1 down 3 more to go...Term 1 has ended

Term 1 has finally ended.  The school year is 1/4 done.  First term was eventful. I kept my student busy.  We started right off by writing our district benchmark essay about their favorite hobby.  My students did very well for a writing pretest.  On a scale of 1-6 they were getting a 3.6.  We have our students get a least a 4.0 on this scale to be considered proficient in writing. 

Sticking with the writing theme we talked about 3 of the Six Traits: Ideas and Content, Organization, and Voice.  To practice these traits we wrote another essay.  This one was about a bird.  The students have been turned into a bird and they have to write a story about what happens the day they were changed into a bird.  Their writing scores jumped a lot from the district benchmark essay.  They were getting 5.0 on the same scale.  The kids were so excited.  Some of them were saying they had never gotten scores that high!

To end the term, we wrote a research paper.  I had the students pick a person from history they could interview.  They had to write 15 questions to ask the person and use these questions to guide their research so they weren't just looking up fluff.  They chose six of these 15 questions and wrote a magazine interview article.  Over the last couple of days they have been turning them in.  The research papers have been really good.


To start term 2, we are going to read The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.  When I told the kids this they were really excited.  I am going to try and teach the literary elements portion of the State Core while reading the book.  I will keep you updated on how this is going.  I have been looking forward to this for a while.