This week we had two things on the front of everyone’s minds: health and our upcoming NYC trip, which is now officially less than a week away! Students also participated in their Candor Health programs this week, including a great in-school visit so students could have the opportunity to have discussions about their health with real-world experts on the subject. In this age of misinformation and disinformation it is more important than ever for students to have the opportunity to learn from trusted and qualified experts in areas like healthy relationships and sexuality, as well as the dangers of various substances that could enter into their lives and have a huge negative effect if they hadn’t had been educated in how dangerous they can be.

Monday we started off the week by having the students begin to complete some of the preliminary work they would need for their in-person portion of their health class. As well as getting a chance to get a head start on some of the online portion of their Candor Health program. 7th Grade students did a module titled “Teen Sexual Health 1” and 8th Grade students completed “teen sexual Health 2”. These courses outline and review various biological and psychological components of sexual and reproductive health, including what you would probably expect such as anatomy, biological processes, and fetal development. But also included details on topics such as healthy relationships, peer pressure, and signs of abuse. After taking some time to make progress for health class, we also resumed “The Sandlot” from Friday, as due to some technical issues the class was not able to finish the film on Friday for our teacher appreciation week celebration.

Tuesday we continued to prepare for our in-person Health Education, with students taking some time in class to complete their preliminary activities and some of the class modules for two other health classes: Decisions and Vaping. In these two classes as one would expect, the students learn about the decision making process, peer pressure, bad influences and which decisions are the right decisions to make, in addition to challenging the kids to think about how they can reframe their mindset in the moment to help them make the best decisions they can. Tuesday we also finally got the time to do our Socratic seminar final discussion for our Night novel study! It was a really great conversation, and I’m proud that the students took the chance to take the lead in the discussion, while I played more of a moderator role rather than an active participant role. We had so many amazing questions asked about the book, and really enlightening conversations in response to those questions, that showcased a very developed level of understanding of the novel and the key concepts that the novel explores, as well as the events, and characters and their connection to our Holocaust unit as a whole. It was a great and proud moment for me as their teacher for the seminar to be our summative discussion of the unit, and I think it served as a tremendous example of how far we have come over the past months of the school year, as this discussion was so much more in-depth and advanced than the one we had for our WWI unit!

Wednesday the representatives from Candor Health came to our school and students completed their 2 in-person classes for health: Teen Sexual Health, and Vaping. During these classes students got a chance to learn firsthand from experts, and also got a chance to engage in conversations about these topics that they maybe don’t get to talk about all that often outside of class. Our guest instructors did a tremendous job of keeping everything comfortable and respectful, and the kids got to learn some great scientifically proven and fact based information about the best methods for practicing safe sex, engaging in safe and healthy relationships, avoiding peer pressure and vaping, and who they can talk to or get help from if they find themselves needing it within the next few years.

Thursday we took a break from Health to do a bit more NYC history. Students completed a mini-project in which they were paired up, and were allowed to choose a NYC Landmark to do some research on and to present to their peers. These landmarks included the Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State Building, the Statue of Liberty, and Washington Square among others. After they did their research, students created a brief slides presentation to discuss and highlight the history of their chosen landmarks, the purpose it serves, the reason it is significant, and who some of the significant figures surrounding their landmarks were like architects and people responsible for funding or construction. Once they finished all of this, they were tasked with presenting their presentations to their classmates who filled out a note sheet with designated areas for facts and information about each landmark. We didn’t get time to finish all of these presentations on Thursday, so they will have to resume next week to help us get even more excited for our trip!

Friday our future graduates took some time to work with Ms. Maria on perfecting their graduation photo slideshows, and their graduation speeches. The students had a full day dedicated to organizing and uploading their photos, and thinking of some ideas of how they would like to emphasize the importance of their graduation quotes, as well as thinking back to some fond memories at Plato Academy and all of the things they learned in the classroom. While the 8th graders prepped for graduation, the 7th graders completed their online classes for Health, and got a head start on some test corrections for their recent Night and Holocaust final unit test.

I would like to start out this week’s blog by thanking everyone for their contributions to teacher appreciation week this past week! We had so many amazing gifts and perks, and I’ll definitely need to get some extra steps in over the next few weeks to make up for having so much amazing food 🙂 Our administration and our parents here at Plato are second to none, and they certainly proved that this week, as I am feeling so very appreciated, so thank you again so much to all of my parents and anyone else who helped make this such a special teacher appreciation week!

Monday students took a field trip to Pickwick theater in Park Ridge to attend a viewing of the film ‘Kapodistrias’ – a biopic about the first governor of Greece, Ioannes Kapodistrias who was an instrumental governing figure and statesmen who served as a foundational architect of the modern Greek state. It was a great chance for students to explore the history of such a monumental figure, and to break up some of the monotony of the school year by taking a fun trip to the movies!

Tuesday we resumed our exploration of the Holocaust by getting back into our walking debate discussion about the aftermath of the Holocaust. Meanwhile our 7th graders began their STS testing for the year, which would include testing sessions on both Tuesday and Wednesday. As we continued our walking debate, we explored ideas like ‘justice’ and ‘fairness’ as it pertains to massive international tragedies like the holocaust, as we attempted to deal with the question “is it even possible to get justice for crimes so severe?”. There were so many amazing responses, and I’m very proud of my students for being able to have a mature and informed debate over such an important topic! Tuesday we also had a brief meeting to discuss plans for the upcoming NYC trip. As the date of departure approaches, we are fleshing out our itinerary more and more, packing in as much as we can to make this trip as special and memorable as possible!

Wednesday and Thursday students prepared for and participated in one of my favorite lessons that we have done so far this year: the Nuremberg mock trial. First we had further discussions and took notes on the significance of the Nuremberg trials, the actual process of liberating the victims and slowly emptying out the concentration camps, and the various questions and their proposed answers that arose during the wake of the discovery of the horrors of the Holocaust. Then students participated in some content readings related to the Nuremberg trials, and specifically the trials of Julius Streicher, who was the Nazi we put on “trial” as a class. Upon being informed on the international legal process, and the various crimes committed by Nazis throughout WWII and the Holocaust, I then assigned various roles to the students, including judges, the prosecution, the defense, a court clerk, a Jury, and the defendant. Students got to see a small bit of how international courts worked, and got to see a direct example of both the Nazi defense arguments, and why those arguments in no way justified their actions leading to unanimous convictions of Nazi criminals after the holocaust. I found this activity to be one of the most engaging and enlightening of the year, and made sure to give students plenty of time to both prepare and participate as I feel strongly that they were gaining a lot both in terms of skills and content but as well as perspective, which can be difficult to attain since we are so far removed historically from the Holocaust, and also since it is such an unimaginable event that it can be difficult for students to get that perspective. After we concluded we had a fantastic class discussion about the mock trial and the history surrounding it, as well as the implications of the Nuremberg trials and the fact that Nazis would be hunted and convicted over the course of the next 70 years across the globe, with some Nazi convictions coming as late as 2024! Wednesday we also paid a visit to Ms. Beth’s class to check out some of their awesome presentations about our national parks. They did some absolutely incredible work, and as usual I’m so proud of my kids for being so supportive of their fellow Plato students as well as great role models by listening respectfully and making great positive supportive comments to encourage the younger students.

