I can not believe how fast this school year is moving; it seems like only yesterday I was meeting my students for the first time.
This week was especially busy. In language arts we focused on dynamic and static characters, we enjoyed two stories featuring similar story lines. Each of the stories had their own unique characters that the students seemed to enjoy. In social studies we continued our unit on the Age of Exploration and the students began work on their research projects.
I will have to say that the thing they all seem the most excited about is their research project. Well, that may not be exactly true, what they are the most excited about was building their websites to house their research projects. Each student group built a website to house their project and they decided that each time I assign a project for the differing units they will just add a new page to their website, therefore creating an e-portfolio for their 7th grade social studies curriculum.
We have discussed the funding issues that are going on within the state of NC and the students are investigating ways to be efficient in their education while being fragile. One thing that they explored this week which they seem to like is EverNote, it is a free App which allows them to take notes, write reflections on the books they are reading, and then house the notes in notebooks on the cloud. This allows them to be efficient, paperless, organized, and timely with their assignments.
The last thing that I will mention about this past week was Patriot Day. Patriot Day, September 11th, is a special day that we stop and recognize American Patriots. This year we spent the day looking at primary source document from The Portable Patriot and discussing how they were still relevant in our lives today. We looked at the original definition of patriot and patriotism as defined in 1828 by Noah Webster in his American Dictionary and we wrapped the day up by writing a reflection on what we felt a patriot was.
Therefore I will sign off by leaving you with this thought:
Patriotism-n. Love of one's country; the passion which aims to serve one's country, either in defending it from invasion, or protecting its rights and maintaining its laws and institutions in vigor and purity. Patriotism is the characteristic of a good citizen, the noblest passion that animates a man in the character of a citizen. (1828)