Peek at My Week {Feb. 24}

Hi Friends!  Just thought I'd peek out from the avalanche of papers I am trying to get scored before report cards and conferences next week and give you 

It is going to be a topsy turvy kind of a week as we try to wrap up multiple end of the trimester projects and get ready for our Genius Hour presentation on Friday.

In Social Studies we are in the middle of our Civil War simulation.  In our current episode students are going into battle for the first time.  Each student has been randomly assigned to either the North or the South, as well as, a specific regiment.  For each day's episode they have to make decisions pertaining to the events of the day.  Depending what each group decides to do and how their roll of the die turns out different things can happen to them.  For example they may be injured and lose a limb or die from disease.  At the end of each day's events students write a journal entry describing their trials as a solider.  This is our second simulation of the year (we did the American Revolution earlier in the year) and the students LOVE them!  I also have the Pioneers simulation which is similar to the Oregon Trail.  The books says it should take 5 days to complete the simulation but it usually takes me around 7 class period because  I try to add extra bits like short video clips, pictures or other resources to help make it even more real to the students.  If you are looking for fun way to engage students while studying our country's history I highly recommend you look into these simulations.

We are continuing to work on long division in math.  Slow and steady seems to be the key on this topic with my group.  They  really enjoyed putting together the first part of our Division Lap books (see last week's post) and we will be adding more to that this week also.

In writing we are finishing up our descriptive writing.  To wrap this up, we are doing a partner project incorporating a little art.  To begin with, each student had to draw a monster of their own creation (They could not draw a monster that already exists from games or TV) and they had to keep it secret from anyone around them.  The next step is to write a detailed description of their creation which they will give to their partner who then will try to draw their monster.  After each partner has drawn the monsters based on the descriptions, they will compare their drawing with the original picture.  I hope to post some pictures of the comparisons when we are done.

On Friday we will be hosting our first Genius Hour presentation for our families.  I am planning another post on that topic when we finish up :o)

Well, that's my week for the most part.  Now back to those papers that need correcting.  Be sure to link up with Jennifer at Mrs. Laffin's Laughings and see what others are up to for the week.  Have a great week!