Friday students took their final test for the class novel ‘Night’ by Elie Wiesel as well as the Holocaust unit as a whole. In this multiple choice test students got a bit of a taste of what they can expect from High School Social Studies tests as I used the same design philosophy and approach as I would have for 9th graders. The test included both content from the novel as well as the surrounding Holocaust unit, including historical events, vocabulary and terminology, as well as literary content and ideas. After this test, we took a bit of a break from the Holocaust to practice our songs for our upcoming spring show! Then in the afternoon while Mr. Joe was away for the teacher appreciation week painting party, students got to relax and have some fun viewing the film ‘The Sandlot’ to end their week.

Next week we will wrap up the Holocaust unit for good by having our Socratic seminar for the novel ‘Night’, before jumping into some NYC history and continuing to prepare for the spring show and graduation. Until then I hope everyone has a great mothers day weekend!

Happy May to all of my readers! Time truly flies, as it’s so hard to believe we’re already in our last month of the school year, and many of my students last month at Plato Academy ever! The weather is getting better and better, and we are inching closer to many of our end of the year festivities such as our trip to New York, field day, and the Spring Show!

Monday we started off the week by finishing up what we started off on Friday. The class viewed the second half of the film ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’, and we had a class seminar discussion on both the literary elements of the film, as well as how the film reflected our understanding of the Holocaust so far. We had a great discussion, and it was exciting to see students make connections between the material they learned from our Holocaust study and their class novels, and the film. This film is unique because it is both a Holocaust story and a coming of age story, and students got a chance to see the horrors of the Holocaust from a different perspective, and see how a loss of innocence occurred for the main character, which in turn represented a loss of innocence for all the German people of the time, many who were completely ignorant to the atrocities going on in their own country, and then the struggle of being faced with those realities after finding out. Monday we also took some time to further develop some of the expository “how-to” papers for when Ms. Debbie had her final class session on Wednesday, so that we could be ready to revise and eventually publish the stories in a class book!

Tuesday morning we continued to work on drafting for the expository paper, as the students drafted I went around the room and did some brief conferencing with each of them to ensure that their topics was something they felt strongly about helping future students improve with, and that they were utilizing the same ideas in both their theses and their body paragraphs. It has been great to see how much growth my students have undergone in just the second semester, as the writing process for these papers has been so much more expeditious than the law day papers due to their deeper understanding of the writing process and how the 5 paragraph format works. Tuesday afternoon we had three of the lawyers from the HBAI were generous enough to come by in person to announce the winners of the law day writing contest, and to engage with a fantastic Q&A session with the students! It was a great opportunity for students to get a chance to learn about different types of law practices, and how different kinds of lawyers can have very different kinds of careers. Students also got a chance to hear about some of the hot-button constitutional issues we have discussed in class from the legal professionals who specialize in the constitution. Finally the lawyers announced our winners, and I’d like to shout out our winner for the 8th grade contest: Soti Stojan! Congratulations Soti! your hard work and dedication to the project paid off very well! But he’s not the only student of mine who should be proud; like the lawyers themselves said it was an incredible close competition, and all of the students should be very proud of the work they accomplished over such a long term project.

Wednesday we had a shortened day for early dismissal, but we still got plenty done by finishing up rough drafts for the expository paper, and taking an opportunity to practice some grammar by looking at the most commonly misused words and participating in a practice activity using the educational app Quill to get some practice experience in! The words we focused on in particular were those with a variety of different spellings, that have been misused with greater and greater frequency thanks to social media and our ever growing reliance on technologies like auto-correct. These include were vs. we’re, their, there and they’re; to vs. too among many other commonly misused spellings! It was a good chance to get in some practice, and I had some fun conversations with some students about their reliance on corrective spelling technology, and the state of spelling and grammar as it is used on social media and the internet. Hopefully my students will be able to rise above this epidemic of misspellings and technological reliance to be able to improve their understanding of grammar and the English language.

Thursday Ms. Debbie came in for the final writer’s workshop of the school year! She helped students to revise for their expository papers, and then we took the chance for each student to create a cover art for their contributions before we published the class book to offer for the next group of Plato Middle School students. The main order of the day was peer review, which will continue to be an essential part of the long term writing process as the students progress to high school. Being able to look at their peer’s papers also gave students the chance to reflect on their own work, and as always with any type of advisory process, the students needed to make sure they were picking the right advice to follow, and maybe filtering out some of the less helpful suggestions that might have compromised their original vision, as it is often important to think about where feedback is coming from, and whether it should be followed 100% or not. I would like to extend a very special thank you to Ms. Debbie for all of her help this semester, she was absolutely instrumental in our completion of the Law Day contest, in addition to many other amazing writing pieces, and has helped to do so much for our students to grow their writing skills in such a dramatic way in such a short period of time, thank you Debbie for everything you do!

Friday we started off the day by (finally) presenting their final projects for their novel studies. This activity was greatly delayed as we were originally going to try to present with Ms. Mary’s class in attendance, but after a couple of weeks of trying and failing to find a mutually beneficial time to present, we had to unfortunately cancel that aspect of the presentation projects. Students did a fantastic job of summarizing their novels and identifying the important plot elements, the characters with their roles and character arcs, pointing out the literary devices present throughout the book and their significance, as well as being able to identify passages that highlight the tone and theme of their class novels. After we took this time to present, we started the penultimate Holocaust topic we’re exploring for the Holocaust unit: rescuers of the Holocaust. Students looked at primary and secondary sources about and related to 3 different heroes who saved the lives of Jewish people under Nazi occupation: William Thalhimer, Varian Fry, and Chiune Sugihara. After they read, took notes and answered questions about the sources and their subjects, students grouped together to fill out a 3 way venn diagram of similarities and differences between the 3 rescuers, and we had a class discussion to explore the same similarities and differences as well as the various risks and heroism displayed by these rescuers. Lastly we moved on to the final subtopic of the Holocaust unit: the aftermath. The first activity related to the aftermath of the Holocaust is a survey students took regarding their opinions on various forms of “justice” related to the Holocaust, which we are also turning into a walking debate. The activity has only just begun and will resume next week, but we’ve already had some amazing discussion and debate on the topic!

