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Long Time No See!

So it's been awhile... Funny how time runs away and you suddenly realize you've stopped doing something you love. Blogging inspires my creativity, both in seeking out the wisdom of others, and posting my successes and failures. So I'm back, and I must say, I feel better than ever!

Round Table Writing

Round Table Writing
By Trevor and Sammy

On October 7, 2009, Mrs. Walker separated our class into groups of four. We pushed our desks together to make a square. Mrs. Walker gave each of us a starting sentence and for 8-10 minute intervals, we took turns adding on to our groups’ stories. Some were insanely hilarious, while others were just plain weird!

Brinnley says, “It was, um, well, let’s just say some people can really mess up a good story. (Trevor).” Six out of seven surveyed students liked the Round Table Writing.

An example of the writing we created is: “There is a plastic bag full of papers in front of my dresser, pink and sparkly of course. I walk towards it and then, all of a sudden, my sister jumped out in front of me. ‘Let me through!’ I demanded. My sister just stood there. I took a step forward, but immediately stopped. My sister had a lighter! She took a tank of propane and threw it at me. She snuck into her hidden stash of weapons and pulled out a flamethrower and some gasoline. As I lay on the floor trying to get the propane off, she is covering the room with gasoline. She points the flamethrower directly at me and just in time, before she fires, I jump out the 2-story window. When I look back there is a huge explosion, and my bedroom is on fire.”

Apparently, this Round Table Writing assignment was enjoyed by most of Mrs. Walker’s class.

Yellow Star

Yellow Star

Throughout the first quarter, the students of Mrs. Walker’s class worked on Yellow Star. Yellow Star is a series of free verse poems about a young girl, Syvia, who endured life in the Lodz Ghetto. As you may have guessed, this story takes place during the tragic Holocaust.

We read a small, printed section of the book, and then answered a few questions about what we read. When the first packet was given, each student anxiously awaited the next part of the story. It was so intriguing; we couldn’t wait to read what was happening next. Brinnley said, “I must confess, I was not happy with Mrs. Walker for not letting me go on and read the rest.

When asked what they thought about reading Yellow Star, Andre said, “It was shocking”. Jorge simply said, “It was real good.”

Like with all things, there was opposing opinions. Lorenzo, for example, enjoyed it, but said, “Behind the Bedroom Wall was better.”

Reading Yellow Star helped us to better understand what life was like for Jews in Ghettos during the Holocaust, how they endured, what they suffered. Hanna stated, “It was cool to be able to read both Behind the Bedroom Wall and Yellow Star so we could see both sides of WWII.

Behind the Bedroom Wall

We wrote our report on “ BEHIND THE BEDROOM WALL” because we wanted to show how a book could show interest.

On the “BEHIND THE BEDROOM WALL” project. We surveyed 20 students and 99% had good comments and one comment was not so good. On the report one group had no comments for the project. But the rest of the groups had comments like “it was shocking and surprising.” By Vanessa Ruiz. Another group said “it was a well written story” by Brinnley Ashton. On group said, that the ending of the story could have been better “The ending was not good,” said an anonymous source.

Our favorite comment was by Lorenzo, he said “it was a good story, and good Nazi stuff” and he rated the book a 10 out of 10. We liked this comment because he showed a rating for the book, how it was, and a reason why.

We felt Behind the Bedroom Wall was a great book!

Written by:
Jorge, Andre, and Abraham

Quickwrites

The quickwrites are about us answering a question that is about a paragraph long.

One of the questions on our quickwrites was, “If you were any age, it would be?” In that question we answered in our reading notebooks and if we want to share we can share with the class.

We answer the question that Mrs. Walker gives us in our reading note books. In the morning Mrs. Walker gives us a question to write about. Mrs. Walker teaches us to do quickwrites because we learn how to do daily writing and gives us practice. Mrs. Walker wants us to make writing a daily thing...

By: Shayla, Breahanna, Nessa

Classroom Games

Most classrooms have a test at the end of the quarter, but not our class. We played Jeopardy and Hollywood Squares (Housel Squares to Mrs. Walker). It was an interesting end of the Quarter grade. Every team was getting very competitive over it.

Peyton said, “I thought that it was really competitive because there were a lot of people cheating off me.”

When asked about how she came up with the ideas for the grade, Mrs. Walker said “one of my students, Lorenzo, said he learned best when he was playing games. So playing games was the best way to have fun and learn, in my opinion.”

When asked if they liked it or not, 84% said they did like it, 10% didn’t like it that much, and 6% didn’t like it at all.

By: Connor & Lane