Today we discussed the importance of making quality blog comments. The students spent time commenting on the memoirs of their peers. The Grade 6 students did a fantastic job composing their memoirs. It is great to see the students commenting words of encouragement and offering suggestions.
Click the link below to access the links to their blogfolios:
Middle School Student Blogfolios
Mrs. Thompson created a wonderful infographic about creating quality blog comments:
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We have finished reading the novel, Egghead. Students will have the opportunity to use the next few class periods to channel their creativity and complete a final task. Students may work individually or with a partner for this task. Upon my return on Monday, we will set a due date for this task together.
Option 1: Create an Egghead Mixtape
Option 2: Continue the story
Click the link below to learn more about your final task options:
Are you searching for a new book for Hanukkah? You are in luck! The Scholastic Book Fair at OJCS begins on Monday, November 22nd, 2021. Each class will have the opportunity to visit the book fair two times next week.
Grade 6A will visit the book fair on Monday (11/22) and Friday (11/26).
Grade 6B will visit the book fair on Tuesday (11/23) and Friday (11/26).
Grade 7 will visit the book fair on Wednesday (11/24) and Friday (11/26).
Grade 8 will visit the book fair on Monday (11/22) and Thursday (11/25).
Additionally, parents will have the opportunity to purchase books online via our digital book fair link.
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As we continue our novel study of Egghead by Caroline Pignat, this week we are focusing on writing from a character’s perspective. Students are being tasked with choosing an event from the novel and creating a postcard. Each postcard will contain an illustration (either digital or hand-drawn) and a writing sample from a character’s perspective. This assignment asks students to “walk in the shoes of another” as they attempt to create a higher-level connection with the thoughts and feelings of the characters.
Click the link below to access the assignment:
Click the link below to access the postcard template:
Egghead Postcard Digital Template
Click the link below to access a student example:
Today we will continue to review and practice how to properly format MLA in-text citations. As we have previously discussed, citations are essential in order to avoid plagiarism and provide authors with credit for their ideas and information.
Yesterday we reviewed a variety of editing strategies that students can use when revising their written work. Today we are going to spend some time in class editing paragraphs and implementing these strategies. My goal is for each student to identify which editing strategy works best for their learning style.
Click the link below to access our Google Slides presentation:
Editing Strategies Presentation
Online editing practice:
https://mrnussbaum.com/extreme-sentence-surgeons-saving-critically-injured-paragraphs-online-game
https://www.softschools.com/quizzes/language_arts/proofreading/quiz1634.html
Students were also provided with a copy of a COPS Editing Checklist to keep in their binders at school.
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Each week students will be responsible for answering assigned comprehension questions relating to the assigned chapters of Egghead. We will be focusing on ensuring that we “tag” each question and provide supporting details from the text. These questions will be answered both in class and at home, depending on the assigned reading. The homework board will be updated regularly to ensure that students are on track and organized throughout the novel study.
Today students were asked to complete a Bullying Awareness Survey. This anonymous survey provided students with a series of questions relating to their own personal experiences with bullying. We will analyze this data as a class in preparation for our first novel study. Tomorrow our class will discuss the results of this survey and create connections to our North Stars and Seven Habits.
Each student was given a copy of the novel Egghead by Caroline Pignat. Tomorrow we will have the opportunity to begin the novel in class. Throughout this novel study, students will be asked to read both in class and at home. There will be corresponding activities for each chapter throughout the novel.
Grade 6 Unit 1: Egghead Google Slides
Please respond to the following task below via a comment to this post:
Students are asked to comment a prediction about the novel Egghead based solely off of the front cover of the book. Support your prediction by referencing specific details from the cover. (Think about the following question: Why could making predictions be an important reading skill?)
Comment due by: Wednesday (10/4)
This week our class has been discussing and analyzing a variety of resources related to the importance of truth and reconciliation. Yesterday the students listened to survivor testimonies and reviewed the 94 Calls to Action that were created by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. As we discussed in class, we must remember and change rather than simply forgiving and forgetting. Today each student will reflect upon our lessons by creating a blog post that demonstrates their own learning.
Click the link below to access our slideshow:
Truth and Reconciliation Slideshow
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This week students will be uploading a few artifacts of learning to their blogfolios. These posts are intended to showcase projects and assignments that demonstrate growth.
In case students are having trouble creating their blog posts or changing their blogfolio layout, I have included a couple video tutorials.
Check out these useful blogging videos that Mrs. Thompson created:
Creating a Post
Writing a new post is quite easy! It is very similar to writing a page or even a document in Word of Google Docs. You can choose to write a new post in a few different spots throughout your dashboard; either way will bring you to the same place.
You are always able to hyperlink to a Google Doc, which will direct people to an external link where they will be able to see the document. Depending on the sharing settings, you can choose whether they can edit, view or comment. If you would like this document to be publicly accessed, it is also important to change the settings so that ‘anyone with the link’ can view the document, otherwise you’ll be getting lots of emails from parents requesting access.
1. Click Share in the top right-hand corner
2. If you would like to share it with specific people, start typing their name or email address
3. Decide whether you would like them to be able to view, edit or comment.
4. If you would like to allow anyone with the link to have access to the document (best if you are linking on your blog so that parents can access the document without it being shared with them, click Change at the bottom of the Get link box.
5. Click the arrow for the drop-down menu next to The Ottawa Jewish Community School and select Anyone with the link. Remember to also select whether you would like those with the link to view, edit, or comment.
6. Copy the link URL to then add as a hyperlink within your document. You never want to paste a long URL to your blog.
Just as with Google Docs, there are a few different ways to embed a Google Slides presentation, and the option you choose will depend on the purpose for sharing.
If you would like to share a Google Slides presentation for people to view only, the best way to do so would be to publish the presentation to the web and obtain an embed code.
If you would like to embed the actual document into your post, as is recommended, you will need to save it as a PDF so that it will show up as an image within your post.
When adding a video to your post, it is always best to embed the video so that visitors can watch the video directly in the post without having to navigate to a new page. HOWEVER, it is still important to consider copyright laws when sharing videos that you did not create! Just because something is on YouTube doesn’t necessarily mean it is free to share (think about whole movies you can find on YouTube for free. You can always read the permissions, but chances are…these are not legally shared)
When in doubt, create your own videos or hyperlink to them in YouTube if they can’t be recreated.
No matter where your video is from, you will want to use the embed code in order for it to properly show up in your post.
YouTube makes it very easy to find their embed codes to copy.
If you have created a video in Screencastify, while the video is processing, a new tab will open on your computer. From there, it will give you the option to get an embed code.
If you accidentally closed the Screencastify tab, or you created the video in some other program (Screen Recorder or even a recording of your Google Meet session) these will all automatically be saved to your Google Drive. Once the video is in Drive, it’s just a few quick steps to embed it directly into the post.
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