Next week we will finish our exploration of the Holocaust and our new class novel night, as well as taking a look at some greek culture by going to see the film ‘Kapodistrias’. I look forward to wrapping things up and talking with students about overall lessons and new perspectives we can take on humanity in the wake of the Holocaust, and how we can make sure “never again” holds true. Until then I hope everyone has a wonderful weekend!

Monday we started a deeper dive of understanding the history of the Holocaust by doing some direct instruction combined with class discussion and writing activities. I walked the students through a slides presentation where I was able to speak with them directly about the context of the Holocaust by explaining the status of pre-war Jewish communities in Europe, the history of Antisemitism, the failures of the Weimar republic and we reviewed some of the reasons Hitler and the Nazis were able to seize power in Europe. We also reviewed what life was like in Nazi Germany and Nazi occupied nations by looking at a timeline of totalitarianism, which detailed how laws passed by Hitler’s regime slowly eroded Jewish rights in Nazi territory until they had fully lost all rights and citizenship. We discussed the establishment of Ghettos and how Jews were persecuted by the German government of Hitler, including the Nuremburg laws and pogroms like Kristallnacht; eventually discussing the “Jewish question” and the “final solution” with full historical context. As we did our discussion, students filled out a guided note sheet to help keep them engaged and provide them with study materials for future exams and writing activities. This also helped students to contextualize more of our class novel: ‘Night’ by Elie Wiesel, by giving them many of the specific details about both Jewish culture and religious practices as well as some of the geography of WW2 Germany and Poland, including the concentration camps system.

Tuesday we continued our deep dive of the Holocaust by first looking at what the US and World’s reaction to the initial events and persecutions of Jewish people was: which was to largely ignore their plight and in most cases to do very little to allow for Jewish people to migrate to their countries. Students learned how few Jewish people were being allowed into other countries as refugees, as well as some of the metaphorical hoops they had to jump through to get visas to emigrate. This was especially relevant in reference to another novel I am reading to the class with some of our time: ‘Four Perfect Pebbles’ by Marion Blumenthal. After we had our discussion, we took some more time to read Four Perfect Pebbles, and had some discussion about the events of the novel so far and how they fit into the timeline of persecution and violence against the Jews we have discussed so far. Tuesday we also started viewing the PBS Documentary: ‘Soul on Fire’ which explores the story of Elie Wiesel writing the book Night, his experiences in the Holocaust and the years following, and how he used his voice as a prominent Holocaust survivor to encourage other people to share their story, hoping to inspire oppressed people throughout the world to resist tyranny and to speak out against oppression.

Wednesday we started the day by taking a quiz for parts 1-2 of ‘Night’, and then reviewed the quiz answers and discussed some of the early events of the book, the book’s use of symbolism, simile, and metaphor, and talked about examples of where each of those literary techniques works best when used in different kinds of writing. We then continued viewing ‘Soul on Fire’ until Ms. Debbie arrived and we began our final writer’s workshop assignment for the year: the expository paper. In this paper students will go into extreme detail explaining a ‘how to’ that is important to them personally. The end goal will be to have the class publish a book of ‘how to’s’ together, that we can compile to create a guide for future students to know how to do everything from achieving academic and athletic goals, to making friends and building positive habits! Wednesday we also visited Ms. Melissa’s class to check out some of the amazing work her students did for a project on the book they have been reading as a class, it was amazing to see how great all of my student were with their younger Plato students!

Thursday I was absent, so students took a brief break from our Holocaust study to take a look at some fun and interesting articles from Scholastic Scope Magazine! Students read three articles: One was about a new system of schools in swamp regions of Bangladesh where seasonal flooding can make travelling a near impossibility during the wet season, a second article about a hypothetical “what if” scenario exploring the possiblity of the electric lightbulb never having been invented in the form of a text exchange between Thomas Edison, JP Morgan, and Alexander Graham Bell. Finally they read an article about a wildlife researcher and her experiences with Lions in Africa. As students read they completed a series of written activities with a variety of skill checks such as recognizing and recalling article content, learning new vocabulary, and organizing their thoughts and responses to some of the articles’ content, themes, and questions raised by the articles’. Thursday students also did a quick visit to downstairs again as they helped out with Ms. Sorya and Ms. Ela’s community service project to save the bees!

Friday we started off the day with another chapter quiz for Night, this time chapters 3 and 4. We then resumed our deep-dive Holocaust study by this time taking a look at another component of the Holocaust: resistance. We had a class discussion and looked at images via slides that showcased some of the different ways people would resist the Nazis historically, including spreading information and nonviolent resistance such as the White Rose movement started by the famous Scholl siblings, as well as some of the violent resistance such as the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Students then read and took notes on an article from the United States Holocaust Memorial and Museum about the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, including the events leading up to the uprising, how the uprising unfolded over a series of months, how the Nazis responded to the uprising, and finally what the outcome of the uprising was. We then had a full class discussion where we synthesized overall thoughts on the article and everything new we learned about the uprising, and students did an ‘exit ticket’ where they were challenged to think about why the resistance fighters did what they did despite facing impossible odds, and what their definitions of ‘resistance’ might be, and what resistance really meant to those who fought and gave their lives against the Nazis. Friday we also started viewing a new film for the holocaust unit: ‘The Boy in the Striped Pajamas’. This film is about a friendship that forms between the son of an SS officer who lives near a concentration camp and one of the inmates of the concentration camps who is a boy the same age. The story is very famous and has won many awards due to its moving and haunting exploration of freedom, hate, division, and shows a meticulously crafted recreation of some of the conditions that Holocaust victims lived in within the horrors of the concentration camps.

Next week we will finish the film, and will begin to practice for our Spring show performance, as well as continuing our exploration of the Holocaust and the class novel night. The school year may be winding down but we still have so much we can accomplish over the next month as we continue to get ready for graduation and the class trip!

It is the end of yet another exciting week here at Plato Academy and this week finds our class experiencing some endings and some beginnings. As we wrap up and finalize some of the things we’ve been working on for the past few months, we also start to dig deep into our new holocaust unit, and prepare for another ending that will be a new beginning for many of our students: graduation.

