SAM day challenge: Golf Ball Run

Similar to the classic kids' game Marble Run, students today were challenged to...Golf Ball Run! Students were divided into 4 teams. Their goal: transfer their golf ball through the pipe chutes to the red Solo cup at the end. The ball must pass through each students' chute, and hands cannot touch the ball. First step: try a short distance:

The slope on the chutes was too steep--and the ball either launched off the chutes or didn't stay in the cup. New plan: change the grade of the slope:

Other teams were setting up their chutes to end with the ball rolling on the floor towards a tipped Solo cup, hoping to make it in.

This group started off with great communication. They were able to get the ball all the way down the hallway by having each group member run to the end of the line, and controlling the ball through balance and speed control. 

They were also able to send the ball down the stairs and into the cup in just a few tries!

Then, two groups joined forces to extend the line:

They went from the hallway past the library...

To the end and around the corner...

And all the way past the library and the stairwell...to the entrance of the Grit hallway. Success! Teamwork, communication, goal setting, and grit helped the groups succeed today. 

CHMS Writes!

If you haven't seen it yet, Camels Hump Middle School has a writing blog! We've made our first post about team GRIT's investigative journalism pieces. Check it out here: http://chmswrites.blogspot.com/

Check back to see the writing other teams have been working on. Whenever team GRIT publishes, we'll have a link here on our blog to connect you. Our next pieces will be argument writing--which we will start after the break.

Final Literature Circle Discussions Today!

Today is the final day for literature circles about our two Revolutionary War books. Students have done a great job taking on the responsibility of their jobs to lead discussions, find new vocabulary words, and share connections and passages. They have also been artists, visualizing scenes from the books. Below are a few examples of the artwork students have created.

My Brother Sam is Dead:

Chains: 

Revolutionary War book selections!

         

In Language Arts, students chose to read either Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson, or My Brother Sam is Dead James by Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier. Both books provide students with different perspectives on the war, including loyalists, patriots and slaves. Students are reading the books in groups, with different literature circle roles on discussion days to help them prepare for and lead the discussion. Each student will rotate through each role 1 time before the books are finished before the winter break. Students are discussion directors who lead the group and ask questions, super summarizers, creative connectors, passage masters, word wizards who find new vocabulary, or artful artists who illustrate a scene from the book. Each student has a schedule of the reading with their different roles and the due dates, to help them plan their homework.

Ask your student what book they are reading. How does this help them understand the Revolutionary War? How does this connect to what they are learning in social studies?

Happy reading!

Journalism Celebration

Our journalists' hard work has come to an end--the arrival of the publishing deadline! On our last day of the journalism unit, students read 3 different writers' newscasts and wrote feedback for them. They wrote specific feedback using our Investigative Journalism checklists, and then cited a specific place in the journalist's writing where they saw that strategy from the checklist. This feedback definitely helps the writers feel good about the hard work they've been doing during the journalism unit. 

Here writers are hard at work reviewing the writing of other journalists:

Here is an example of feedback for another student's newscast:

Students made sure to rotate to different newscasts throughout the feedback process. Each student should have read at least 3 pieces and received feedback from at least 3 other journalists. 

Afterwards, students posted their writing on the Grit Gazette newspaper wall in the hall for all the staff and students to appreciate: 

And, because it's a celebration, we also had snacks! Ms. Livingston was kind enough to grab a delicious selection of Munchkins, and Miss Lindsey brought in some juice. 

Congratulate your writer on their hard work so far this year! 

Colonial Presentations Gallery Walk

Last Friday, students shared their Colonial life presentations and artifacts in a gallery walk in the library annex. Students created presentations in the form of movies, slides, posters or newspapers on either a Colonial event or one of the 13 original colonies. Some students chose to work in partners, some worked individually. Check out some of the great artifacts below:

Here is Lila's lacrosse stick:

Here are the components of an average meal for slaves during the Colonial period that Madison and Ada put together:

Below is a model of Jamestown created by Ethan and Ari:

Kira and Nick put together a pirate's treasure chest:

Jesse and Darren recreated a scene from the life of William Penn, including a biography:

Maddy and Hannah modeled a New York town:

Below is Kimmy and Anna's newspaper presentation and their horn book, which Colonial students used in schools:

Bailey and Ale studied the Salem witch trials, and created a replica of the gallows:

Claire and Ali put together some theories on the lost colony of Roanoke, complete with croatoan carving:

Kilee researched Colonial women, and baked small apple pies to share:

Raegan created Salem witch gallows as well in a small model:

Noah recreated Colonial era musket, with working trigger piece: 

And, Bethany used turkey feathers to symbolize the hunting during Colonial times:

Students took notes while taking a look at other projects on the reasons people came to the Colonies, what economic opportunities were available, and how the French and Indian War helped lead to the revolution.
Students also left feedback for each other on their projects--and were very impressed with the amount of effort put into the displays!

Investigative Journalism

In language arts, students are investigative journalists, working the news beat to find stories around them. We have learned several strategies of great writers already, which you can see in your child's writer's notebook. Their table of contents should look something like this:

One of the skills students worked on is transitioning from narrative, 1st person writing to journalistic, 3rd person observer writing. On the left in the photo below is an example text, comparing the same scene but told two different ways. One is as a fiction story, and one is as a news story. We discussed these differences and used the mentor text to improve our own writing.

Students should have pages where they brainstormed potential newscasts from inside the school (the gym) and from last year. What would an undercover journalist have written about? I wrote a mentor newscast from our field trip earlier this year. Journalists need to remember to have an angle in their writing, the "so what?" to engage their audience. My angle was about how the bus garage needed the bus back an hour early--would we be able to see everything at Fort Crown Point and complete our assignments in less time?? Turns out, GRIT rose to the challenge. 

One of the ways writers improve their writing is from experts. Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Roy Peter Clark's strategies are pasted into students' notebooks to help them improve their stories. First we looked at a mentor newscast, and tried to find evidence of Clark's strategies. We found vivid details in the descriptions of the fighting basketball players, a grace note in the word pandemonium, and a clever ending in the author's use of the phrase, "These stars had just imploded." The author used the star theme throughout the newscast.
Your child should have newscasts where they highlighted these strategies in their own work. If they didn't have them, they were to revise their work to include them, and improve their writing.

Finally, we chose one of our pieces to publish on Schoology. Students used the last minute editing checklist to review their work one last time, and then were responsible for reading 2 other writers' work and providing feedback. Could they find the 5Ws? Could they find the angle? 

For our longer news piece, students should have selected a topic and made sure to identify the angle. Next, they needed to find sources to interview, so students shared their topics on notecards so other students could add their name to their card if they had a source for their classmate. This is a great way for students to help each other! 

What is your student writing their newscast about? Do they have an angle? Do they have sources to interview? Check in with your journalist to see how they're doing!