Our first full week of school ended with "Read Like Your Hair Is On Fire" silent reading. If you don't know what that means, ask one of the students. The phrase comes from a great (but painful) story. Students have perused the school library and checked out their own books. Did you know that we have over 5,000 individual titles in our Carmel Campus library? That doesn't even count multiple copies! Impressive.

Students have been reviewing and learning about Literary Elements (or Story Elements). They are applying these terms to their summer reading books. They are also finding images to go along with the elements and writing simple, compound, and complex sentences as narration for their pictures. These will eventually be put on Photostory 3, resulting on an audio-video presentation.

We  are  also creating our own textbooks in our  journals. Students are creating a Table of Contents, and there is a section for reading response. These journals should stick like glue to my students. They will need them every day.

We are also learning two vocabulary words a day: irenic, skosh, holus-bolus, adust, bibelot, ripsnorter, marmoreal,daedal. Ah...we are getting so smart!

 The eighth graders each chose a metaphor to represent eighth grade. They found an image to represent their metaphors; some were photographs and some were their own drawings. After they wrote paragraphs to explain their metaphors, we used the Flip Video camera to record their images and their voices as they explained the reasoning behind their choices. The video will be posted on the school website, hopefully this week. It's not bad for a two day project!

My, how the eighth graders grew over summer! Though I see it each year, it still shocks me. They are a respectful group, and I had a great time watching the excitement in their eyes as they learned about our new SMART Board. It is a wonderful tool which will supplement our lessons. Note the word “supplement.” The SMART Board will not change the objectives and goals of the language arts curriculum, but it will help students learn in a collaborative and engaging way that supports “21st Century Skills.”

Along with exploring this new tool, we analyzed a painting called “The Wanderer” by Caspar David Friedrich. We looked at composition, the qualities of conveyed emotion, the intent of the artist, and how the painting could be used as a metaphor for the eighth grade year. I am excited to see what metaphors the eighth graders come up with to represent life in the eighth grade. 

Future blog posts will be written by the eighth graders. Stay tuned!