The Paper-Free Class
Home Learning
Welcome Back!
Great to be back again at Ponce de Leon Middle! Looking forward to an exciting year with my IB students. This year in 6th grade we are going to be talking about Facing Fears, Making Your Voice Heard, Fairness, and Cultural Perspective. In 8th grade, we will have a different set of themes. If you … Continue reading
Nothing to Fear
Students, we are in the middle of our first IB unit on Facing Fears! You are reading stories and a novel based on the concept of overcoming your fears, and you will be preparing your Unit Project starting soon. The rubric and other important documents are on Edmodo, so be sure to look. There are … Continue reading
Four Legs Good, Two Legs Bad
Yes, we have a new post – finally! We are reading Animal Farm in class and at home and completing our project. The project pages are being posted on Edmodo, and will cover the concept of allegory. Along the way, we will learn about the rise of Communism and hopefully learn some things about human … Continue reading
Blues Journey
Do you think Lemon Brown might have looked something like the man above? We are going to go on a blues journey. You will see four youtube links to blues songs that we may have heard in the class for this unit. For your home learning assignment, you should listen to the music. Do these songs … Continue reading
Pride and Prejudice and…
ZOMBIES! Who doesn’t love reading about zombies? This will be our novel for the third nine weeks, so please secure a copy – either physical or digital. Remember, the public library is a great free source for books! by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith Also available here: http://smile.amazon.com/Pride-Prejudice-Zombies-Classic-Ultraviolent/dp/1594743347# And through scholastic.com – our class code is MZ832
The Giver Games!
We haven’t had an update in a while! Sorry, I have been busy running the JFK website and the JFK BEAT Website. First things first, check out the Giver Games – while you’re at it, browse the rest of the BEAT website 🙂 Now, down to student business – next week, we will be having … Continue reading
Join the Party!
The book party, that is! Yes, we are going to be ordering books through the Scholastic website! Just sign up with your parents, use code MZ832 for our class, and place your order. It’s THAT simple! When the orders come in, we will give them out in class. Our first two books are The Giver and The … Continue reading
What Do You Cherish?
The first three weeks of school, we are focusing on the idea of what should be cherished. We are reading The Treasure of Lemon Brown, writing dialogues, exploring the role of 3rd person limited narrative, and making inferences. In the story, Greg Ridley finds out the importance of family and what makes something a treasure. … Continue reading
Let’s Get Different(iated)!
Students, we are approaching FCAT quickly. This is the BIG CRUNCH! LOOK at your FCAT Reading Tracker Pinpoint your WEAKNESS in the following areas: Compare and Contrast Multiple Texts Character, Plot, Setting Figurative Language Text Structure and Text Features Collect, Evaluate, Summarize Information You may also consider the other benchmarks you did for DI if … Continue reading
Let’s Get Smart!
Essay Smart, that is! Students, we are coming up on crunch time for our FCAT Writes test which will be on February 25, 2014. We are going to be reviewing the concepts you learned in your Saturday classes as well as writing a few practice essays of our own and grading them through Classzone’s Essay … Continue reading
The Paper-Free Class 