Tuesday we started off the day hitting the ground running by finishing up the two activities we left off on last Friday: the birthright citizenship argumentative writes, and their persuasive presentations for our upcoming trip to New York City next month. As I stated in the last blog, these were coming along so well that I didn’t want to limit them to only one day of class, so I gave the students some extra time to finalize their arguments for the birthright citizenship assignment, and allowed them some more time to research activities they would like to add to the itinerary for the upcoming class trip, while also working on developing their pitch skills by giving them some time to prepare their sales pitches on their chosen activities. Its been great reading over everyone’s arguments, and seeing how their time working on law Day has given them the skills to quickly research, formulate and articulate an argument – even if they aren’t particularly passionate about a subject, or even if they disagree with the stance they are arguing in favor of. Speaking of law Day, Tuesday we put the finishing touches on law Day and submitted all of the essays. I am so proud of the work the class was able to accomplish, and I would like to shout out our own Ms. Debbie for being such a fantastic part in making sure the writing process would be everything it could be! Thanks to her help and all of the students’ hard work I saw everyone learn and develop, and write some truly amazing essays for the prompt. Tuesday students also finished an presented their sales pitches for what we can do in NYC, and as we move closer to finalizing our schedule there were many compelling arguments for many fantastic activities to look forward to!

Wednesday to start the day we began wrapping up another long term unit for our class: the book club novel studies. Students took final multiple choice tests about the content of their novels from beginning to end, giving them an opportunity to practice their skills in taking formal tests, and also putting their reading and recollection to the test! After the tests were completed Ms. Debbie stopped by for a brief post-law day celebration, where we were able to have a debrief and share some thoughts about the favorite parts and least favorite parts of the essay writing process, finishing off by playing some games before we left for our field trip. Wednesday we also walked down to the Des Plaines theater to watch the fun production “50 States in 60 Minutes”. This brief exploration of US history through a humorous lens helped students review a bit about American history, while also learning some new fun facts and concepts, all while being engaged in the rapid pace delivery by some fantastic local actors!

Thursday students were introduced to the activity that would take up most of the remaining time for the week, their final novel study presentation projects. Each novel study group would break off on their own to create a poster and presentation representing their books. In short, the idea of the project is for students to re-tell the stories of their books by having a brief description of the various literary elements present in the story. This includes creating a story-arc and a plot summary blurb, (like something students would find on the back of a novel) to give the audience an overview of the plot of their assigned stories. Then the characters, including some descriptions of characters, what their role is in the story (protagonist, antagonist, foil etc.) and the character arcs throughout the story, for them to explain who the story is about and how these characters change over the course of the novels. They also had to include the conflicts present in the story, including which type of conflict (such as character vs. character, character vs self, character vs. society etc.) and how each conflict contributed to the story, and helped to drive plot and character growth. Students also have to identify the symbolism used throughout the story, and to talk about the tone and mood of the story, including finding some passages to help illustrate why the story has the tone that they have identified. Finally student groups have to talk about the themes present in the story, what the overall message of the books were, what universal truths the author was trying to share in their novels, and relate their theme to the modern world and people their own age today. They had a bit of work time on Thursday, but due to needing to explain and model the assignment work time was limited before we had to head down to science class.

Friday students got the majority of their work time for their novel study final projects. We were able to get enough quality time for the students to finish their projects, and as I went around the room and assisted with their projects, I saw a ton of exciting ideas and excellent connections being drawn. Students are doing a great job showing off their reading comprehension skills, and I can’t wait to see everyone’s presentations when they are fully realized early next week as we present the posters and talk about the novels with Ms. Mary’s class! Friday students also received their new class novel that we will explore over the next couple of weeks: ‘Night’ by Elie Wiesel. For those unfamiliar Night is a haunting memoir of Elie Wiesel’s experiences in the concentration camps during the holocaust, including his life immediately before and after his time in the camps. This book is responsible for Wiesel winning a Nobel peace prize, and is deemed one of the finest examples in the genre, as well as one of the most informative accounts of specific details of what the holocaust was like. Students will almost certainly find themselves reading the book again as they progress through high school, so this will be a valuable head start to help them anticipate their future learning. In addition to this and the other stories we are sharing in class, such as “Four Perfect Pebbles” by Marion Blumenthal, students will get a better idea of the horrors and moments of hope from the holocaust from the firsthand accounts of survivors, and I personally find there is no better way to learn about history than by getting accounts straight from people who experienced history, no matter how dark it may be.

As we move towards the end of the school year I would also like to bring attention to an upcoming part of graduation that students will be participating in, which is the writing of their graduation speeches and the inclusion of quotes they find significant or inspiring. I would encourage all of my readers to have conversations with students about their quotes and notes, and to spend some time reflecting with them about everything they’ve learned over the years at Plato, how they’ve grown and learned over their time here, and how they can use that as they continue to grow and move on to bigger and better things! My students have a lot to be proud of, and I can’t wait to hear what everyone has to say in just a few weeks when we have our graduation ceremony!

The weather is (finally) getting warm and the time is flying by as we wrap up another week here in room 214! It has been another productive week of learning the writing process, deepening our historical understandings, practicing rhetoric through current events, and building our school community. We’re also excited to finally announce some details for our upcoming class trip to New York City next month, so be on the lookout for more as we continue to solidify our plans for what is sure to be an unforgettable few days! This week also saw the conclusion of not one but two major long term projects: the Law Day essays and the Independent Research Projects for science. I’d like to congratulate all of our students on their perseverance and for sticking through these projects and working hard the entire time, they should all be very proud I know I am!

Monday jumped right back into action for our law day essays, making Revisions based on feedback received over the weekend and having conferences with Ms. Debbie. The one-on-one conference approach gave us the opportunity to have conversations about feedback received so far, and what our goals could be for revising the essays moving forward. While Debbie ran the conferences I worked with students on two things: Revisions based on the conference feedback, and an introductory activity from Facing History to get students familiar with our next history topic: the Holocaust. Students first had an introductory class discussion about how much we know about the Holocaust, and how much we could remember about life in Nazi Germany and states occupied by the Nazis (it was a lot). After this discussion we read a poem entitled: “What do We Do With a Difference”, did a bit of discussion about the poem, and then students continued to read a series of sources selected by me that introduced the idea of “the other” or “mothering”, and how not only Jews have been persecuted for centuries, but how other groups have been treated unfairly based on their backgrounds throughout history in America and in other countries. This helped students understand some of the initial concepts that can allow for large-scale hate movements, which can then lead to tragic atrocities like the holocaust occurring. While dark, these types of subjects serve as a great example of why it is important to study history – to ensure things like this are not repeated.

