This week essentially served as a Quarter 1  review; an opportunity to slow down and process our content. We started the week off with a story building assignment, where students were assigned a topic and asked to write a topic sentence, they then crumpled up their paper and threw it in the classroom. Students retrieved a new paper and built on the topic sentence written down. By the end of class we had 20 completed paragraphs with each student having contributed to five topics. Notes and textbooks were available for this work.
Tuesday and Wednesday were spent working on a project. Students were given five project options with guidelines explicitly laid out. Students displayed their projects on Thursday, where we did a gallery walk and used rubrics to view and grade each others' work. 
We end the week with a scavenger hunt around the school, the idea was courtesy of Mr. Finney. 

Benchmarks took place this week so we could check-in on students' progress. Please remind your student to take these very seriously as conversations about their progress are focused around these monthly assessments.

Next week, the topic in class is westward movement in Georgia. We'll focus on land distribution, the movement of capitols, the establishment of UGA, and the impact of both railroads and the cotton gin. 

Conferences are on Monday, October 8th. Please follow this link to sign up:

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/70a0f44a8ae23abf58-fall

Last week students assessed the weaknesses in our government's first form under the Articles of Confederation. Learning about these sets up an understanding of concepts to be argued again leading up to the Civil War. Students were given different assignments by the week's end to support their learning of specific content based on results from a quick, in-class assessment. 

This week, we are slowing down to ensure depth of knowledge on topics covered so far this year. Monday starts with the trial of a new activity called Team Story Build, where students are tasked to contribute one sentence to 5 different topics as they traded papers in class. Tuesday and Wednesday will be project days, where students will have a choice of 5 projects to choose from. Thursday will be a gallery walk where students will view each others' completed projects and give peer feedback. We will close the week with a treasure hunt activity put together by Mr. Finney.

Grades are due by Oct. 2nd for the first quarter. Be on the lookout for conference sign ups coming soon!

Last week students learned about some of the events that caused tensions between the American colonies and Britain. 
Students had an online forum to ask questions while watching a video, they were taken outside but only granted freedom to play if able to relate their trapped scenario to King George's Proclamation of 1763, and then students were tasked with interpreting excerpts from the Declaration of Independence as their graded assignment for the week.

Next week we will learn more about events of the war as they relate to Georgia. Students will produce E-Notes with rubrics for what to include on each slide. 

If you would like a parent login to Infinite Campus and did not come to the curriculum night, please contact me about when you can come to the school to sign off and receive your login code. 

Also, please join @wiayear3 on www.remind.com