ASHLEY SHOUTOUT - Week ending 10/26 Today's shoutout belongs to Ashley! You made an awesome mask! WOO HOO!!!!
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GUESS WHAT? I am so excited because I have a great leadership team in charge here at BJHS and I get to go to a FANTASTIC professional development class, called: Echos and Reflections!!!! According to their website, Echos and Reflections is, "The Leading holocaust education PROGRAM that includes everything educators need to teach the complex issues of the Holocaust to 21st century students." My kids (11th graders) read "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" for summer reading and "Night" for their 1st novel. This means that about 5 weeks are used for an indepth study over the Holocaust while we study 1 fiction and 1 non-fiction novel. I (sadly) didn't do well in History in high school. It was NOT Mrs. Deaton's fault, I was in choir and band and took History the summer ahead so I could free up one period a day for both music classes. I cheated myself and I am paying for it now! I try to incorporate a "Today in History" on my board everyday so I can help out the History department but also because I don't know a lot of the major historical date, names, places, and etc. I use it as a talking point to get the class going. Sometimes we incorporate it into our daily journal but mostly just to get the brains working. Well, when I started teaching "Night" a few years ago, I had to really study about the Holocaust. I have learned a lot and can pass along a lot of great information, that I hope is historically accurate, to my kiddos! This class is going to help me learn so much more about the Holocaust and I am so excited to be going with some of the other English teachers! It's in November so I will let you all know when. Kiddos - 2 things: 1) Be nice to the sub while I am gone or the fussing and the homework will flow until I am fully conviced you are sorry and 2) Be ready for me to share when I get back! <3 Kids and teachers have been using social media websites for a while now and Edmodo is a social network available to teachers and students to use in an academic setting that benefits both groups! It's a lot like Facebook in the way you can comment on a wall for your entire class to see and respond to. You can also upload links, photos, documents and more! I have an Edmodo and all my kids added themselves to our class groups last week. We are trying it out this week so I invite you to communicate to your classmates and ask questions! You are all doing the same Gatsby project and your classmates are a wealth of information. You can also download the app for Edmodo and use your smart phone or device! See me for the class codes and HAPPY EDMODOING! Edmodoing, that a word right? See you online. PS - I check and answer questions daily but not after 9 pm. :) RR Yesterday, the students and staffulty at Bob Jones were asked to wear orange to support the Anti-Bullying campaign. We took a small break from our English agenda and watched a great video from "The Glee Project - Season 2" titled "Vulnerability" featuring the cast of the show and music from R.E.M., "Everybody Hurts". We then wrote a journal about what bullying looks like to high school students today. Most responses were profound and heart felt. Student's eyes were opened to the fact that bullying does happen everywhere and that some students feel it while others don't. I went through their journals and highlighted key words that summarized their entire journal. I've used Wordle in the classroom before but I wanted to create a Bully Wordle for my kids so they can remember what they learned in class today. Below is the Wordle image and the video. RR :) I have some kids that haven't grasped the idea of a KWL chart so, as promised, here is a detailed "How To" for the graphic organizer. Pictured to the left is a sample KWL chart. On day one, you wrote everything you knew about the Holocaust in the K column and now every time you walk into class you need at least 2 Ws and at least 2 Ls. Please put the date in the margin so I (and you) can keep up with what you learned and on which day. The K stands for 'know" so in this column students will write everything they know about a topic. The W stands for "want to know" so in this column kids write all the questions they have about a topic. This is an ongoing column that students were asked to complete daily. EVERY day, you should write at least 2 more questions in this column. The L stands for "learned" so this is where students write everything they learned - NEW information for the day. EVERY day, you should write at least 2 more things learned in this column. It's Homecoming Week at Bob Jones and we are hoping to "Shut the Door on the Panthers!" We finished up door decorations today so below are some pictures of my fabulous students' work! Enjoy. RR
p.s. Even if we don't win the door prize, my kids worked extra hard and we will ask if we can have a mini party of our own. :) Sometimes teachers have to admit that their kids are AH-mazing so today's SHOUTOUT goes to Exavier, with an E!!!!!! He came up with BEST idea ever. <3
We have finished our poetry unit and we have moved on to novel #2 - "Night" by Elie Wiesel. The kids have already done so much work with their summer reading novel and had the Holocaust on the brain. I wanted to take advantage and keep the momentum going. "Night" is on our reading list and is an AMAZING book. It will have a lasting impact on many of the students that read it. It forces them to look into a specific time period in our world's history and learn about individuals, events, and ideas that shaped our history. I hope they get as much out of reading it as I do teaching it. Today we started with my favorite video clip from Oprah. The kids reaction, "OMG, we love Oprah!!!" The loved the video. If you would like to watch a portion of the interview, click here for part 1. I promised the kids we would watch a few parts of the Oprah interview as a bellringer over the next few days. They are wonderful. We may end up the unit with part of the Bob Costas interview. This is a fairly short novel, so we will only be reading for (maybe) 2 weeks. We will have an extra week for other assignments that will accompany the novel. I will post the links for the other Oprah interview below. If you are beginning your research over the Holocaust, then a WONDERFUL place to start is the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center. We will access this website during class so if you get a chance to look around at home, please do so! I would say start here and watch some of the powerful presentations. Today, some kids asked some phenomenal questions about everything surrounding the Holocaust. One thing they asked was, "Why didn't everybody else do anything? What was wrong with those people?" Someone brought up our "right" and so I located the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and upload the file. You can click below and read them for yourself. I know that I didn't study these until college but the kids were asking. We won't go over them in class, but feel free to read over them. Here are the links for the Elie Wiesel interview conducted by Oprah Winfrey. We will watch parts of these videos in class as a bellringer for the next few days. The images are real and I've told the kids that if they don't want to watch, they don't have to. Most are very interested, concerned, and saddened about what happened during the Holocaust. Oprah's Elie Wiesel Interview, part 1 Oprah's Elie Wiesel Interview, part 2 Oprah's Elie Wiesel Interview, part 3 Oprah's Elie Wiesel Interview, part 4 Oprah's Elie Wiesel Interview, part 5 Oprah's Elie Wiesel Interview, part 6
Each week, Mr. Parker has a weekly video and watch below to see how awesome our forensic science students are!
Check out this video on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWga1Pj7GfU&feature=youtube_gdata_player I would like to thank all the parents, grandparents, and guardians (and anyone else) that came out last night for Open House. It's always fun to meet the parents of the students we teach. I talked with many parents last night and I enjoyed showing you a little about me and my classroom. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. If you weren't able to come last night, I encourage you to look around on this website because it will give you much information about me, my class, and the work your kids are doing. Even though I am from Florence, I will be wearing red, white, and blue at Friday night's 6A, Region 8 showdown against the Falcons. If I didn't meet you at Open House, please say HI at the game so I can match parent to child. See you there and GO PATRIOTS! RR
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July 2015
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