This is the year your students will be freshmen in high school... I am doing my absolute best to get them ready!
ANNOUNCEMENTS
High school guidance counselors are coming to Beaumont to present information to 8th-graders. We will hear from Benson and Grant on Thursday, January 14 and Jefferson and Madison on Friday, January 15. Students will receive flyers with family information nights, so stay tuned to hear about the high school choices available to your student.
CALENDAR ITEMS
No school Monday, January 18 (MLK Day)
Late open Wednesday, January 20
End of Quarter 2 Friday, January 22 and school dance
No school for students Monday, January 25 (Teacher Plan Day)
IN-CLASS
Language Arts
We will start the historic fiction novel Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford on Monday, January 11. I will read the entire novel aloud in class, and students are responsible for taking in-class notes and participating in verbal Q&A sessions. Reading this novel gives me a chance to teach a little bit about WWII and the U.S. Japanese internment policy. Students will be analyzing characters, issues of identity within multi-cultural families, and comparing the novel to a short story called "The Bracelet" that also addresses Japanese internment. Woven through all of this will be conversations about social justice and the impact of race on a person's privilege. There will be an art-based final project (identity masks), as well as a persuasive writing piece that addresses rights of immigrants and descendants.
Regular weekly vocabulary/spelling homework will continue, starting the week of January 11.
U.S. History
Students are about to learn about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. In order to gain basic facts about the U.S. system of government, students will need to "pass the 'bar exam'", a 20-question quiz based on questions from the U.S. citizenship exam. Once they have 'passed the bar', students will work in groups (law offices) to try to solve some Constitutional dilemmas. After that, students will learn about several Supreme Court cases that impact the roles of student/teacher/school. Another Time Book entry will be due before the end of the quarter, as well as the "Preamble Project" (students memorize and recite the Preamble to the U.S. Constitution - it's just one very long sentence!). Finally, students will create Bill of Rights posters as a group activity. Phew!
Coming soon: westward expansion, and BEYOND the Oregon Trail (the not-so-rosy side of Oregon's history).
