St. Baldrick's Event THIS Saturday!

Those of you who have been keeping up with the newsletter already know that this Saturday F.AVE kids are shaving their head for a good cause!  The event is called St. Baldrick’s and their mission is to conquer kid’s cancer.  The head-shaving events began as a challenge between businessmen and have now grown from one event in 2000 to over 1,300 events in 2012, raising critical funds for childhood cancer research.

FAVE student, Evan Kupersmith, has been doing this for the past 6 years and now has some amazing friends joining him for this challenge.  Not only are they shaving their heads in support of children with cancer, they are raising awareness and much needed money too.

Please consider donating to this cause.  Every dollar helps.   http://www.stbaldricks.org/participants/mypage/665696/2014

If you are in the Decatur area, please stop by our event at the Harbour House Pub on March 15, 2014 from 3pm-7pm to support your FAVE friends and families. This is a family friendly event and Evan's band, Route 41, will be playing for the crowd.

Monday, March 10th

Today we started with our daily grammar review and we continued reading Messenger.  I taught a lesson on prepositional phrases and students created their own sentences (for some reason, I was the subject in many of them… and my actions were not exactly exemplary).  

I concluded class by introducing this term's social studies project.  Students are working in groups of three to research, write about, and present their WWII related topic.  They will be working on these projects for the next three weeks and they'll be presenting during the final week of the term.  This project will help students prepare for their culminating Exhibition projects during term 6.

Morning Notes

Afternoon Notes

Friday, March 7th

Today we continued reading Messenger and I gave the vocabulary assessment.  Both classes began a map/timeline social studies inquiry and we will finish the final part of that on Monday.  

Also, my homeroom came in second place in this year's Black History Bowl!  The boys did an excellent job and I'm proud of them. 

Thursday, March 6th

Today we had our daily language review and students completed their WWII causes inquiry.  Additionally, students who completed the inquiry were given an extension assignment so they could compare two opposing ideologies.  Tomorrow students will do some WWII map work and create a timeline of major WWII events.  We will also have the vocabulary quiz tomorrow.

Analysis of Communism

Analysis of Fascism (with a focus on Germany and Italy)

Expressions on the Ave!

Tuesday, March 4th

Tomorrow's Expressions on the Ave performance is at 2pm for both homerooms in the multi purpose room.  

Monday, March 3rd

We started the day with this week's vocabulary and daily ELA work.  After that we concluded our analysis of the setting of The Giver and Gathering Blue.  After finding a similarity, we worked together to find text-based evidence about differences between the two.  We completed one together then students worked with one or two partners to identify two more differences.  Then we shared and students filled in the last blank.  

During Social Studies I introduced this term's UOI: How the World Works.  Students worked to come up with a definition and examples of the terms constructive and destructive.  They also had to come up with examples for each.  When they presented their examples, I immediately gave my own example of how their example could fall under the other category.  This term we will continue to go beyond simply identifying terms and saying whether things are "good" or "bad."  Moving forward, events, people, and actions will be analyzed to determine if they are constructive, destructive, or (in most cases) both.