I am excited for the first day of school tomorrow! I can't wait to meet everyone new and see older students again after the summer break. I wanted to post the course outlines that will be going home later this week. They need to be signed by parent/guardian and returned to me by Friday. I think we will be going over these Wednesday or Thursday depending on how the week goes.
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Good morning! I spent some time yesterday updating my website and I think it's looking pretty solid, but would love any feedback you have!
We have been busy around here with setting up the new school. It's going to be a scramble to get it done, but I hope we will be presentable by the first day! Here is the first of many reminders that my classroom is on Instagram @fischerclass The students last year wanted to follow me on Instagram so here is their opportunity. I would love parent follows as well so I can keep everyone up to date on what is going in Ancient History and BASES. Looking forward to a great year! Continuing our book study, we read the first two chapters of the Gross and Disgusting History of Ancient Rome. We learned about community latrines and how urine is effective for cleaning clothes. Gross! But the students enjoyed this reading a lot!
We will continue that book later this week, but we are spending the early part of the week on, the less gross but more dry, history of Roman government. We are using this presidential election season to raise student awareness of how much the US government is borrowed from the Romans. Might be something to ask about tonight at the dinner table... We are well into our study of Roman History via our book Ancient Rome by Peter Benoit. This is giving us a chance to learn techniques for reading non-fiction text as we learn Roman history. We are pretty much going to be doing a pattern of read, take notes, take a quiz while we read this book. The first quiz last Friday didn't go well for many students so we have talked about some strategies to help improve scores. I am hoping that Thursday's quiz will go much better.
We have begun our study of Rome this week with the documentary Rome: Engineering an Empire. We are seeing a broad view of the city of Rome, some of it's most famous, and notorious, Emperors, and it's engineering achievements. We have seen the Aqueducts, the Coliseum, and Hadrian's Wall. Later this week we will start a book study. We are going to work on non-fiction reading skills as we read a chapter book on Roman history. My plan at this point is to introduce the sign posts on Thursday and get started on the book Friday.
We will be doing a lot of this work in class so I wouldn't expect much homework from this class over the next several weeks. We will be doing comprehension quizzes on the text as we go. Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks for the comments here and on Facebook. I had the videos too locked down for privacy control. I have them on here now. You can only see them through this blog. Remember the students were filming them with an iPad so the shaky cam is all their fault. :)
Let me know if this working for everyone! Enjoy! We have finished our Greek simulation and are moving onto our study of Rome. More on Rome next week. I have posted the videos on the blog. The kids did a great job! I was really proud of everyone and their efforts on this project! Let me know what you think of their performances!
The Greek simulation was a huge success and while it can be tough to lose a competition, I think all groups handled the competitive aspect of this project very well. We will be doing a short awards session on Friday in class to finally wrap up Greece. Here are the 5th period Greek Theater Performances: Here are the 4th period Greek Theater Performances: Here are the videos from 1st period's Greek Theater: Looks like we had a technical difficulty and didn't get all of Corinth's play. |
AuthorThis is the official blog for Room 113 at Desert Hills Middle School. Archives
February 2017
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