The Midterm deadline is April 22, Friday a week from now. No late work will be accepted after this date. We wrote our “DOOM” deadlines on the board. For science and Utah Studies (or Geography), the study guide is due on 4/22. In math, we only have our regular, daily homework due. Our entire unit for language arts is due 4/22.
Peer edit #4 is due today, and the entire unit is due in a week, on Friday.
For our next unit, the last of the year, we will be working on reading comprehension. We will focus on locating facts within a text, and using the SQ3R method effectively.
Please remember to bring a book or magazine to class. We have time at the beginning of the period for you to read something fun–but you need to be bringing something, or you’ll be stuck reading something from my library bag.
Authors! If you have a writing project that you have been eager to start or would like to work on, I will also accept proposals for individual, alternate units for our final month together. Your proposal needs to include weekly milestones, and a plan for what you will do in class. Remember that computers are not always available, so do not plan on typing unless you have an approved device from home to use for this. Please turn in your plan by Thursday, April 21.
Are you missing any of these on Aspire? Here are the directions, in case you’ve forgotten…
Five Things (week 1): List five things that you did well at school last term. Then, list five things that you did not do well at school, that you’d like to improve on. These things can be academic, such as “I learned how to do long division!” or these things can be behavioral, such as “I was on time for all of my classes.”
For most of us, the thing that keeps us from getting our schoolwork done is difficulty focusing. We watched Thomas Frank’s “5 Ways to Build Focus and Concentration.” from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-KCZ1sghLY&list=PLx65qkgCWNJIS5Y_CcxifKHjQKf7iqVv5 and discussed the ideas that Mr. Frank presented. If the assignment called “Focus” is marked as MISSING in Aspire, you still need to write down what tactic you think will work best for you, and how you can adapt it to school situations.
Today in Reading Lab, we had a check-in for the third peer review.You were expected to have finished your creative choice, or levels A and B. Those of you who were completely unprepared had time during class to do a “hail Mary” and try to get something ready for Ms. Jessi’s class, when this assignment is due.
As a class, we did the Venn Diagram for the Inside Out & Back Again unit. In order to complete this assignment, you still need to write a paragraph. We had work time today, and will have work time again on Wednesday and Friday to work on this.
Our next peer edit is due on Friday. You are expected to have the Venn Diagram and paragraph completed.
Today we read pages 83 – 143. Ha travels from Vietnam to Guam, and then on to Florida, and finally ends up in Alabama. She struggles with learning english, eating the food (missing her papaya!!!), and being different from all her classmates.
As we began class, we watched a newscast that described the process that Vietnam refugees went through when trying to get to safety. That video can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_i_HkeqN5E .
I was answering an email for someone, and realized that possibly some of you would appreciate this information!
There are a lot of very good education apps for IOS, and, if you get your parents to sign the device policy paper (ask Ms. Jessica), you can bring your IPad or IPod to school. Sorry, no IPhones.
Do you have a hard time writing? DragonDictation is a free app that will turn speech into typing. You speak into the microphone and it types every word you say. Then, you email the text to yourself and put in punctuation. This app would be great for those of you who HATE writing but are good at speaking.
Do you have a hard time filling out worksheets and tests because you don’t like writing by hand? SnapType is another free app. With it, you take a photo of any paper, and then you can type on the photo. Then, you can email the photo to your teacher to turn in the worksheet or test, or you can email it to me, and I’ll print it for you to turn in.
Do you have a hard time reading? Text Grabber costs $4.99, but it looks very useful. You photograph any typed text, like work sheets, study guides, or textbooks. Then, the app will actually read the text to you! I have not tried this one personally, but the reviews are very good.
The midterm assignment deadline is December 7, right after the Thanksgiving Holiday. Late work will not be accepted by your teachers after that date.
The deadline for math work for the A3 class is a week sooner. Ms. Marie will be spending her holiday grading the Essential Skills books, so all ESM book work must be completed by Friday of this week. That’s pages 17, and 22-28. We should probably turn in our ESM book with a plate of cookies or holiday snacks for her to eat while grading over 125 books on her holiday “vacation!”
The short story is now over a week overdue. In Study Skills, we checked in Aspire to see if our short story had been turned in. If it was not, then you did not get a choice about what you were doing in Study Skills: you worked on your short story.
This is Core Curriculum work due this week, as posted on whiteboard and filled in by the students. We had 40 minutes of study hall in Advisory on both Wednesday and Thursday.
