HELLO I.A. FAMILIES!
A Summary of The Past Couple of Weeks:
· We are pretty much finished with My Legacy, My Destiny Project. The scrapbooks are beautiful and we can’t wait to share them with you in November. Next week we will finish Resumes and work on Personal Budgets.
Ups and Downs Timeline: After finishing the first draft of the timelines, we focused on perfecting our work. Students went on a gallery walk and critiqued unnamed timelines, looking for things they liked and things that could be improved. I am using Ron Berger’s critique format for beautiful work. The three main focuses are that when critiquing work, you are 1) Kind, 2) Specific, and 3) Helpful. Their final drafts were amazing transformations from the originals.
Family Traits Tree: After learning about inherited traits, students compared traits with one another to create a graphical representation of traits versus students. Students also interviewed family members to find out what inherited traits they have in common and used that information to create a family trait tree.
Salaries and Taxes: Students started dreaming about twenty years from now about their ideal careers. Using www.salary.com we looked at salary ranges, bell curves that showed percentiles, job descriptions and education tracks for our careers. We played a game of chance to determine such things as whether they are married, have children and what percentile their salary falls in. Students used this information to calculate their federal, state and social security taxes. Not only did they sympathize with their parents for having to do taxes every year, they found out how much of that money gets taken away!
· Our morning meetings are getting so fun. The kids are really getting comfortable and seem to really enjoy each other’s company. I love listening to them. Our sharing and activities are the highlight of my day! I enjoy our class’ creativity. I learn so much from them.
· Our M.A.P.S. program has been a hit. Our class just finished Art with Tina and Fitness Conditioning with Kalif. They started Puppetry and Yoga this week and will continue with it for the next three weeks.
For Next Week:
Conferences will be held next Wednesday and Thursday after school. If you have not signed up with me, I will be contacting you to schedule a time. Please fill out and bring the Student Goals sheet to your appointment.
We will finish our personal budgets and resumes and put the finishing touches on our scrapbooks. They will be ready to exhibit for our Nov. 12 Family Night.
HAPPY HALLOWEEN!
