Happy Spring/Winter Students and Parents!
As the snow continues to fly here in Minnesota we begin our fourth and final quarter of the school year. I am sure you are all aware that our students are on the third and final book in the Sharon Draper, Hazelwood trilogy. These books were so well liked by the students that they will start another series of her books when they make the glorious transition into seventh grade.
Now for the big assignment news!
Every year our students are assigned a capstone assignment that encompasses all of the new ideas thoughts and knowledge they have gathered throughout the year in their reading classes. This large scale assignment culminates with a assemble where students present their project before the entire 6th grade team. The assignment this year is as follows:
Students will create their own story of an incident or a day in their lives that mirrors one of the characters in one of the three books. They can use their skills with comparing and contrasting and have to include at least twenty of the new vocabulary words that they have learned this year. Another requirement is the story must include full details. Students this means adjectives are very important to your written story. You also will need to make sure that your story includes all five parts of a story:
The Introduction- Where the story is revealed.
The Rising Action- where the conflict and initial character development take center stage.
The Climax - Where the conflict comes to a boiling point and the hook of the story takes you to the place where the character is revealed in detail.
The Falling Action- Where the story begins to problem solve the conflict and characters finally begin to correct situations that happen.
The Resolution- Where the conflict was resolved and the characters resolve all lingering plot twist or prepare you for the next book.
Make sure you fully set the scene and that your plot is engaging to all of your classmates.
This final assignment will also bring into use our new technology lessons that we have been working with in the media lab. Students stories will not be just written in word these stories will be created using PowerPoint. The slides will need to have graphics and include sounds and images. Students will be given time during the next five weeks to complete this assignment during class and in our before and afterschool programs. Your slide show will need to be fifteen slides long minimum and no more than twenty five slides. All students are welcome to use scanned in photos and to create as colorful design as they can.
The links to some additional websites that we have used during class are also listed on the bottom of this page. One of the best is the official Sharon Draper web site or the Met the Author Web sites where we got a chance to ask questions directly to the author.
Remember this is worth twenty percent of your final grade and that all of your grades up to this point are listed in the parent portal in Naviance along with your link to your e-portfolio with all of your old Sharon Draper assignments.
If you have any questions please feel free to contact me and I wish you all the best of luck.
Your Teacher,
Monique
http://sharondraper.com/
