Full Days and First Assignment

Monday’s Field Experience, despite a minor setback, was a success! Students learned to work in a group to make a boat out of cardboard, duct tape, and plastic. While we weren’t able to get the boats in the water, the children did have a blast swimming when we were done building.

The rest of this week was spent solidifying new routines in ELA and learning about career clusters in CCA.

English Language Arts

On Tuesday and Wednesday, we began Independent Reading. This is done for the first 20 minutes of class. After that, we reviewed my course disclosures so that students are aware of my academic expectations of them. We did this as a friendly game of Jeopardy. Doing this reinforced what they need to bring to the table for their own success.

Students received their first assignment this week which is tied to Independent Reading. They will be doing a Book Talk. There is a written component, a visual aid component, and a presentation component. Students were given the assignment and rubric in class on Thursday and Friday. The due date for this assignment is October 7th.

We also did a writing prompt about their Willard Bay Experience. The requirements of this prompt varied, seventh grade responded with a fewer sentence minimum and ninth graders responding with four full paragraphs. It was refreshing to see students remember my expectations about assignments and expressing their concerns about finishing on time. This prompt was an assessment so that I can see each child’s ability and develop plans to work on areas of improvement.

This coming week we will begin The Great Lessons with an emphasis on The Story of Language.

College and Career Awareness

On Tuesday and Wednesday, students were introduced to the 13 career clusters that we will be learning about all year in class. Our lesson began with an activity where students dug into a bag that contained slips of paper with a different career on each paper. There were some duplicates that represented a particular field having more of a demand than others. We observed and discussed the thought processes of a few students as they were searching for their careers in a baggie. Students were able to see how some already know what they want to be, hence they just dug around the bag looking for that particular career while others picked one, looked to see if they would like it, and discarded it back to the bag if they weren’t interested. We related it to how people really do look for a job.

On Thursday and Friday, students received their computer logins and were able to get in and take an interests quiz to see which was their dominant personality. This allowed students to see which careers fits their interests, and in turn, which career cluster they should focus on in the future. For more information, visit utahfutures.org, scroll to assessments, and click on “Interest Profiler”.

This coming week we will conclude with one more assessment, will look over careers again but this time based on the personality and interest profilers, and begin learning about the agriculture cluster.

Students, rest up this weekend! After a week of full days, you deserve it!

Ms. Dore