In my home room class for devotions I am reading and the students are narrating The Silas Diary by Gene Edwards. This book is a fictional telling of the apostle Paul's journey's as he takes the gospel to the gentiles. Based on the biblical account of Acts meshed with historical facts known about the culture of the region at that time, The Silas Diary puts handles on understanding what it might have been like for Paul and his companions. The hardships they endured and the victories they celebrated in Christ become alive and real. Just ask any of my home room students if they would ever get on a ship that was preparing to sail into the Etesian winds!
All students are using the Winston Grammar workbooks, each one working at their own pace. Most students are working now on mastery of identifying words as either adverbs or adjectives and learning how to tell what word the adverb or adjective modifies. Many have moved on to identifying prepositions, objects of prepositions and how to identify a prepositional phrase as either an adverb or an adjective, while showing what word the phrase is modifying. Most seniors and a few sophomores and juniors have advanced to and/or completed the advanced Winston Grammar Workbook.
This year we have added Barton Reading remediation to the Language Arts program. Barton is a one on one tutoring curriculum for children with dyslexia. The students who receive this are so appreciative of the hope they have for overcoming their reading disabilities. There is no better reading remediation program than Barton and I am so excited about being able to offer this to our kids!
As the Language Arts teacher I also teach journalism and yearbook as electives.
Throughout the year my journalism students have published over a half dozen editions of our new school newspaper, The Flint Telegraph. I am so proud of the excellent work students have put into the paper! The result of their hard work has been an insightful, intelligent and entertaining paper that has something for all grade levels. As we near the end of the school year we are retiring the newspaper for the year to work on Flint Academy's first ever yearbook!
Taking center stage though, for the month of April, is our upcoming annual play. This year's play is Hotel Frankenstein. This is one of my favorite parts of the year! Being in charge of stage crew, there is nothing more exciting to me than finding free or inexpensive items for our students to transform into amazing props. Left over foam donated by a local mattress factory becomes gray stones for castle walls. An old ugly couch is being transformed into a lovely piece of Gothic furniture, with wall paint! Do you know how many hours it takes 6 students to tear up enough newspapers to make paper mache mash for the creation of fog blowing gargoyles? A lot! I love watching the students creativity flow and the satisfaction and pride they experience as their creations develop into works of art.
From scraps of foam,
to rocks for a castle wall.
The students' creativeness in prop design is in addition to another artistic outlet they have available all year long. Zentangle has been incorporated into the Language Arts program as a way to reduce the stress that students tend to have about grammar. Zentangle is art created by repeating patterns of specific designs. The benefits are manifold and the kids love doing this! Taking a few minutes out of the class period for a brain break helps them do better work with a clearer, more relaxed mind. More benefits of Zentangle are:
The students' tangles are copied and then combined on the bulletin board in the hallway to create a united work of art.
