Today is Elie Wiesel's 86th birthday. In class we are currently reading the widely known memoir he wrote about his time during the Holocaust - Night. This book is about a horrific time in world history; people were treated in unbelievable ways and witnessed hatred that seems impossible for the students to understand. The conversations surrounding this book will always be most powerful! This book is a literary masterpiece - Mr. Wiesel's writer's craft is something all students (and I) can aspire to mimic; the symbolism and theme of the book are perfect for the first literacy analysis of the eighth grade year; and the vocabulary is more than worthy of analysis and evaluation. During the reading of this book, though, students exhibit empathy for the victims and almost constantly question how others allowed this to happen. The high level questioning and thinking that fill the classroom right now are truly amazing. Elie Wiesel states in the preface that he has three basic reason for writing Night.
A few years ago, I had the great fortune to hear Mr. Wiesel speak at Xavier University. His message then is exactly what Beth and I want the students to remember years from now about our study of Night. "Indifference ... is the epitome of evil" (Wiesel). |
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Since Rita and I have the luxury of team teaching, we used that opportunity to work with small groups on sentence structure and other grammar skills this week. We administered a pre-assessment (after a flipped lesson on sentence structure) and used the data from the pre-assessment to put students into groups based on their knowledge.
Rita worked with students who needed a refresher on run-on sentences and sentence fragments. It was a two day process that obviously helped the students because the results from today's post-assessment were very good. While Rita worked with that group, I read with a small, self-selected group of students reading picture books that pertain to the Holocaust. There are so many excellent picture books that help build background knowledge about the Holocaust and that help develop empathy for the time period. I read The Butterfly by Patricia Polacco, Terrible Things by Eve Bunting, and The Cats of Krasinski Square by Karen Hesse. Each period we talked about the books and what we noticed about the writer's craft. Today, I worked with a small group of students in each class on the four sentence structures, while Rita finished up with her group on fragments and run-ons. The students who weren't in either group, read independently - most of whom chose Holocaust or World War II books to build even more background knowledge about the time period. I was pleased with how the small group instruction went this week. It takes a lot of preparation, thinking and planning to make this type of instruction work, but it is something that Rita and I are committed to doing. Using the workshop model for both reading and writing instruction is vital to our 8th grade classroom. I have had Evernote on my iPad for about three years - yes, my iPad is an original. I believe I downloaded the app during Dublin Leadership Academy because one of my colleagues, probably Franki Sibberson, tweeted about it. I have Evernote on my phone too, but I've never used it to take notes. I have opened the app on occasion, but that's about it. This week, Rita and I dove into Evernote with reckless abandon. We have been looking for a way to collaboratively share reading and writing conference notes. Last year, we tried Google Drive, but that didn't last long. Since we team teach and try to conference with every student in the room as often as possible, we were trying to figure out the best way to document the interactions so that we could share easily with each other. Evernote seems to be the tool that will work for us this year. This week we've been having one-on-one reading conferences during independent reading time. It is a quick and easy way to share the interactions we have with students. I can't wait to see what each students' "note" looks like by the end of the year. After participating in a Twitter chat called #dubchat, Mrs. Shaffer and I are trying to beef up our use of the 8th grade ELA Twitter feed. In class yesterday, we finished reading Freak the Mighty, the whole school read aloud. Every students' task was to create a tweet (140 characters or less) about the book or their feelings regarding the book. Today, everyone shared his/her tweet and the class voted on the best one to represent each class period. The winners were:
1st period: Dad's back. Max gets sacked. Freak dies. Max cries. #freakthemighty (created by Ashley R.) 2nd period: Just read #freakthemighty. @MaxPerry calls it a must read! Sad ending though. (created by Max P.) 3rd period: That awkward moment when your dad comes and kidnaps you, though it makes for a heck of a story. #freakthemighty (created by Anna M.) 6th period: #freakthemighty The ending is so sad. Poor Max. Kevin was his anchor and now he is drifting away. (created by Nithya V.) 7th period: Freak's dictionary > your dictionary. #freakthemighty (created by Luke M.) The tweets were sent out after each class, so hopefully, if you follow our class, you received them. In case you haven't jumped on the Grizzell 8th grade ELA twitter feed, you can follow us: @Grizzell8ELA More Twitter fun to follow! -Mrs. Honeycutt |
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January 2015
AuthorsBeth Honeycutt is an avid reader and loves to work with middle school students. Writing and publishing a blog is a new, but exciting endeavor for her. |