Tuesday, February 21, 2012

It is safe to say that we are now officially into the second and final term of the school year.  The IEPs (Individual Education Plans) will be sent home next week and I will provide a short summary of what they mean in language that is not too confusing.

I returned copies of the Reading Comprehension test on energy drinks.  I was pleased to see that the class is improving in this area.  They are using information from the article to help them answer the questions.  I will continue working on developing  reading comprehension strategies but I selected another expectation to comment on for this Term's report card that has to do with reading with fluency and developing skills to break words and their sound parts down.  This will be useful for some of the students who experience difficulty with pronouncing words, sometimes known as "word attack" skills.

In our current Read-a-loud, I have selected Kenneth Opel's Half Brother.  It is fictional but based on the story of the family who adopts a chimp in an attempt to teach it American Sign Language in the 1970s.  We watched the documentary in class called Project Nim.  Here is the trailer from Youtube.  Each of the class members wrote a very interesting journal response on whether humans should attempt to raise chimpanzees.

In another activity from a book we read (Randy Pausch's The Last Lecture), the students did some Wall Art.  This was an extension of a journal activity we did in the Fall.  Basically, if you could paint or write on your wall, what would you say or do?  Here are some of the images from our collection:

Kortnee

Nick

George

Jack

Sandro

Mr.P

Sophie

Zhao Lun

Johnson

Stavroula

Uyen

Bishop

Mathew

Taushana

There is no homework this evening.

Steven