One Week Left

For someone who loves to write, I'm a terrible blogger.

In other news, school is over in one week. My third(ish) year teaching, and my first year teaching in the States.... over in one week. Maybe it feels this way because I spent most of third quarter sitting in coffee shops and waiting for my water pipes to unfreeze, but this school year FLEW by.

We finally finished reading The Hobbit in 7th grade! It took almost two months. I split the reading, so we read a chapter in class together, and they read a chapter on their own at home. I found that some of the students LOVED it and are asking to read Fellowship next year, while some wanted to die the entire process. I think they enjoyed the story itself, but have never read a book that's meant to be savored like an Italian cappuccino, instead of chugged quickly like a Starbucks Frapp.

While we read, we made lapbooks. I've seen elementary school teachers do this, and it's becoming a popular project in the homeschool circles, but I wanted to give it a shot in my classroom, too. I didn't use printables or any pre-made parts. The students brought in their own folders, sticky notes, colored paper, tape... whatever they wanted, and we would work on it a section at a time as we read each chapter. They then could use their books to study for the test at the end of the unit.

My example lapbook

A student cover

Inside of a finished one! 

The inside of a lapbook in-progress

Significant Quotes Foldable

Races and Characters with pictures

Author Bio Foldable

The "rubric" for grading

Along with making the lapbooks in Literature class, we used what we were learning about the fantasy genre, epics, and quests to work in groups and create original fantasy worlds. I think this was the biggest hit of the Hobbit unit. I had students coming in during lunch, free time, after school, to ask if they could keep working on their fantasy worlds.

I gave them large sheets of bulletin board paper to start off with. The first day, I asked them to come up with a name and the type of people that might live in their world. I told them to be creative and do anything they wanted. Later, we added an original language, a map, a hero, villain, and wise mentor, and created a story to go along with the world.

Poptart-topia

In 10th grade, we finished off the year with Julius Caesar. I love some Shakespeare, but Julius Caesar is not the most exciting play. In order to make it at least a bit interesting, we turned it into a Twitter Board.

The students enjoyed creative hash-tags... and so did I. Hilarious. 

I also required them to memorize at least 14 lines of Shakespeare. Now, all I have to do is walk into the room and say "Friends, Romans, Countrymen..." and I get a chorus of "lend me your ears!" in response. It's beautiful. 

8th grade spend most of third quarter studying the Holocaust. So after we were all thoroughly depressed, I let them do an independent reading project while we worked on persuasive writing in class. It was interesting to see which books the students chose for themselves. 

Paper Towns by John Green

I have heard SO much about this book from the kids

Great choice!

With all those projects, my room is looking extra fun right now. I also re-arranged my desks because if they're in one spot for too long, I start to get jittery. I probably need to stop moving them every six weeks... maybe one day.

I only have three more class periods to teach! Monday, we're having a Hobbit party in 7th grade... including a costume contest. I'm also looking forward to getting my final exam projects from 10th grade, which will be analysis-style scrapbooks of one of the works we studied this year. I think we'll probably end up having a dance party in 8th grade, as most of them will be out of my room taking a Spanish exam this week. 

Here's to the end of the school year! 

And a busy summer!