Monday March 18, 2019

Team Aurora has a new blog post!

Hi readers!
I am recommitting to posting every Monday. You can check here for upcoming assignments and due dates.

Report cards have been sent. You should have received them in the mail by now. "Why mail?" ask some of our inquiring students.  This has been policy at BRMS since we instituted the Teachers' College Units of Study for Reading and Writing.  It is very ver possible to receive a 2 or even a 1 in areas on these rubrics, yet still be working completely appropriately in class. To prevent misunderstandings and comparing of report cards, we ease this stress by sending them in the mail.

We have been meeting with parents over the past week and into this week. If you feel you need to meet with us, or would like more information via email or phone call, please let us know. We are happy to set up times for this.

What's coming up?

We are still into our argument unit. This is a combination reading/writing/social studies unit and will continue until April break. We are learning to make a claim based on a question, research and collect evidence on both sides, then write an organized essay explaining our claim.  For our pre-assessment, we looked at "should cell phones be allowed in classrooms?" For our model lesson, we are investigating, "should chocolate milk be sold in the cafeteria for lunches?"

Next, students will work in coalition study groups around a topic of their choosing in one of these areas: zoos, extreme sports, plastic bags, space exploration, sharks, plastic bottles or Mt. Everest.

Word study
We are making every Tuesday new word study day. This means that word study will always be due on Tuesday morning. That means, some of us have homework on Monday nights.

Pre-assessment
We have a pre-assessment for argument about cell phones. If students need to work on this at home, because they could not complete it during school time, please make sure that they do not get assistance at home. Thanks.

The next big assignment due, besides Tuesday word study, will be our argument essay from our research groups. This will likely be due next Friday.

See you next Monday.