Detectives, Witch Trials, & Communications.
Fall is always a favorite time of year in the middle school communication arts classes. When the weather starts to turn to cool, the students in communication arts get to start learning some spooky history to help them understand writing and reading better. 6th, 7th, and 8th-grade students are all working on different units to help their understanding of reading and writing.
Students in 8th grade have been reading the mystery novel, And Then Were Were None. Students study character development during this novel and really look at how the setting plays a factor. During this novel, students act as detectives in class to investigate what is happening in the book and the reasoning behind it. Students always enjoy mapping out the book and the detective case on the wall in class.
Students in 7th-grade are beginning to learn how to use MLA citations to cite their sources and the information they find using the computer and books. To help students work on their citations, they are asked to write journal entries in the first person, as someone who was alive during the Salem Witch Trials. Students are asked to research a person who lived during this time period and infer from what they find online, how the person felt, thought, and was treated. Students are then asked to become creative in sharing their first-person journals with the class, using posters, videos, or anything else they find unique. Students in 7th-grade always enjoy connecting this information to what they learn in history class and asking questions to those teachers as well.
Students in 6th-grade are currently working on finding information from the text and drawing conclusions about their text using details and descriptions. To help students work on writing descriptive texts, they are asked to write about an object and give it real-life features. Students always enjoy thinking outside the box during this assignment and trying to be as creative and funny as possible. Students in this class will always begin learning how to write instructions and will learn how important it is to be detailed in their writing so that their readers can understand what they are trying to say.
These are just a few of the things we are learning in middle school communication arts.
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