Dec 29 2018

6 Word Memoirs

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6689062 / Pixabay

To kick off our memoir writing unit in October, students wrote 6-Word Memoirs. We started with looking at examples of 6-Word memoirs from the teen site: sixwordmemoirs. Students created a six-word memoir on paper to get the idea of how the project worked. They experimented with lettering, color, and images to create a 6-word phrase representing themselves. Then students learned about Creative Commons images and copyright. They installed the Compfight plugin into their blogs to make finding safe images easier. They typed up their 6-Word memoirs into a new post and experimented with fonts, colors, sizes, and images to create a visual representation of themselves.

I shared my memoir with students about living an exciting life to walk them through the process, and they created some pretty inspiring memoirs. Check out a few below:

Josh‘s memoir is about dreams.

Shanna creates a great simile about life.

Taylor‘s love of dance shows in her memoir.

Gracie‘s memoir should give you the courage to stand up for yourself.

Conner‘s memoir speaks to the inner teenager in all of us.

Kierstyn‘s memoir touches on the insecurities inside all of us.

Dec 28 2018

A Christmas Carol Book Snaps

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My 7th graders partnered with their pen pals from California to create “book snaps” for each of the 5 Staves in A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. My students focused on passages from the text that show Scrooge’s changing character throughout the story. We compiled our book snaps onto Padlets to help showcase our work. Check them out and rate/comment if you’d like.

Made with Padlet

 

Made with Padlet

 

Made with Padlet

 

Made with Padlet

 

Made with Padlet
Nov 25 2018

Student Blogging Challenge – Week 8

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We’ve taken a break from the blogging challenge to work on our memoirs and a project for A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens – Book Snaps. We’ll be sharing those on our blogs soon. We’re back to the challenge this week with Holiday-themed tasks. I can’t wait to see what traditions and celebrations my students share this week.

I used Mrs. Vasquez’s suggestions to spice up my blog for the holiday season. I created a custom background using a picture I took of my Christmas tree. I added the plugin “Simply Snow” and changed the theme of our class blog to “Cheer.” Now our class blog is ready for the holiday season.

I also created a post sharing pictures from one of my favorite Christmas traditions – decorating our Christmas tree. There’s something really magical about Christmas trees, and mine is really special.

Check back soon to see our holiday posts!

 

Nov 25 2018

Christmas Traditions – Week 8 Task

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One of my favorite Christmas traditions is decorating the Christmas tree with my 3 sons. We have a special flocked Christmas tree, which means it comes pre-decorated to look like it’s covered in snow with pine cones and holly berries already attached. It’s a huge mess to take out of the box because the beads and foam that make it look like snow fall all over the floor, and we have to clean up before we can begin to decorate, but it’s worth it to see the tree all lit up. Our elf, Sammy, stays in our tree until the 1st day of December.  Our tree sits in our window alcove in the dining room, and we enjoy it’s glow by our fireplace all throughout the month of December.

Nov 6 2018

Book Review – Week 5 Task

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I tend to read books that fall into the Dystopian subgenre of fiction. I love the plots in this subgenre and how complex the conflicts that the characters struggle with are. Characters in Dystopian fiction tend to undergo great personality changes as they grapple with the problem in their story and struggle to stand up for what is right. I like Dystopian fiction that blends with a little bit of romance. I like for characters to get their happy ending and find love on their path to fixing society’s conflicts. I have several favorite Dystopian fiction series. I read the entire Monument 14 trilogy by Emmy Laybourne this year and really enjoyed the blend of disgusting gore, action, romance, and humor that the series has to offer. The Partials trilogy is not a very well-known Dystopian series, but the story is so complex and interesting that I couldn’t stop listening to the books on Audible. I found myself carving out little bits of spare time throughout my entire day so I could listen to the story plot its way through many twists and unexpected turns. The Red Queen series and the Shatter Me series are two Dystopian series that have the perfect blend of action, dystopian conflicts, and romance. The characters in the stories change in such profound ways and take you along for a wild ride. They are both edge-of-your-seat action and suspense stories. The next time you find yourself with a few extra hours, pick up a copy of one of these books and throw yourself into a futuristic world filled with action, nail-biting suspense, and a touch of romance.

Nov 4 2018

October Summary

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OCTOBER

October brought many new writing experiences for my students. Students polished and submitted their free-verse poems. Students published their poems as their first blog post of the school year. We mailed our first letters to our pen pals in California after reviewing the parts of a friendly letter. We wrote 2 sentence horror stories on Halloween and reviewed the structure of complex sentences. In order to begin writing our memoirs this week, we spent several days analyzing memoirs to help learn what makes an effective memoir. We’ll spend the first week of November continuing to analyze effective and ineffective memoirs to help better understand the requirements of this new genre of writing. Also, we spent a great deal of our time focusing on the Student Blogging Challenge. We learned a lot more terminology associated with blogging and finally started to get the hang of posting, commenting, taking screenshots, using creative commons images, and formatting blog posts. The student blogs now showcase examples of their creative work.

November will be filled with honing our memoir-writing craft. Stay tuned for more posts from the Student Blogging Challenge, which carries into December, and posts filled with memoirs that offer a unique perspective into the minds of my 7th graders.

Oct 28 2018

Student Blogging Challenge – Week 4

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Here are the week 4 tasks for the Student Blogging Challenge

This week, my students are going to use one of the suggested sites to write an emoji-inspired story.

