Last Week’s Highs and Lows – SOLSC – Day #4

Each night at the dinner table, the family answers two questions: What was your high of the day?  What was your low of the day?  Our nine-year-old started this nightly tradition about two years ago.  Every member of the family has a chance to answer and everyone else is expected to listen.  Sometimes, the highs and lows of the day spark conversation that takes us off task, which is usually a good thing, but sometimes it’s not so good (on Sunday night, the nine-year-old confessed her low of the day is that she is worried that she is not going to grow:).

So, at the end of every week, I do my highs and lows of the past week.  They can be any highs and lows (personal or school-related), but for this week, I decided to focus my highs and lows on the past school week.

My highs:

1. The students are doing an amazing job preparing for our upcoming Holocaust Resistance Museum, which we are presenting today in the school library.  They have researched, written a summary and a day in the life entry.  They also connected their rebel to a Positivity Project trait (with an explanation).
2. The pure substances and mixtures lab was a success.  During science class, the students learned about homogeneous mixtures, heterogeneous mixtures, compound, and elements by doing a lab that had them (in pairs) looking at 16 different substances/mixtures.
3. We started a new read aloud in ELA and the kids are really interested in the plot of the story.

My lows:

1. Two two-hour delays – That is not a misprint.  We had two delays that put the kids behind one full class period in science class.  The science lab that we moved to this week is on chromatography, so the kids were excited all of last week.  I’m hopeful that their excitement will roll over into today.:)
2. In ELA class, the students are writing an essay about the lessons learned and the natural phenomenon found in the myth entitled “Echo and Narcissus”.  Because of our delay schedule (shortened class periods), the kids could not get into a rhythm with their writing.  After showing them an example, reviewing the structure of the essay, and weeks of reading myths, I expected some amazing essays.  The students are still in the first draft stage, but the essays are not looking amazing yet (not even close).  Here is for hoping that this week goes better.

The highlight of the week was undoubtedly the Holocaust Resistance Museum project.  The students used the United States Holocaust Museum website to research different men and women who resisted Hitler during the Holocaust.  They used the information on the identification cards, which you can also get when visiting the museum in Washington, D.C. (I showed the kids what the identification cards look like – one student used the information on the paper copy), to write a summary and a day in the life entry to honor their specific person.  Today, they will present their information in a museum-like setting (the students are the curators) to other sixth and seventh grade students, teachers, and administrators.  Although, I am nervous about the presentation (because I want the students to do well), I am also very excited about the museum presentations.