Conferences Recap and Happy Thanksgiving

It was nice to meet everyone this past week.  I hope I was able to provide you with some good information and I thank you for sharing with me a bit about your family.  I left thinking that it's no wonder our 7th graders are such great kids.  Some of the common things that I tried to communicate are as follows:

·                     Students can retake/redo perfomance assignments (peformance assignments are worth 70% of the grade).

·                     I am available at lunch or after school on most days (excluding Wednesdays).

·                     I collect assignments on Friday, so students need to be organized enough to hold on to them for a few days.

·                     If daily classwork is not finished in class, then it becomes homework and needs to get done by Friday.

·                     Quizzes from this point on are CLOSED book, but OPEN workbook.

·                     Unit 2 about The Rise of Islam begins this coming week.

·                     Trimester 3 is Washington State History and students must pass to graduate from High School.

·                     If students are absent, they should check www.mrtalmadge.com for accurate information.

 

We will have our final quiz of unit 1 on Monday (over information in chapter 6).  It was originally scheduled for this past week, but I decided to postpone it till Monday.  We did a review in class the last couple of days, but students may need to study a bit so that they are ready to go on Monday.  Also, thanks to those of you who volunteered your ideas for stock market contest prizes and even offered to bring some in.  You can just have your student bring them to me this coming week.  The last day of the contest is Monday.

 

Lastly, Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.  I know that I am thankful to get to spend my days with your amazing kids. Enjoy the long weekend.

 

Mr. T

 

Dear Mom or Dad,

For this week's blog post, I want you to write a letter to your parents (either one or both) explaining to them how the first trimester of 7th grade has gone for you.  Explain to them what you've learned in each of your classes.  If you've done well, explain what you did that has helped you to be successfull.  If you haven't done so well, explain to them what you did or did not do that made you struggle.  Then, whether or not you did well, describe what you would like to do differently this coming trimester. 

Computer Lab Instructions

1.  Log on to your computer. 

2.  Open up Internet Explorer. 

3.  Go to <www.voicethread.com>. 

4.  Click on "sign in or register an account" in the upper right hand corner.  

5.  When the pop-up box opens, click on "register". 

6.  Fill in the boxes using the following format: 

• name:  yourfirstnamemrt09 


• 
  
  email address:  yourfirstnamemrt09@mrtalmadge.com
  
  
• 
  
  password:  your 6-digit number 

8.  Click the "register" button. 

9.  On the next screen, click on "browse" in the upper left hand corner. 

10. Type "ss5" or "ss6" in the search box and hit enter.

11.  Find the picture that you were assigned in class by clicking on the 4 images

       in the lower right hand corner.

12.  Make two comments on that picture:

• One that shows an interesting detail or a question that you have.


• One that explains how the picture shows something from section 6.4.

13.  Find another picture that someone else has commented on and respond to

      their comment.

 

 

 

Veteran's Day Assembly

Middle Age Research, Progress Reports...

This past week we have been working in the computer lab as students researched topics of their choice related to the middle ages. You can check out our work at http://www.middleagesmrt09.wikispaces.com. The process we used is similar to the way that students will conduct their social studies CBA (click here for more info) in the spring as part of the way Washington state evaluates subjects other then reading, writing and math. I wanted students to conduct research by selecting a topic, posing questions, making inferences, searching with key words, evaluating websites, summarizing and citing sources.

Also this past week we had our last 15 day progress check before the end of the trimester on November 25th. I updated grades and changed all of the asterisks "*" that students may have had to zero's. This way they get a truly accurate picture of what their grade would have been if the trimester had ended this week. The good thing is that students still have about 10 days or so to make up any work or redo any tests. Because I want to have the grades finalized before parent conferences begin on November 20th, I have decided to make November 18th the last day to turn in work in my class.

Regarding conferences, I look forward to meeting with families on 11/20, 11/23 and 11/24. Conferences will run from Noon-3pm on Friday, Monday and Tuesday. In addition, we'll be offering an evening time on Tuesday from 4:30-7:30. I do have a question for you. The other teachers on the 7th grade team and I have been wondering whether or not to print out a paper copy of student' grades. Does it matter to you if you get a hard copy or is the online access good enough? Respond by clicking here if you read this on your email or by using the comment box at the bottom of this post if you are reading this on my blog.

Friday Activities

Friday's are crazy days in my class.  For one thing, each class is only 30 minutes.  For another, I usually pack three activities into that short amount of time: assignment turn-in, geography skills practice and a raffle.  It's a bit of sprint for me as I teach for 3 hours straight with no break.

Assignment Turn-in
I don't like to collect things on a daily basis, instead choosing to do so on a weekly basis. In theory, this should mean that I am keeping my grades up to date weekly, but somehow things just don't work out that way.   At any rate, I have the students turn assignments in by passing them up their section to a person in the front row whom I designate as the "first level of quality control."  Then that person is suppose to pass the assignments over to the student sitting closest to my desk. I then take the pile from them and place it directly in front of my monitor (so that the pile can be forever calling out "grade me!"

Geography Skills
I like to use most Friday's as a day to focus on geography skills. So, we get out the trusty atlas and I make students search for things.  I use two different online geo quiz resources.  One at http://www.theworld.org/geoquiz and another at www.nationalgeographic.com/geobee.  The first one requires the students to read through a paragraph to decipher what it is they are looking for.  Then they have to decide what key word(s) to look up in the index of their atlas.  While they are searching I walk around the room and students raise their hand when they think they have the right answers.  They point in their atlas and I give them creative economy money if they are correct. The second is more of a traditional quiz, so I alter it a bit by sometimes making them show me in their atlas what the right is.  This past Friday I tried something new which was to use the activote devices so that the students could register their response electronically.  You can see the device below.  The second image is a screenshot I took of a geobee question with the activote spreadsheet overlayed on it, just like the students would see in class.  I have signed us up for the National Geographic Bee (click on the link above to read more about it), so hopefully the time we spend on Friday is helping to prepare the students for that.

Creative Economy Raffle
Finally, the last five minutes of class we have a raffle.  While students are getting their assignments ready to turn-in at the beginning of class, I walk around and "sell" raffle tickets.  The prices varies depending on "what the market will bear".  I started out charging 1 dollar, but the price has risen to 3 dollars now that students have had some time to earn money.  Usually, I take the money collected and divide it up among the winners of the raffle.  It's a pretty fun way to end the week. 

 
I would love to know what you think about these Friday activities.  You can comment by clicking here

Church Poems