Weekly Objectives for 10/28/13 - 11/31/13

Overview - The focus for the week will be Greek Mythology.  Students will once again be placed in collaborative groups in order to tackle a challenge.  Each group will be responsible for researching a Greek God by using literature and web based informational sites.  The goal is to create a biographical sketch and informative report that best represents their Gods.  There will be a total of two days given to the students to complete the task.  The remainder of the week contains Halloween, Monday Meeting and the Greek Shutdown on Friday.  
    Monday - 10/28/13 - Monday Meeting - PJ Burns was our guest speaker from the Mohawk Police Department.  The students were very interested in his presentation.  Many questions were asked and a great picture was taken at the end.  A big thank you to Officer Burns.  The remainder of the day was spent on interviewing prospective employees for the Greek Fair.
    Tuesday - 10/29/13 - The students began researching their assigned Greek God and Goddess in collaborative groups.  Each group was assigned the task of creating a 3 paragraph informative essay, an artistic sketch of the deity, and 15 fast facts about them as well.  Within the groups, students assigned tasks to each other according to their strengths.
    Wednesday - 10/30/13 - Today is Deadline Day for the Greek God research project.  Students are wrapping up their research and getting final pieces put into place.  They will have until 2:30 today to turn in their work.  I am very impressed with how they stick to deadlines and find ways to produce positive results.  Congrats to them!!!
    Thursday - 10/31/13 - Happy Halloween!!! We have a day packed full of festivities and presentations for your young goblins.  Students in writing are creating Spooky Stories, but the twist is that they can only write for one minute.  When that minute is up, they must switch to a new paper and continue switching until time is up.  We then get to share their crazy stories at the end of each class.  The first group was laughing so hard that a few actually fell out of their seats.  Great bonding experience, but educational as well.  The students were also treated to a Bullying presentation by a professional MMA fighter.  Great show!!
    Friday - 11/1/13 - Day #1 of the Shutdown.  In the News Room, the journalists created their driving question to get them to their overall objective.  They then began breaking down the jobs, agendas, expectations, goals and results.  You have to come in and see what is going on.  We have broadcasters setting up the Green Screen, interviewers creating questions, bloggers designing their page, writers crafting the Greek Daily Times Template, informational analysts collecting news worthy content.  By Monday, we should be a partially functioning News Room.  Still waiting on technology issues to get us live feeds and audio.  Bear with us.