Thursday, September 20, 2012

Walkathon News - Shine Like Stars!

Next week is it!  Teachers are so excited about the opportunity for students to serve our neighbors around the world that we have cancelled afternoon classes Friday, Sept. 28 for students to participate in the Walkathon.  Students, have you talked to a sponsor(s)?  Have you decided on a self-pledge?  Proceeds will go toward creating School kits as part of our Christmas Service project.  Students will have a second opportunity to serve as we gather school items and pack the kits later in the second semester.  Remember:

  • Dress in PE style clothing to come to school Friday:  Spirit wear or Christian t-shirt,  shorts/sweats, good walking/running shoes!! 
  • Pledges and pledge sheets are due Oct. 5

English Class


After our first grammar unit, our English class has shifted to writing.  Our first creative writing project was a fractured fairytale.  Students took inspiration from childhood favorite tales but put their own "twist" to characters, setting, and plot.  Since creativity in storytelling was a focus, less emphasis was put on proofreading errors.  Sentence fragments were intentionally used to create the feel of an oral tale and a casual tone.  A great introduction to tone and author's purpose in our Literature study!  (Note the fragment I used).  Read our stories on Kidblog using the Student Blog tab above. Students had some very clever ideas. Please share your comments, too!

Our second writing project is a formal paper, a character sketch.  We used the movie, The Prince and the Pauper, for a character study, as we had read a character sketch of it's author, Mark Twain.  This is a process writing project, meaning we take the writing through the formal steps of brainstorming/prewriting, drafting, revising, proofreading, and publishing. Our writing focus is paragraph structure and students are learning to compose at the computer.  As this is an in depth writing assignment, the final paper is assessed as a test grade in English.  First drafts are due Monday in hardcopy. 


Social Studies


Looking Cool in an Arid climate

Who says you can't have fun in the rain?

On location in the Humid Continental climate
Rainfall is coming!

 Religion Class

A study in the 8th Commandment




Friday, September 14, 2012

Weekly Blog

Walkathon Coming

Students found out about our Junior High service project today at the Walkathon Kickoff.  We will be walking on Sept. 28 after lunch to raise money for Lutheran World Relief and their school kits project.  Later we will have a school supplies drive to coordinate with the Christmas time service project.  Pledge sheets came home today.  Ask your child!

Rocket Launch

reported by class blogger: Erin M.
We just watched the eighth grade rocket launch and it was so cool. There were cool designs and others went really high. The eighth grade pumped them up with water, then Mr. Debrick pulled the rope and the rocket flew. The whole elementary school was there, the junior high was there, and even some of the little kids. I think that everyone had a lot of fun. I think that our class is really excited to do the rocket launch in eighth grade.











In celebration of completing assignments on time, the class celebrated extra recess with a "big ball" soccer game.







Friday, September 7, 2012

Weekly Blog

Individualized Spelling


Spelling tests this year are individualized.  Students create personal word lists from taking a pretest, words they misspell in their daily work, and a master list of confusing words.  Here are some of our students giving each other the test today.
 







How was school??

Often kids respond, "Fine," or "OK." How do you get your child talking?  Ask specific questions about our units of study:


RELIGION - God's Call to Abraham, The Offering of Issac, the Sacrifice of Jesus,  Issac and Rebekah

LITERATURE - Fiction and non-fiction, Part 2 - Fact/Opinion  Up next:  Mark Twain and a character study of The Prince and the Pauper

SOCIAL STUDIES - Map components, Up next:  special purpose maps

MATH - Order of Operations, Fractions, Reading a ruler

SCIENCE - plate tectonics, volcanoes

ENGLISH - subjects/predicates, kinds of sentences 

Book Orders

Book orders can be ordered online or by sending a check to school by Friday, Sept. 14.  Please write your check to SCHOLASTIC BOOK CLUBS.  Our class code is GV2FP   Book Orders