Tuesday we continued the process of conferences with Ms. Debbie combined with introductory Holocaust activities. Students continued to revise their papers based on feedback from Ms. Debbie, while some other students did a bit of secondary research on supreme court cases to help strengthen their arguments for their essays even further. This included a mini-lesson with me on how we can use artificial intelligence as a research tool, instead of being lazy and relying on AI to write our papers for us. The reality of AI is that it is not likely going anywhere, so I believe as an educator it is my responsibility to show students how they can use AI productively and with integrity to assist in their education, rather than just asking it to write papers for them. This included having the students write a brief description of their circumstances to give the LLM more context, and then using clarifying questions to have the AI dig deeper into pools of resources rather than just using whatever is deemed most popular or relevant by the LLM. In the future I hope this will be beneficial for them as they will be able to use AI to look over databases for relevant sources, rather than having to spend hours on JSTOR like I did as a history major at DePaul 🙂

Wednesday was another day of writer’s workshop, and the order of the day was to buckle down and begin to finalize revisions on the Law Day essay. We had a limited time, but were able to finish up conferences and ensure that everyone had taken their feedback into account and directly addressed issues with their essays as identified by Ms. Debbie. This was their last in-class opportunity to make major changes to their essays, and between everything Ms. Debbie identified, and injecting more evidence to back up their claims that they worked on with me (and partially at home), students were able to put the finishing touches on their arguments, leaving the only thing left to revise being grammar, spelling and punctuation.

Thursday we took a break from the Holocaust and Law day and worked on two things: the first was to take some time to further develop argumentative writing skills by examining some current events, and the other was to begin the planning process for our trip to NYC next month! Students were assigned a position to take in regards to a recent hot-button issue: birthright Citizenship. As many already know birthright Citizenship has seen the spotlight recently as an executive order ending birthright citizenship was recently challenged in the US Supreme Court. I believe it is important for students to have awareness as to what is going on in their country, in addition to building their arguments skills (even when they have to argue for ideas they disagree with) so I had students listen to an audio summary of the two different stances on birthright citizenship, and then the students had to write a short argumentative piece in favor of their assigned position, whether it was that of the Democrats or the Republicans. We made some great progress, but I was so excited by what I was hearing I decided we would need more time, and decided to instead take a bit of a detour so they could have a proper amount of time on Tuesday to finish their arguments. In the meantime students partnered up and started to research things they would like to do in New York, and I’m having them create slides presentations and rhetorical speeches where they can attempt to sway their classmates into doing the activities of their choosing (budget/timing/logistics dependent). We have a lot of great plans already, but with some other time yet to be filled it’ll be interesting to see what students want to do on their big trip! Those presentations will also have to be done early next week!

Thursday also saw the students finally giving their “TED talks” and presenting the findings of their independent research projects for science class with Ms. Pam. They have worked so hard for so long, and it clearly paid off as there were some absolutely phenomenal projects presented today. I would like to commend and congratulate all of my students for their hard work and commitment, they should all be very proud of their work!

I hope everyone who celebrates has a fantastic Orthodox Easter holiday, and all of my students get some rest and relaxation over our long weekend, I look forward to seeing everyone next week to finish up our book club novel studies, and to keep learning more about the holocaust and persuasive writing!

It is a rare Thursday blog post for me as we come to the end of our abbreviated week and prepare for a weekend of festivities for many. The Law Day writing contest for the HBAI is taking the center stage as students continue to organize their thoughts, research their topics, and put their thoughts onto paper as we took this week to begin to create rough drafts of essays for the writing contest. While we focused a majority of our energy writing for law day, we also resumed our novel study book clubs that took a brief break the week before spring break while we prepared for conferences and introduced law day. The law day writing contest has been a great opportunity to get students to develop their skills in all aspects of the writing process from brainstorming through drafting and (in the future) revision. Due to the nature of the prompt this year, students are finding a great degree of challenge in defending their positions, so it has also been a good chance for students to learn that in school you don’t always get to write about something you’re personally invested in, and especially in a court of law you aren’t always defending something that you have a great personal stake in.

Since I will be referencing the Law Day assignment heavily, I will repost the prompt here to hopefully help my readers make a bit more sense of the specifics of the assignment and how it fits the writing process:

“This year, the United States celebrates 250 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the birth of our nation. The U.S. was founded on the principles of democracy. The word democracy comes from the Greek word δημοκρατία, which translates to “rule by the people.”  Democracy was born in Ancient Greece as the ideal form of government, because it gave power to the people to vote on laws, speak in public debates, and help decide important matters for their city. Today, democracy in the United States reflects many of the same core principles, including the right to vote, freedom of speech, and allowing citizens to take part in shaping the laws and policies that affect their lives. As we reflect on 250 years of our nation’s history, which principles of democracy do you believe are most important? Please choose three and explain why they are important to our country and its people.”

Tuesday we hit the ground running as we came back from our break by finishing up outlines for writing Law Day essays. Students took their theses, introduction paragraphs, and key principles of democracy that they wanted to defend for their paper, and began to plug them into an outline to organize their thoughts. The outline described the purpose for each sentence throughout the paper, and then students would identify how each sentence would serve the purpose of backing up their argument and wrote an original sentence to fit their own needs for their papers. In addition to helping them organize their thoughts, this helped students feel a bit more confident in tackling the full paper, and ideally will assist them in the writing process in the future. They got to see that if we break down a paper into it’s parts, that writing does not have to be a huge monumental task, but rather a series of small tasks that we can find ways to fit together to fit a larger overall picture. As students wrote their outlines I went around the room to assist, and it was exciting to get to see everyone’s thought process as their ideas for the essay formed into more concrete information, and as some of the students began to research the types of materials they would like to use to back up their arguments such as quotes from famous leaders and political philosophers, supreme court cases, and historical examples of the principles of democracy in action.

Wednesday we continued our writing process for the Law Day essays, as students wrapped up their outlines and began to transition their outlines into rough drafts. Me and Ms. Debbie went around the room conferencing with students individually, while they got to see that writing a rough draft becomes a very simple process if they go through the effort of outlining. The students got to see that essentially once they have come up with an outline, turning it into a full scale rough draft is just a matter of taking many of the sentences and ideas that they have already written, and then adding in some transitional sentences and a few words here and there to turn outlines into papers. Some students also continued their research into supreme court cases and famous quotes and events relating to the principles of Democracy that they chose. Students also got to see that writing body paragraphs is a bit more simple than writing their introduction paragraphs, but follows a similar structure of first introducing ideas, then elaborating on them and their importance, before finally summarizing their arguments and transitioning to the next part of the essay.

