6th Grade Social Studies
The sixth grade is nearing the end of the Medieval Europe unit. Early on in the unit, the students researched Medieval castles and designed their own blueprints for a castle. More recently, we did a role play on feudalism in which the students played lords, knights, and serfs. We're currently discussing the importance of the Church in Medieval Europe, and after our discussion, we'll do another role play in which the students will mimic the lives of Medieval monks.
7th Grade English
The seventh graders recently finished a large unit on verbs and are now doing a writing unit. For this unit, they have to write a paper which pitches an idea for a "B movie." They have to create a plot and then argue why their movie should be made. So far we have plots about superhero dogs, elephants from outer space, giant mutant squids, Russian spies who can teleport themselves, and alternate worlds.
8th Grade English
The eighth graders have just finished writing papers about a person whom they admire. They were required to research someone who isn't well-known, explain the highlights of that person's accomplishments, and then describe why they find the person inspiring. Now that that paper is finished, we have started a grammar unit and are learning to distinguish between direct and indirect objects of verbs, and objects of prepositions. I explained to the students that this will help them when finessing their English (when to use "I" as opposed to "me," for example), and it will also help them to acquire foreign languages since objective cases can be so variable.
