Typing

Students have been blogging throughout the year and I'm excited to see their progress. It seems to me that overall their posts have become more thoughtful and they seem to look forward to our blogging days.

 

I noticed that when students made grammatical errors, they did not always notice during the writing process. I think our capitalization and punctuation might improve if we spend a little more time focusing on typing. Students will now have a little time to practice time each week, but they are more than welcome to practice at home too!

We are using www.typingweb.com, and students have their log-in information. Feel free to check the site out and encourage your students to practice ... especially with both hands in the right place. :)

Here are the lessons they will be working on in the beginner portion:



Figuring MLA Out

This week, students have been working to format a paper using MLA Style, which is set by the Modern Language Association. They will be using this in high school and we will be using MLA Style later in the year to cite the sources that we find. Thanks for answering any questions they might have had at home when formatting their documents!

Below is a picture of students playing a game to make us familiar with MLA headings. We turned our desks into a sheet of computer paper and laid out the pages silently, so there were multiple hand signals going on!

For the rest of the year, we'll be distinguishing between plagiarizing and paraphrasing so students know how to handle a source when they use it.

 

MLA Basics

This week, we're working with citing things using MLA. When guessing what MLA stood for (Modern Language Association), students suggested My Loving Armpit or Michigan Lakes Association. :)

I know we'll have some learning curves because this type of formatting is new for all the students, but check out this video from Purdue's Online Writing Lab, which is also a great source for information! Eventually, we will move into works cited pages.

A Visit from an Author

Throughout the years, I've really come to believe that each situation I'm in is a chance to learn from someone else's story. This week, that was definitely true in English class! We had a substitute para for the day who was helping students in my sixth hour.

 

The students were working to write dialogue, when the para said, "You know, it's so true. I've written a book and dialogue was the most difficult place to really capture the action and the characters." Our para was Mrs. Donna Boddy, who published the book "Angel on a Mission" in 2011 and is working on the sequel.

 

With a quick change in the lesson, we had time for the students to ask questions about what it's really like to write a book. What an awesome chance for the students to learn! So many of them raised their hands that they wanted to write a book. We have some budding authors!

 

Mrs. Boddy talking with the students. Check out her website at http://donnaboddy.com/.

Blackout Poetry

Seventh graders have been working with punctuation so one day we got to break some of the punctuation rules we had been working with! Instead of looking for correct sentences, we created blackout poems where we took a variety of words and puncutation marks from a Kansas City Star article.

 

 We transformed the meaning of the article from one topic to another. (Below you'll see a poem about bullying. The article was originally about acting.) They did a great job!

 

 



Giving up: I believe that giving up is a kind of joke

 

Decisions: decisions could be simple it might also stretch who we are but who we know we are

 

Bullying: watching bullying can be exhasting. one stopped and the other began.

 

 Love: friends say I love you it's necessary to tell you I want everyone to know feelings are strength

 

Have Trust: I believe God speaks "I love you."

 

Music: When it comes to music it blows my mind it makes me want to laugh it's so brilliant it's really not opinion definitely More than that

Feedback on the Snapshots Unit

2013 8th Grade Class Snapshots

Joe B.

Tom D.


Kyla D.


Bridgette D.


Abby E.


Michael F.


Dylan G.


Adriana G.


Brenna H.


Braedyn K.


Ryan M.


Connor M.


Mykenzie M.


Nick M.


Skylar O.


Madi O.


Ava S.


Zac S.


Matthew S.


Alex T.


Erin W.


Max Y.


Marielle A.


Mac B.


Tori C.


Molly H.


Anna H.


Chris H.


Spencer K.


Andrew L.


Joanna L.


Sophie M..


Kathy N.


Ali O.


Connor P.


Avery R.


Sam S.


Bryce S.


Dylan S.


Shelby S.

br /> Jacob T.


Brady T.


Peter W.

Snapshots

My 8th graders this week will be looking at writing as a form of expression and reflection. One concise way to capture the memories and emotions of a memory is through a picture. Students will use their presentations of Animoto videos about snapshots of their lives to create expressive and poetic writing for their portfolios. Here's the example I made of my life.

Collin's Cause

 

 

Students and families,

 

I would like to ask you to pray for one of my students during student teaching who is now battling with brain cancer. Collin had returned to Manhattan High School during his sophomore year, which is when I had the pleasure of teaching him. He had spent much of his freshman year battling with cancer, but was in remission.

 

Collin's cancer has returned and a cure has not been found for this type of cancer. I would like to ask all of you to pray for this junior in high school and his family/friends. It's hard to see someone so young who is struggling.

 

If you have any desire to donate to the fund to support his family as they visit Collin and pay for medical bills, students in Manhattan have started this fund and almost $20,000 has been raised as support. To donate, go to this website (http://www.giveforward.com/collinscause).

 

Thanks for your prayers!

