Student News: April 28, 2006
written by the Scholars of Room
208This week in the morning we
listened to music. We listen to music because it helps us work and concentrate.
Mr. Sprankle puts on the music every morning before we walk in. Some of the
people we’ve listened to so far were: Billie
Holiday, Mahalia Jackson, Curtis
Mayfield, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Pop
Staples, Ray Charles, Duke
Ellington, and Nina Simone. We [listen to it] by hooking Mr.
S’s iPod into the speakers and turning the music up. We listen to these
famous African American singers because we are studying African Americans. We
really enjoy the music.Also this week we
read an article on Chernobyl. Chernobyl is a nuclear
power plant in Chernobyl, Europe. 20 years ago the Chernobyl Power Plant
exploded. Many days after the explosion, radiation reached other countries.
Chernobyl didn’t tell the other countries about the explosion until many
days later. The radiation killed about 35 people and [gave many others] a lot of
diseases. That’s what we read about in the
article.Last week, we started something
called Facilitated
Discussions. Mr. Sprankle got the idea from
Kevin Perks who gave a presentation for the school
district. A facilitated discussion is when the whole class or a group
reads the same article and when we’re done reading the article we put any
questions we have about the article on the board. Then we answer the questions
together and sometimes Mr. S answers some of the questions for us. Most of us
like doing this because we get to learn different words and how things work.
Sometimes when someone answers one question, it leads to another. We can’t
wait to do this again. This week we
started IIM. IIM stands for “Independent Investigation Method.” We
use this for research. IIM helps our research because it keeps it organized. Our
class research topic is African American Heroes. Some of those people are:
Michael Jordan, Jackie Robinson, Thurgood Marshall, Muhammad Ali, Maya Angleou,
and Duke Ellington. Part of IIM is it gives us focused questions. Mr. S’s
question was: “How did this person change the world?” We also have
to do a Bibliography. And that is what we do in our IIM.
Posted: Sun - April 30, 2006 at 12:09 PM
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