Researching Your Family Tree

     This week my students will begin researching their family tree.  On Monday night students will go home with a generation chart.  Parents, please help them fill in as much information as possible.  They will use this generation chart to search for their ancestors.  If you, or someone in your family has already begun to research your family tree, any information you can share with your child will be very helpful.

Students will learn about the different types of documents they can use to find information they need to follow their lineage and use my personal account on Ancestry.com to find more information.  Students will find birth certificates, death certificates, and in come cases, military records.  They will get to see census documents that date back to the 1800′s.  If we find any documents, I will print them off for them to have.

This has been one of my favorite projects to do with the children.  They learn a lot of about primary sources and researching on the internet.  Last year, one student was able to go back 6 generations and we were able to find a great grandparent they had been looking for.  I have researched my family tree, so I will be sharing what I have done as well as the documents I have found.

As always, any parent that wishes to come out and join is welcome.  :)

Cool School of the Day

South Edgecombe Middle School was honored as the “Cool School of the Day” by NBC 17 today.  Click here to see the video!

Happy New Year!!

Happy New Year everyone! I hope that you all have enjoyed your Christmas and New Year holiday.  I also hope that you have gotten a lot of rest and had some great fun so that you are ready to come back with a new, fresh outlook for the new year.

As we start out the new year, we are going to go into short stories, looking into the different literary element that we find in them. Also, we’re going to work on getting re-tests and make up work done to bring up those progress report grades!! I am going to also try to do a better job about keeping the website up to date and I encourage you all to use it more as well.

I look forward to seeing all of you bright and early in the morning!!  See you in the halls…

What’s Up Next?

I hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving break and is well rested.  I am SO excited about what we will be covering over the next few weeks.

This week,  students will begin a 3 week unit on the Holocaust.  They will be completing several research projects in class that may extend into homework.  We will be talking about the same subject matter in Social Studies class with respect to Africa and the Rwandan Holocaust as well as the events taking place in Darfur.  Videos and books that will be seen, read from, or mentioned are “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas” (the movie and book), ”Hotel Rwanda”,  ”Beyond the Gates”, “Valkyrie” and Night by Elie Weisel.  I encourage all parents to talk with your child about what we are doing.  Ask questions about what they are learning and what they are doing.  This subject has been touched on lightly in the 6th grade so they have a little idea of what to expect.  This year they will be looking at the Holocaust from a completely different angle.  They will be learning about the concentrations and death camps, daily life as a Jew in occupied Europe, Hitler’s Last Will and Testament, and some of the methods that the Nazis used.

My students have always enjoyed this unit and I don’t expect any less from this year’s group.  If you, as a parent, would be interested in coming out to learn with them, please contact me so we can make arrangements for that to happen.  I would welcome and enjoy your presence.  :)

Ancient Egypt Projects

For the past couple of weeks, students have been working on a research project for social studies. They have been working on finding information on the different aspects of Ancient Egyptian life. These projects are due on Wednesday, November 23rd.
We have been doing most of the research in class, but now students are going to have to do the rest at home. Students have been given the choice of writing out the information or typing it, so some of them will need to computer access at home. Please allow them time to work on it. Their books should contain information on the:

• History
• Daily life
• Government
• Art
• Science
• Literature
• Beliefs and ceremonies
• Architecture
• Religion

They also need to include a picture for each page. They can print out a picture from the internet or drawn one on their own.

We have learned a lot of valuable information over the past few weeks and I think they have enjoyed working independently on the projects. I can’t wait to see the finished products.
As always, if you have any questions, please feel free to call me at school, on my cell, or contact me through email.

This Week – October 10th – 17th

This week, students will be learning about space: living without gravity, how they eat, how they sleep, the space suits they wear, what they do while their in space, garbage that is in space…you name it, they’re going to be reading about it.

We also have a video for them to watch about the satellite that just crashed to Earth and they have an online project they will doing in groups.

Also, a reminder that progress reports when home today. Their Language Arts report is on one side and their Social Studies report is on the other.  They have been working very hard and their grades are showing it. I am very proud of them! Keep up the good work!!

I have also started a new procedure concerning testing. Anytime a student scores below a 77%, they can re-take the test. They will have access to it starting the day after they took the original. They can also retake it up to 3 times if they need to. if they score lower on the retest, the highest grade will be counted. Retests have to be completed before October 27th.  The end of the grading period is October 28th.

In Social Studies class next week, students will be given their first project. We will begin studying about Africa, so watch out for more information to come later.

Thank you for all you do to support your child, and to all my students – thank you for your hard work! It’s definitely showing!

This Week – September 26th through September 30th

This week students will be learning about non-fiction texts with a focus on its purpose, text structures, picture clues, sub-headings, and signal words.  I will be using the Leaning Tower of Pisa to help teach these objectives.  Students will also participate in a tower building activity to learn about compromising, improvising, and the use of materials.

We will also begin working on the writing process.  Their first writing test is coming up in October, so we want to start preparing them for what they will see.  Their first writing test will be a content-specific test.  They will be given a social studies topic for which they are expected to research and write according to the prompt.  Teachers will also be teaching about this topic in class to help with information.

Please continue to consult the Homework Page and Power Word page for information on what students have for homework for the week.