Ms. Rekemeyer's students completed a fun research project to find interesting facts about their chosen presidents. Recycled materials made the project environmentally friendly, too!
Retired Lieutenant Colonel Fullerton served in the army for 25 years as a helicopter pilot, infantry officer and aviation officer as well as an Airborne Jumpmaster and Pathfinder. He retired to begin a new career as a teacher in McAllen until finally moving to the area around 2011. He is currently a BISD bus driver and the BMS ISS room supervisor. He visited all 8th grade history classes on Veteran's Day to share some of his experiences with the students. He also talked to them about what it means to live in the United States and stressed that no one is "born a leader." It's a skill that one learns and earns through hard work and dedication. Mrs. Schmitt and Mrs. McCullough are using Google Classroom with their sixth graders for a research project on states. The students are collaborating with their partners in Google Drive to create presentations. The students are accessing TexQuest databases to find information and cite their sources.
The blog has been kind of quiet this week, but that's because life on campus has been wonderfully busy. Mrs. Groff was fortunate to attend the Texas Library Association conference in San Antonio last week. In addition to learning about great resources for our students and teachers, she brought back over 20 advanced reader copies of books that will be published over the next several months. Several BMS students took on the challenge of reading the ARCs to determine whether the new titles would make good additions to the BMS collection. Mrs. Groff is totally excited about the students' input into collection development and their willingness to serve as a teen advisory team. Let the reading begin! With STAAR just around the corner, 8th grade students spent the week working with Ms. Rekemeyer and Coach Spiegleman reviewing the timeline of events in American History. Wow! Talk about students engaged in learning. The students worked in collaborative teams to match events, images, and descriptions in an interactive learning experience. Our students are ready to take on STAAR! If you happened to drive down 11th Street today and saw 6th graders running around looking for eggs, they weren't on an early Easter egg hunt. They were participating in an "egg-cellent" math/science lesson with Miss Smallwood and Ms. Moseley. They used their STAAR math charts to solve equations and search for eggs marked with the correct answer. To confirm that they'd solved correctly, the students had to identify the item in the egg. Needless to say, the 6th graders had a fun day in science!
The BMS Library transformed into a Civil War Museum for a week in February. Eighth grade students explored Civil War artifacts loaned by the Gettysburg National Military Park. Items included a Civil War soldier's uniform and accouterments, photographs of a Civil War soldier's life, and historically representative music and pastimes. Students paraphrased Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, learned about the roles various women played in the Civil War, and made videos using slang apropos for the time. The students extended their study of sensory language's role in evoking pathos in a reader by recording significant quotes and using watercolors to paint their symbolic representation.
One of the highlights of the week was a regimental marching competition. On Monday during advisory, Mr. Crowder taught self-selected teams of students basic marching commands. The regiments practiced on their own during the week, and on Friday, they competed in a judged competition. The Civil War Traveling Trunk was secured to provide background knowledge for the students' reading of historical fiction and expository text in Ms. Bagwell's and Mrs. Lonsberry's classes and their study of the Civil War in Ms. Rekemeyer's and Coach Spiegleman's classes. For two weeks in February, BMS is going to step back in time. On Tuesday, February 18, the U.S. Department of Interior will deliver a Civil War traveling trunk. 8th grade students will have the opportunity to connect their study of the causes and effects of the Civil War to daily life in the nineteenth-century as they explore the music, literature, and past times of a Civil War soldier. Teams will compete in a regimental marching competition and record choral readings of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. For two days, the BMS library will be turned into a Civil War museum where eighth graders will interact with artifacts and primary and secondary sources. Stay tuned for more info on the joint initiative sponsored by the social studies department, the ELA department, and the library.
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