 



The One and Only Ivan Conclusion



We've finished! The 6th-grade classes have completed "The One and Only Ivan." I think they'll miss our reading days in class. Applause rung out in one of my classes at "The End." :)

 

With this exciting Global Read Aloud Project, the author of the book (Katherine Applegate) is answering students' questions about the book. More than 30,000 students participated in the Global Read Aloud Project, and we got to be part of it here in Shawnee, KS. This link is the one students will need to complete their homework for Tuesday.

 

While the students were writing two-word sentences to form a poetic reflection of the book, I wrote one about the process.

Taking a Chance

Teacher creates.

Miss Rajewski finds.

Book speaks.

Class smiles.

Journey starts.

Pupils listen.

Cities join.

Students converse.

Teacher loves.

 

Almost every single one of the students said they would enjoy participating in the project as 7th graders so we'll plan on that for next October. It will be a new book to read. Check out the students' blogs from this past week to see their final thoughts. 

 

Making Vocab Movies

My 8th-grade classes created stories in the computer lab this week to use their vocabulary words in context. Next week they will be receiving the rubric for a writing opportunity about themselves. They will also be creating videos with this same program to share in class, so these vocab videos were a great way to get familiar with the program.

Here's an excellent example of one student's work.

Remember, students, be collecting pictures for next week!

Celebrating Halloween

Happy Halloween! Here's a view of the day from my classroom.

 

 



The middle school teachers (and the rest of the faculty) took the day to embody the school theme -- "Make me an instrument of your peace."

 

 

The seventh-grade girls gather for a picture outside at the parade.

 

My homeroom class had some pretty creative costumes. Thanks to all the parents who helped with the party. We had a great time!

 

Students practiced active listening and made predictions as I read "The Tell-Tale Heart."

 

Once they made predictions, we checked to see if they were right!

Skyping with Students in Canada

Halloween costumes, YouTube sensations, and a love of the restaurant Subway --- though 6th graders may live across North America, they still seem to have many inerests in common. My 6th grade students got the chance to Skype with 6th grade students in Canada today.

 

We discovered that more students in my class eat Canadian bacon than Canadian students. Our Canadian friends speak French and English and love a food called poutine (french fries with melted cheese and gravy), though they also enjoy pizza and cheeseburgers jut like us. Catholic schools in Ottawa, Canada, which is north of the state of New York, are paid for by the government. The students chuckled as a student from Canada did the "Gangnam Style" dance from YouTube, and several of my students joined in.

 

I'm thankful to the Global Read Aloud project for bringing these students together to celebrate reading! I would love to expand our connections even more next year if we do the project again.

 

And a compliment for the Kansas kids: Mr. Fischer (the teacher of the Canadian class) shared how he often uses my students' blogs as an example of what blog posts should look like because of the deep thinking and writing students were putting into them. Way to go, students!

 

Students got a kick out of waving to one another! Look at those smiles. :)  

 

We brainstormed questions ahead of time about things we wanted to know.  

 

Moderators asked our questions and also helped answer the questions the other class had for us. Due to technical difficulties, we made a laptop screen work!  

 

 

 

 

I love how intrigued they look! Hopefully the students enjoyed their time in English class today.

Reading Fiends

Check out the totals for the Pages Party! In May, the class with the highest number of pages per student (meaning I divide by the number of students in the class to make the total more equal) will receive a party in my class. All six classes are competing against the others, and we're off to a good start with our reading from quarter one.

 

Frequent readers often subconciously pick up setence patterns and vocabulary, which ultimately makes them better writing. Thus, more reading equals more quality writing, which is my goal. Please encourage your students to write any pages they read on their reading logs.

 

I even had a few students between 5,000 and 9,000 pages for the quarter. Wow!

 





Conferences Update

Thanks to all the parents who came to conferences. It was wonderful to meet you and discuss what we can do as a team to help your student! I thank God that I was sent to Sacred Heart where there are so many wonderful people. Thanks also to all the parents who took items off my wish list. This first-year teacher really appreciates you!

At the start of this week, I also wanted to make you aware that your student has free access to the Kansas City Star through a program called the Kansas City Star in Education. Take advantage of this wonderful resource to get your student reading good examples of writing and learning about the world around them! For log-in instructions, click the "KC Star" tab at the top of the page.

Have a great week!

-- Miss R.

Great Work

Parents,

Be sure to check out your student's blog (Click on the "Blogs" tab above). They wrote about their bucket lists, and they have quite the collection of big dreams! The students wrote with much better grammar after we talked about how best to present our writing! What's on your bucket list?

For my 6th-grade parents, all the students collected adjectives while we read about Ivan last week. Look what we created! The largest adjectives are the ones most listed by the students. I thought they did an awesome job!

6th grade -- Lab work for today

Sixth graders,

Today we get to do some fun things to connect with others about The One and Only Ivan. For starters, click here to enter your adjectives, so we can make our class connection.

Once you have finished this response, close out of the form and we will move onto our other activity of the day and blogging.

