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Tongue Twisters, Growth Mindset, and Self-Portraits

To celebrate the beginning of fall (or to mourn the end of summer), here is a lovely picture of a sunflower in my yard.

Here’s what we were up to this week!
The seventh graders continued their exploration on narratives this week.  We practiced summary writing and writing about theme.  We also talked about how setting can influence the events of a story.  We used close reading strategies using the Collections Close Reader.  To put all this practice together, my students have some interesting short stories of their own in the works.  I can’t wait to read them!
I’m really kicking myself for not getting any pictures of the demonstration speeches we did in second hour this week.  I’ll leave it up to you to picture my students teaching the class how to make cheesecake, wash a dog, tie a bowtie, ride motorcycles, and make lava lamps.  It was a diverse set of topics to say the least. Friday, we relaxed a bit from the stress of speech delivering and had a Tongue Twister Battle. Little did they know, I secretly tricked them into practicing speaking more clearly.  Can you say, “pad kid curd pulled cod,” five times fast?  That’s a tongue twister that MIT researchers found to be the most difficult. 
Some of the tongue twisters we tried
Do you have a fixed or a growth mindset?  That’s a question the seniors pondered this week as we read about Carol Dweck’s research.  We also analyzed the structure of her argument—claims, reasons, and evidence. Actor Will Smith also came to class to share his ideas of success (not really, but this is a great video). We had some discussions about the meaning of success and compared the central ideas of two commencement speeches (here and here). Next week, we will continue the conversation with an older text—Beowulf (cue the epic Anglo-Saxon music). 
Claims, reasons, and evidence
I can’t even keep up with my Google Docs class; they are hard workers.  This week they explored a third app from the Chrome Web Store.  Their Google Sites are starting to fill up with all the things they’ve learned.  To start the week, we did a step-by-step activity using Google Draw where they had to use shapes to create a self-portrait among other things.  Finally, we sent out our first “Google Tip of the Week” to the staff and students.  This week the tip was about how to change the colors of your folders in Drive.
A wonderfully random Google Drawing
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