prior to reading the story, my students used a virtual tour of Anne Frank's Secret Annex to complete a virtual quest. They enjoyed seeing everything first hand and hearing how everyone lived. It was eye-opening for my students to see, travel through, and hear the living situation and conditions that surrounded the Holocaust. It was a great opening activity!

We are only three weeks into this school year, and it is already incredible. It will be a fantastic experience to see my students grow this year. I look forward to continuing our student-center classroom using project based learning!