Happy New Year! It was great to get back to the business of teaching and learning after a relaxing vacation. I'm so proud of how your children are adapting to our new hybrid schedule. They are continuing to work hard and stay focused, despite the disruption. My favorite day is when we can work together in person, but I love seeing their faces on Zoom and it will never cease to make me giggle when a pet enters their screen.
This week we began our next social studies unit that examines the expansion of early agrarian societies. Students had a short refresh on early man and civilization and how the development of agriculture led to an era that lasted for over 10,000 years. We are now considering the economic, political, cultural, and geographical impact of expansion and how collective learning grew from expansion into the four world zones.
In ELA we are working hard on learning the characteristics of well-written literary analysis. Students worked together as a class to create a mentor text for a brief constructed response (BCR) to a poem. Next week students will work individually to construct their own BCRs.
Lastly, we conducted a short seminar of sorts addressing last week's events at our nation's capitol. Students were able to engage in a really intelligent conversation about what happened and why it happened. They were able to apply their understanding of civics, democracy, and rule of law to think critically about Wednesday's events. They are such engaged, big thinkers!