We're More Than Half Way Through...

...the first week of school!

Observation has become a buzzword and a through-line for many of our class activities this week, and will continue to be throughout the year.

This morning students honed their observation skills in Language Arts through an exercise entitled Every Picture Tells a Story. Students sat in groups of four and were given a photograph. After studying it for a time, students wrote down their observations, doing their best to keep their prior experience and point of view out of their work.

Next, students made interpretations about what they thought was going on in the picture.

The third part of the exercise entailed writing a creative story based on the photograph, the students' observations and interpretations.

This creative writing assignment will be the first major piece of writing that the students will be graded on. Tonight, for homework, students are to complete their first drafts. From there, we will begin working on the elements of writing. Many drafts will be written so that students have the opportunity to experience what it means - and what all the necessary components are - to writing a story.

Observation came into play this afternoon as well. After reading the first chapter of our history book aloud, students broke into small groups and worked as archaeologists to analyze specific artifacts from TPA. Students were encouraged to work as a team to come up with the best possible answers to questions to discover what these artifacts said about Tempe Prep and the people of the TPA community.

We had a new student join us today: Chad Shaw. Now our class is a well-rounded group of twenty. We'd like to extend a warm welcome to Chad and his family to (and from his class in) Room 503!

Cheers,
Ms. Pitman