MY SIS CAME IN THIS WEEK! She's my best friend, and she's a third year medical student in Worcester. She was in town for a few days doing some work at BU, so she came in for a little on Wednesday morning to meet some of the kiddos. Unfortunately she could only stay for a half hour, so it was only my homeroom that was graced with her lovely presence. She talked about the longggg process of becoming a doctor, and I even tricked her into doing some poetry-related-brainstorming for a writing activity we did after she left. I love getting to show off my sis to my students, and vice versa of course! She was very impressed with them. :)

We're in the thick of our poetry unit, and it's been super cool to see some of the poetry writing some of the kids have been doing. The natural talent and creativity that this unit brings out in them honestly blows me away. On a different note, and yet still related to writing: GRAMMAR. It's rough. Grammar and spelling have taken a back seat in education over the past decade, with comprehension becoming the primary focus. Though this is understandable, basic writing conventions are still vital, and recently I stumbled upon a really neat program called NoRedInk. This site has students take a grammar diagnostic assessment, and those results reveal both whole class and individual needs related to parts of speech, punctuation, capitalization, etc. Then I can assign lessons, practice, and posttests that lead to student mastery. In addition, students can track their own progress in several areas, and guide their own lessons and practice based on individualized need. But the coolest part is that they get to pick a whole bunch of interests--movies, shows, music, books, sports, you name it--and all of the questions and content in their account incorporates their chosen interests. So, they love it (as much as a kid could love a quality online educational program, of course). 

Our Bucket Fillers this week were Emma and Antonio. Emma's writing....there are literally no words. (Kids: what kind of "literally" are we talking about there?!) She is so incredibly creative and descriptive with her ideas and word choice, and lately she's been doing some extra writing that she so kindly has shared with me. It is amazing! Antonio also really impressed me this week. He's been participating a bunch, and working hard to make sense of the pretty challenging figurative language we've been exploring. Check out the picture of him using an iPad during a STEAM-related figurative language activity that had the students scanning QR codes to reveal song lyrics in which they worked in groups to analyze. Cool, huh?