Thanks!

Miss R

Feeling the Love

I feel so lucky to be at such a great school. Thanks to all the parents who contributed to the book fair because these books were all given to me. What a blessing as a first-year teacher! All of these will go into my slowly increasing classroom library. If you ever have books at home you don't want/need anymore, I would love them.

Blogs Redefined

Parents, some of you might be wondering why your students have not been blogging these past few weeks. After discussing the importance of producing a polished product and thoughtful comments, students were still using lots of text lingo and incorrect language on the blog.

 

We used a day last week (instead of going to the computer lab) to analyze how we could use the blogs. Each class made resolutions, and I think they're ready to use the blogs more meaningfully! The students voiced valid concerns about embarrassing themselves or turning the blogs into a popularity contest, so we came up with some solutions.

 

Students are always welcome to blog from home, which was a question they had. Our blogs are still a work in progress, but we're learning, growing, and thinking more as we continue!

 

Students answered questions in pods and chose the best advice their peers had to offer to share.

 

Each class generated a set of resolutions, which are hanging on the wall.

 

I was impressed with the mature, introspective thoughts students generated.

 

Great goals will guide us forward.

The One and Only Ivan

Hello, especially to my 6th grade parents. We're trying something new in my 6Y and 6Z classes for the month of October. I tell them they're my guinea pigs, but they say they would prefer to be called hamsters!

There is a program called Global Read Aloud, which a teacher started in 2010. If you're interested in its origin, watch this video. The program started with 60 classrooms, and now in its 3rd year of existence it has about 26,000 students!

I showed the students this map today of classrooms reading the same book, The One and Only Ivan. The commercial for the book is above. You can find us in Shawnee, KS, as number 226 out of almost 250 classes! I will be reading the book aloud to them in class at the same pace as other teachers across the nation. We hope to interact using our blogs and Skype.

The students are not required to purchase the book, but if you would like to, you can follow along at home. I have found that this is a book with meaning that transcends age.

The kids seem pretty excited to start and so am I!

I'll leave you with the quote that starts the book: "It's never too late to be what you might have been." -- George Eliot

Vocabulary Helpers

We started working in our vocabulary books this week. This year, students can use the Loyola Press website to supplement their vocab books! If you click on the above tab labeled "Vocab," you will see links to find word lists, games, and online practice quizzes. Check it out!  Students do not need a username or password to log in.

Hopefully these will be study tools to help you prepare for your vocab quizzes. Good luck!

Blogs

Students are getting ready to blog! The main purpose of our blogs: to create a conversation about our writing. One of the best ways to do this is to use excellent comments.

To practice, students created paper blogs about a topic they know a great deal about, like one eighth grader who loves crayons. The next day in class, they practiced writing comments that went beyond "Awesome!" or "Nice job!" They stated something they could relate to or learn from a blog post and asked a question. As you can see, another student did a great job sharing what she learned about crayons and asking for more information.

Students will use the same types of comments on their actual blogs. Because they did such good work, their blogs are hanging on the walls of my classroom and in the middle school hall!

What do you think? Don't they look good? 

Why Write?

Because we all want to know why we are actually doing something, writing class has started out with figuring out some reasons we should be motivated to write. To get us started, students generated their own reasons and shared skits with the class. Enjoy some of the pics from the day!

Sixth graders share a song and some laughs about writing.

Eighth graders created a fake job interview scenario.

Eighth graders use a rap to argue the need for writing.

Eighth-grade poets share snaps with the class.

One angry employer for a job interview.

Seventh graders explain their poem to the class.

Some students chose to create some fake facial hair ...

A budding seventh-grade rap duo.

Ta-da!

The "creativity queens"

Another job interview.

Sixth graders sharing a beat.



All the students' created a theme for their skit, which we compiled on our classroom bulletin board. Now we have lots of reasons to remember to write.

Parents, why do you write in your lives, whether for your jobs or for other purposes?

Getting to know you

Students, during our lab time today I would love to learn more about you! If you could click on the link below and answer the questions, I would greatly appreciate it.

Please let me know if you have any questions. These answers are only for your teachers, and the information is private.

 https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?formkey=dDNRbHFpdmlLejdTczVnZmZELTZDZ3c6MQ

Ready for a great year.

The classroom is ready, and I have enjoyed spending the last two days with my students. We have set up some classroom rituals, especially getting in the habit of grabbing our Writers' Notebooks when we walk in the door. Students will be writing about daily prompts to examine and discuss with their classmates about what their thinking. Today, they designed their perfect set of classes, with many of the music classes taught by Justin Bieber and PE by LeBron James!

I am here to help so please let me know if you ever have any questions. Students, we will be using this blog for the teacher to post links during our weekly computer time. Parents, please feel free to follow along or even subscribe to this blog if you would like.

The syllabus is going home Friday and needs to come back by Tuesday. Please contact me if you have any questions.

Excited to grow with you this year,
Miss Rajewski