OPTION ONE

Use this random emoji generator to help generate an idea for a story. I love this site and used it quite a bit last year for journal writing with my 8th grade students.

 

Students will need to screenshot the emojis that are generated so their readers will know the inspiration for their stories.

Here’s how to take a screenshot using the keyboard on a Chromebook:

Copy and paste or download and upload your screenshots into your post and write your story.

OPTION TWO

Write a story or an informational blog post and use Emoji Translate to turn substitute some words for emojis.

 

Copy and paste the text with substituted emojis into your blog post.

✍🏻 a story about your 🐶, your day at 🏫, the ⏱️ ➡️👤 had ➡️ to the 🏥, or any other memorable ⏱️ in your life.

Please title your blog post for this week’s task “Emoji Story – Week 4 Task.”

Click here to add this week’s post URL to submit your post for commenting.

Oct 28 2018

Emoji Story – Week 4 Task

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Too Far

Emmett’s younger brother, Michael, was always ▶️ pranks on him. They were usually quite harmless, like the ⏱️ Michael put a rubber, squeaky 🐀 in Emmett’s 👞. Emmett was definitely 😯 the morning that 👨🏻 👂🏻 a 🔊 squeak come from his 👞 as 👨🏻 slipped his foot in. At the same ⏱️, 👨🏻 felt the soft, squishy object against his toe ➕ immediately reacted by gasping ➕ throwing the 👞, which thumped hard against the entry table. The 🥛 vase on 🔝 teetered 🔙 ➕ forth before tipping on its side ➕ rolling off the table in a 🔊 crash. The vase shattered into pieces, some skittering all the way across the floor to where Michael sat 😆 on the couch. Of course that got his mother’s attention. 👩🏻 ran in from the kitchen, where 👩🏻 was packing their lunches for the day. Of course Emmett got in trouble for throwing the 👞, ➕ Michael sat there 👂🏻 to Emmett get lectured about throwing things in the 🏘️ with a smug 👀 on his😀. His 👩🏻 💬 👨🏻 would learn his punishment when his mother ➕ father had ⏱️ to discuss it after 🏫, but in the meantime, 👩🏻 took 👨🏻 favorite snack, a Cosmic Brownie, out of 👨🏻 lunch box ➕ 🗣️ him 👨🏻 wouldn’t be getting a snack today as 👩🏻 dropped a baggie of 🥕 in the brownie’s place.

Emmett was 😫 of Michael’s pranks ➕ how Michael never got in trouble for anything. It was Michael’s fault that Emmett threw the 👞 that broke the vase, but his parents wouldn’t 👂🏻 to him ➕ grounded him for a week. Emmett decided then ➕ there that Michael would never prank him 🔂. 👨🏻 would make sure of it.

Several years ago, Emmett 🏆 a orange-striped goldfish at the state fair in 1️⃣ of those 💍-toss games. The life expectancy of 1️⃣ of those goldfish isn’t typically that long, but Emmett took 👍🏻 care of his fish. 1️⃣ Saturday morning, Emmett woke 🔎 👨🏻⬅️ goldfish, which 👨🏻 had named Bubbles, floating on the 🔝 of the tank, lifeless. Emmett 💬 nothing to his parents or his brother, ➕ instead of flushing Bubbles ⬇️ the 🚽, 👨🏻 decided to use it to teach Michael a lesson ➕ 🛑 the pranks 🔂 ➕ for all.

Emmett’s parents both had work ➕ ⬅️ Emmett in charge of ⌚️ Michael. It was lunch ⏱️ ➕ Emmett decided to make 🥪. Both 👦🏻 like 🥔 chips on their 🥪, which was perfect for helping Emmett conceal the lump created by the goldfish in Michael’s 🥪. Emmett took his ⏱️ spreading mayonnaise on both pieces of 🍞 for Michael’s 🥪. 👨🏻 layered a piece of 🧀, several pieces of ham, a squirt of mustard, the goldfish, some more ham, ➕ a ✋🏻 of chips between 2️⃣ pieces of 🍞. The 👀 on Michael’s 😀 when he bit into the goldfish was hilarious, but the 👀 when Michael realized what was in his 🥪 made Emmett realize that 👨🏻 had taken this prank way too far. 👨🏻 felt terrible ⌚️ Michael get 😷 for 🔟 minutes. Both Michael ➕ Emmett learned a lesson that day, ➕ Michael never pranked Emmett 🔂.

 

I used Emoji Translate to substitute some words in my story for emojis. I hope you enjoyed it.

Oct 21 2018

Student Blogging Challenge – Week 3

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The tasks for week 3 of the Student Blogging Challenge have been posted.

This week my students will complete a variation of the 3rd task – Image Task Cards. This week we will be beginning our memoir unit. Our very first lesson is trying our hand at creating 6 Word Memoirs. Students will begin their experience by creating a physical copy of their 6 word memoir on Monday. On Tuesday, we will create a digital copy of our 6 Word Memoirs using our blogs and creative commons images. We will be adding the plugin “Compfight” to our blog dashboards so that we can have easy access to creative commons images to ensure we don’t violate any copyright laws. Students will then create a new post on their blogs that has at least one 6 Word Memoir and a creative commons image to go along with it. I hope you’ll check them out once they are published. The 6 Word Memoir project is something I always enjoy doing with my students.

 

Students:

Here is the link to the Google Form to submit your post so that it can be commented on.