Humanities: Speak & New Design Challenge: How Might We Improve 8th Grade Orientation?

A few weeks ago, Guidance asked Mr. Dunbar and Mr. Ryder if our students would be interested in redesigning eighth graders' high school orientation experience.  We said yes.  (We did not consult you folks; we just figured you'd be keen on doing a project around something that actually matters, will actually happen, and for which you have a lot of expertise as you went though it all yourselves.

All of the work we do for the next several weeks will be about the following design challenge:

How might we improve the eight grader's orientation to the high school?

We did some writing in the lobby, the food court, and the forum, three places were the current ninth grade spent a lot of time last spring and fall.   We tried to recapture our experiences in those places.   We've done some examining of that writing, and will finish off that work on Friday -- for now.

This week, we started Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson.  One reason we are reading it now?  It's all about a girl and her transition into ninth grade and dealing with very grown up situations.  We are going to be using the "reciprocating questions" strategy a great deal -- where you folks as Mr. Ryder questions that stem from the reading.

And finally we started on Roots 9.

This blog post is a bit of a messy catchall for the week.  We will get back on more proper track next week with the blog.

HOMEWORK:

Blog: 3+ posts
Req'd Post: "Ten Lies."  Make up a your own list of "Ten Lies" inspired by the list in Speak.  You may want to come with "Ten Lies They Tell You About Freshman Year" or "Ten Lies They Told Me on the First Day that I Found Out Weren't True on the Second."  How creative and insightful can you be?

Vocab: Roots 9
Study & Complete: Word Map or Roots Product
Roots Quiz: Thursday Feb 6 over 6 to 9