Thursday we started off the day by having students complete their 3rd set of vocabulary quizzes as well as book content quizzes for their novel study units. With only about a week to go in their novel studies, students are starting to reach the end of their novels, and I look forward to their work on the summative assignments that will be announced as soon as the Law Day essays are complete. Thursday also saw a return to law day work, as students began wrapping up their rough drafts and utilizing a checklist I posted on the whiteboard to make sure they had completed every necessary step before turning their rough drafts in. This included reviewing their theses, reviewing their arguments throughout the essay, and making sure they took some time to research appropriate sources they could cite to back up their arguments using historical and legal precedents. The next step will be for students to look out for some feedback from Ms. Debbie and myself over the weekend. After they see the feedback their job will be to correct any necessary changes and to print out their essays for Monday so we can continue to conference with the students and revise papers before submitting them at the end of next week. For any of my readers please be sure to remind your students about this assignment as I know homework over the weekend can be a bit of a rarity for our class, your help is greatly appreciated!

I hope everyone has a nice extended weekend and I look forward to seeing everyone on Monday to start putting the finishing touches on the Law Day essays!

It is the conclusion of our penultimate week before spring break, and as we make some preparations to conclude our WWII unit, we also welcome some new challenges into our classroom and celebrate Greek culture and heritage! It was a bit of an abbreviated week due to our celebration, but there was still plenty of excitement and learning in room 214!

Monday we participated in a creative writing activity that allowed for students to showcase their knowledge of what the WWII experience was like for soldiers, sailors, and airmen. In a follow up to our film study from last Friday, students were asked to use the notes on the films and class discussion to write a letter home or a diary entry from the perspective of someone serving on the front lines of WWII. Before we wrote the letters though, students read some examples of letters home to get a better understanding of what they looked like, what kind of content they could or could not include, and what purpose they served to both individual soldiers and the armed forces as a whole. As they wrote, I challenged them to include as many sensory details as possible about their surroundings, whether it was accounts of combat or accounts of life in between battles. This is one of my favorite ways of assessing student understanding, as students can tell such immersive stories through the use of their details, and it shows a direct connection to what we have been discussing in class for the past few weeks in regards to the various fronts of the war, and how each front was different. A student writing from the perspective of a Soviet soldier on the eastern front will tell a story vastly different from a soldier fighting in Japan who will tell a completely different story from an American at D Day and so on. Challenging them to use extensive details also helps them to show what they know about life in camp, or the other various places soldiers, sailors and pilots could end up staying in between battles. I am very excited to read and grade their pieces over the weekend! Monday I also passed out a study guide for their upcoming WWII unit test that will be next week, so they had a chance to preview what was to come, and know what they should be studying and taking notes on over the next week to prepare to get the best results possible!

Tuesday we started off by giving students a bit of time to finish up their letter assignments, and then we moved on to the next major assignment that we will be focusing on for the next month including after spring break: their law day Essays. I’m sure most of my readers are familiar with Law Day as many of my students participated in it last year, but for those out of the loop: law day is put on by the Hellenic Bar Association of Illinois as a celebration for the winners of their essay writing contest, which focuses on a prompt relating to modern legal issues and has participants from 5th through 8th grade. It encourages rhetorical writing skills, research skills, and public speaking skills and is a great opportunity for all students to develop all 3! Tuesday students in my class received their prompt for this years competition, and then we had a class discussion to give students some guidelines and goals for how they want to go about researching and writing their papers. They are individual projects, so each student will be creating their own unique piece with their own unique perspective, and as such will need individualized feedback and guidance from me in regards to their essays. One of the major focuses of this years prompt is the principles of an effective democracy and why they are important; so as a class they all researched some of the principles of democracy and we made a list highlighting and explaining the various principles on the white board in class. Later on students began to choose some principals they would like to research, and did some preliminary research on a more in-depth definition for what each principle of democracy is really all about. This was merely our first step on a much larger journey, but I’m very excited to see how everyone’s essay turns out!

Wednesday was a rehearsal day for our celebration of Greek independence Day on Friday, so we spent most of the day at the Des Plaines theater practicing and watching other class groups practice as well. I did see some of our students starting to clap along with the music to encourage and cheer on their younger classmates and that brought a big smile to my face, my class continue to be fantastic role models for their fellow Plato kids!

Thursday we had one of my favorite lessons of every unit: test review Jeopardy! I assigned the students into four teams, and each team participated in a game of Jeopardy I made based on our upcoming WWII unit test. One thing that made our game a bit different from the game show is that there was no buzzing in, but rather each team would rotate getting a chance to choose a question from the board, and each other team also could answer the question for an opportunity at half points. This kept everyone involved and invested, and most importantly kept them paying attention and taking note of any questions they struggled with so they could review that material later on when studying and preparing for the test. We had a great showing from our class, and those who maybe didn’t see as much success on Thursday now have a solid idea of what they need to focus on in their studies over the weekend before the test next week!

Friday was the Plato Academy celebration of Greek Independence Day: the Greek Independence Day Show! I was blown away at how great all of the class groups were, and I am especially proud of my class for being such great emcee’s and narrators, as well as putting on an amazing performance themselves! It was such a lovely family atmosphere before and after the show as well, it really made me happy and proud to be a member of this community, and it was great seeing so many of our room 214 parents there to support your students!

Happy St. Baldrick’s day readers of the room 214 blog! We’re ending this week in style as we support one of our favorite charitable causes of the year: the St. Baldrick’s Day Foundation! Plato students participated in fundraising for the cause by donating money (or hair), and shaving their heads for awareness, as I’m sure most of my readers are familiar with. It was a great opportunity to strengthen our community and have a bit of fun, while also reflecting on how fortunate those of us are who haven’t had to deal with childhood cancer. In the spirit of reflection we can also reflect back on our very busy week and everything new we learned!

Monday students received their new vocabulary lists for their classroom novel studies for the week, and then split off into their groups to participate in a variety of activities related to the readings they finished up last week. These activities included plot summaries, close-up character studies, writing reflections based on the readings, and some activities that involved artistic interpretations of central themes and ideas present in the readings. It was great to be able to sit in with each group and hear them reflect on the readings, how they felt about the readings, and how they analyzed the chapters they read. I was able to have some great conversations with students about their books and all of the amazing stories they contain, and it was also a good feeling to see their curiosity when I mentioned that many of these are either true stories or based on true stories. It can be difficult for students to fathom in our modern age, but the unbelievable cruelty and the inspiring courage of the Holocaust gives us some of the most compelling true stories ever told. Another special activity we participated in as a class on Monday was a reading and discussion about current events, specifically the escalating conflict in Iran. Students read an article and timeline on APnews.com and we identified some of the key events and facts related to conflict as was understood on Monday. We then had a discussion about the events, reiterating that all statements had to be supported by facts from the sources. I know these can be some delicate topics in such turbulent times, so I ensured that all necessary steps were taken to create an equitable and respectful environment for a mature and logical discussion, and I am very proud of the kids for being able to have a productive conversation in a mature and respectful manner. Finally for Monday we also took a brief visit to Ms. Demetra’s class to see some of their awesome projects about Emus! It was great to see my students interacting so well with their younger Plato peers (as always), and I could also see some pride from our students who helped show Ms. Demetra’s kids how to research and write for their projects, so fantastic work all around!

