The good things about a sick day are:
1.) I get to cuddle with Luz on the couch all day (a rare privilege)!
2.) I get to spend quality time planning our Summer Learning Academy adventure!
Here are some ideas in the works:
- Student-made passports which will be stamped upon the beginning and completion of each mini-unit (four or five within our six weeks together). As it is with real international travel, the stamp of each region or country we have as a focus will have a unique stamp).
- A unique project (integrating art and cultural study into our literacy travels) as the culminating collaborative performance piece of each unit. Some ideas I'm kicking around:
- A mural a la Diego Rivera in Unit One (which will also display our daily pledge to each other as a community).
- A reader's theater production to celebrate African literature.
- A short film with scripted dialogue to honor the history of European cinema.
- A reception on Day 1 and a celebration on Day 29 (our last day) to celebrate our time together!
- An ongoing Travel Log (journal) in which students record brief daily entries (which will serve as "exit slip" style formative assessments) about what they have learned about or found interesting that day.
This is my first classroom, my first blog, and my first time in summer school.
I'm excited to find out who will begin this learning adventure with me in a few weeks!
We will transform our classroom at Emerson into a travel machine... as we work together to strengthen our skills in reading, writing, and speaking with each other about the world around us :-)
