At the end of last week, we finished up our Counting on Grace work with an in-class
essay. We took some time the day before to plan: thinking about what we would
say and what evidence from the book we would use to support our arguments. The challenge was
to write an organized, thoughtful essay within a given timeframe. I was
impressed with the seriousness and focus with which students approached this
challenge.
We also took time to revise several of the poems we had
written in February and March and selected a poem to include in TGS’s annual
student poetry compilation. 6th graders have written some beautiful
work, and we’ll be talking about additional ways to share our writing.
The next few weeks will be a transition to several spring
projects. We are finishing up chapter 5 in our vocab book and reviewing the
words from previous chapters—I did some informal review last week, and students
have good recall of the earlier words. In preparation for ERB testing (to take
place during the weeks of April 16 and 23), we are doing some practice tests
and talking about test-taking strategies. We will also start brainstorming for
our I-Search research projects (more on this to come next week).