Tuesday students got back into their novel study groups to finish some of the activities we had started on Monday, as well as some additional activities just for the Tuesday class. Students also got an opportunity to create study tools and to study for their vocabulary quizzes later in the week, in addition to having more time to discuss their books and the readings from the previous week. Tuesday we also had a bit of a catch-up activity for our World War 2 unit. They reviewed some of the theaters of the war in a quick discussion, and then they read a summary of events leading up to the D-Day invasion, as well as a summary of combat in Europe. Students reviewed how the United States could not initially invade Europe due to the idea of “fortress Europe” and how the Nazis had secured each coast, as well as had substantial enough naval defenses to make an invasion impossible in 1943. We then quickly reviewed operation Torch and the North African and Italian campaigns, before digging deep into D-Day, operation Market Garden, and the battle of the Bulge. Students reviewed a timeline of events as well, before preparing for reading a primary source from Dwight Eisenhower on Thursday.

Wednesday I had to be absent for a professional development conference in downtown Chicago so students worked with a new application I introduced called Quill. Quill enables students to develop their grammar and reading comprehension skills in self-paced lessons that cross over into a variety of content areas. Students started off Wednesday by taking diagnostics, where they would answer a variety of different questions designed to get a feel of how developed their skills were in a few different categories. now using these diagnostics students will get personalized plans that help to develop skills where they need the most help, while also keeping their stronger skills sharp. Wednesday also saw another writer’s workshop class with Ms. Debbie: “This week continued our deep dive into paragraph structure. The class dissected paragraphs to locate, identify, and analyze all the elements and then designed their own paragraph. The activity also introduced a mentor text of a 5 paragraph essay typical for high school level writers–which also introduces the next goal for students in the Writers Workshop, writing a longer essay! “

Thursday I returned to the classroom and we checked in on Wednesday’s learning before we took some time to finish the activity we started on Tuesday. Students read the famous two versions of Eisenhower’s D-Day address: the one we know from history that highlights our success, and the alternate version written for a potential failed invasion including Eisenhower’s resignation. We also read the address Eisenhower gave to the troops on the eve of the attack, which was a great exercise in our primary source analysis that helped students to immerse themselves by reading exactly what the soldiers would have read prior to their courageous offensive. Thursday was also a big day for assessments for our Novel study, as we had both vocabulary quizzes as well as novel content quizzes. I must commend our students for keeping up with their readings and doing a great job of taking notes to enhance their comprehension along the way!

Friday was St. Baldrick’s day, so our class was all over the school all day! We had students doing a great job of helping out with PE classes for all of the younger grades, I’ve already heard so many great things and I know that the younger kids are all super excited to have gotten to spend some time with older students that they look up to! The class also did a great job of cheering on some of our haircut recipients for the St. Baldrick’s day charity event! While we were in the classroom, we spent much of the day watching a variety of clips from some of the most realistic filmed depictions of WWII battles. These films included Saving Private Ryan, Red Tails, Hacksaw Ridge, The Pacific, Enemy at the Gates, and Masters of the Air. By looking at these films students were able to see what battles were like at D-Day, Stalingrad, Bodenplate, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Berlin. I find films to be a great tool for teaching about history, but wars in particular as often times the old grainy black-and-white footage just doesn’t capture our imagination and empathy the way that expertly made films with all of their amazing special effects can put us right alongside the brave fighters of WWII. Students got to see a variety of technological innovations in use, they got to see the various strategies employed by different armies in the war, they got to see the environments and conditions that people fought in for years, and they got to see the courage and brutality that could only arise from a global conflict the scale of WWII. While viewing students took notes on what kind of sensory experiences that soldiers, sailors and airmen would have experienced in preparation for a creative writing activity we will introduce on Monday. To end the day we did a bit of trivia for some St. Baldrick’s fun and to lighten the mood a bit after watching some very somber and intense films. Next week we can look forward to some more great creative writing and an exploration on the very end of the war as we prepare for our WWII unit test which is approaching rapidly.

Science With Ms. Pam/Math with Kyrio Zafeiris: This week in science students continued to work on their independent research projects and examine natural and artificial selection. They also viewed a video about the reintroduction of Wolves to Yellowstone national park and the ensuing effects on the environment as a whole, which serves the purpose of showing how even one species’ presence can make such a substantial impact on an environment. In math students worked on finding the midpoints of triangles and other polygons, and later in the week learned how to make proofs that related to new polygonal shapes such as rhombuses.

I hope everyone has a great weekend and I look forward to seeing everyone back on Monday! Hopefully we can all get a chance to enjoy some of this warm weather!

This week we continued our exploration of World War II with some very exciting content and assessment of our progress in our novel studies! Students have now made some substantial progress in their class novels, and are beginning to reach the “meat” of the stories they are reading about the harrowing terror and inspiring courage of the holocaust. We also got the chance to conclude our “theaters of WWII” project with two more fantastic presentations and kahoot quizzes, and got to participate in some great seasonal activities as well: read for the record, and leadership day! For the students in the eighth grade, they got a chance to celebrate some of their accomplishments and enjoy some great local cuisine when they took a trip to Via Roma restaurant! As we inch closer to the conclusion of our World War Two unit, this week was a good opportunity to reflect on our progress, while setting some goals for the future, much in the spirit of the book we read for read for the record day: See Marcus Grow by Marcus Bridgewater.

Monday we started off our week by working on a skill that will be essential both to our 7th graders who have upcoming CDMs and standardized tests, but also our 8th graders before they head off to High School: grammar. First we had a class discussion where we identified the purpose for using commas, colons and semicolons, and students learned some more about what independent and dependent clauses are within a sentence, and when each type of punctuation is best to use. After we had our definitions written on the whiteboard, students completed an activity that challenged their skills and saw them punctuating, re-punctuating, or eliminating punctuation in some example sentences. Afterwards we reviewed these examples as a class, and looked at some examples of where we got the answer wrong, asking ourselves why we got the answer wrong, and looking at how we could go back to fix the incorrect answers with correct answers. During the beginning of this activity, our 7th graders met with the 7th graders from Ms. Mary’s class to work on identifying a problem within our school community and brainstorming some ways that our students could work together to address the problem from start to finish, raising awareness, funds, and organizing a solution to the problem independently! The problem they have chosen to highlight is the school’s trash output. They started to organize a plan for how we could start a recycling program to help reduce waste and encourage more recycling in all Plato classrooms!

Tuesday we resumed presentations for our “theaters of WWII” project, with some incredible presentations by our final two groups: the war in the Pacific, and the war on the eastern front. The Pacific group made a great collage of images from their theater of the war, and then presented the collage to the class giving context for each image, and telling the story of the fighting between the United States and Japan along the way. They introduced the attacks on Pearl harbor, explored the aggressive expansion that lead to the creation of the Japanese Empire in the 1930’s, and explained how the oil embargo placed on Japan by the United States contributed to the Japanese decision to attack Pearl Harbor. They also described the grueling process of “island hopping” that cost so many American lives and dragged out the war for so long, as well as describing some of the key naval engagements such as the battle of Midway and the Coral Sea. After this they put their fellow students to the test, and encouraged some friendly competition by having the class participate in a Kahoot quiz about their project, they did a great job on both the product portion as well as the assessment portions of their project! Next up was the group covering the Eastern front, who wrote an informative and exciting newspaper about the rapid offensive of the Nazis, followed by the scorched earth campaign of the Soviets, leading to some of the largest and most decisive battles in human history such as Kursk and Stalingrad. They informed their classmates of the staggering numbers of casualties involved and the brutality of the fighting as Hitler obsessively attempted to not repeat the mistakes of Napoleon, only to repeat almost every mistake of Napoleon. They also made a challenging Kahoot that helped their classmates test their knowledge gained from the newspaper articles. Tuesday also saw the 7th graders making some final preparations for their leadership day conference, while the rest of the class had a class discussion to prepare them for a later activity in the week where we explored the Pearl Harbor attacks in depth. Students informed me of what they know about an event that is often compared to Pearl Harbor: the September 11th attacks. By discussing these attacks students were able to relate historical content to something more recent and relatable, especially considering it is something I can remember vividly and I’m sure many readers of the blog can remember vividly as well, whereas Pearl Harbor is a bit more of a distant memory! Tuesday students also completed vocabulary tests for their class novels, the class average was over 90%, so great job to everyone for making sure to study, make study tools, and read their novels on time! These are some skills I encouraged and required earlier in the year that I no longer need to require clearly, as everyone made their own study tools and did a great job preparing for their Vocab quizzes.

Wednesday saw both our 7th graders as well as our 8th graders going on some exciting field trips. The 7th graders traveled with me and Ms. Filisa to go to the temporary site of the Skokie Holocaust Museum in downtown Chicago, where they participated in leadership day! Leadership day saw the students broken up and grouped with students from all over chicagoland, where we participated in an activity where students made a hypothetical social media post addressing a universal human right, and asserted why the right they selected was so particularly important. This was a great chance for the students to test out their critical thinking while also engaging with real-world problems, and getting out of their comfort zones for a bit to engage in discussions with students from all types of local communities. It was such a diverse environment, I’m glad we all got the chance to share ideas with people from all walks of life! After that activity there was a great presentation and poetry reading from Harold Green III, who offered some incredible perspective on challenges he has faced and was he has encouraged positive change within his own community and within the world as a whole! He was generous enough to provide us a copy of one of his poetry books: Black Roses, and even signed a copy of it for us! The final activity saw the Plato students grouping back up to present their action plan for their recycling program, and I would like to shout out Timo and Elliot for showing courage and leadership skills to present our plan with composure and clarity to a room filled with hundreds of strangers, that is no easy feat! While we were off in Chicago, the 8th graders first viewed a short documentary: D-Day: The Hidden Side which is about the “shadow Army” that was made to deceive the Nazis prior to D-Day, and helped keep the location of the landing zone secret, to mislead German defenses and give the US and their allies the best chance of a successful landing in northern France. After this they participated in some math review, before heading out on a field trip of their own to Via Roma, a local restaurant owned by none other than one of our students families: the Forti family! This was a great chance for our classroom to cut loose and have some fun, enjoying some of the spoils of all of their hard working before graduating a few months from now. Thank you very much Forti family, it was by all accounts an amazing time for everyone!

Thursday we started off the day by doing chapter quizzes for the classroom novel book clubs. There are 4 different groups with different novels, which in turn required different assessments. So some groups took multiple choice tests that were a bit more content heavy and a bit longer, while others had quizzes that focused on short responses that required a bit more judgement and critical thinking, despite having fewer questions. Throughout our book club studies, each group will have a variety of exercises and assessments, so throughout the exploration each group will see things like multiple choice and short response quizzes, or class assignments that may be more discussion based or writing based one day, and then more artistic or interpretative based the next. This way things are kept engaging and interesting, and everyone is on their toes and prepared for what comes next! That being said there will also be some days where assignments can be applied to all the groups, and Thursday was one of these instances. Each member of each group was tasked with completing a “one pager” assignment, where they used a combination of their critical thinking, their ability to find relevant quotes from the text, and their own artistic interpretation to showcase their understanding of the content and themes of their class novels. Thursday we also participated in “read for the record” where we read a book aloud together that was all about growth, reflection, and striving for improvement. Afterwards students did an activity where they reflected on past achievements by listing something they didn’t know how to do that they learned how to do, while also setting some goals for the future by writing about some things they are actively working to improve as well as something they hope to be able to do someday in the far future. Being able to reflect, take inventory, and set new goals for the future is a great skill to have, and it broke up our day in a fun way that will help students focus on what they want to improve in their lives moving forward!

Friday we resumed our in-depth exploration of the Pearl Harbor attacks by reviewing our discussion from earlier in the week, and then reading a variety of primary sources. These sources included photographs, propaganda posters, firsthand accounts from sailors at the harbor, profiles of sailors who gave their life in defense of the harbor, a presidential address to Congress, and even the infamous executive order 9066, which placed Japanese-Americans into internment camps for the duration of WWII. By analyzing and completing an analysis of their choice of two of these sources students got more practice analyzing historical sources and using critical thinking to answer the guiding question “Why was Pearl Harbor a defining moment in US History”. We also viewed a brief scene from the film “Pearl Harbor” to give the students a more gripping depiction of what the attacks were like, and showing the courage of the famous Pearl Harbor hero Dorie Miller, whose bravery earned him a Navy cross and a nomination for the medal of honor, which was a huge contrast to the way African American war heroes had been treated in the past, which of course inspired hundreds of thousands to help contribute to the war effort. After our analysis and discussions, students began their assignment to create a political cartoon or propaganda poster of their own to answer our guiding question, using one of the reasons we listed during our discussion as a guiding theme for their art piece. We will continue this activity briefly to begin next week!

Science With Ms. Pam: Students continued work on their independent research projects and began to assemble their final products including posters and dioramas. Students also learned more about natural selection vs. artificial selection.