Saturday, September 4, 2010

Making Progress on a journey


The path has been set and this week will see progress being made upon it. For the seventh graders, this will resemble working through their trace fossil writing tasks, consisting of multiple rough drafts, struggling with issues of symbolic meaning, leads, and how to define culture. A strong student this week will be one who is pouring over writing, thinking things through about how to classify a trace fossil, and reading over my comments on their drafts. A strong student this week will be one who faces a high level of challenge and struggle in attempting to articulate individual thoughts, ideas that reside in the mind and yearning to be put on the page. Final Drafts of all trace fossil papers are due at the end of class on September 17.
For their one year older counterparts, the path will be through that long and arduous road called the Constitution. It begins this week with an overall discussion of the Constitution and, in more specific terms, the Preamble. Weekly study sessions will start next week as well as weekly quizzes on content covered. The Constitution Exam is tentatively scheduled for 35 school days from now. All of our eighth graders are on the clock, both literally and figuratively. It is my hope that we, all of the stakeholders who wish for nothing but the best, can be vigilant of what they need in order for them to do the best in this unit, on this test, and along the first step of a long journey towards scholarship.
I hope to see all of you on Wednesday, September 15 for Curriculum Night, a great moment to meet your child's teachers as well as sign up for Fall Conferences. If I can be of any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact me at school or at my home.
All best and happy hunting to all.
Mr. Kannan

2 comments:

  1. I think that "Realities" was the hardest item to categorize because I didn't really understand what it meant and what it has to do with the Constitution.

    -kathryn p.6

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  2. I think that the section, "Important Cases", is the most difficult topic for me. I haven't studied the Constitution in depth that much, and I especially haven't studied the court cases. I can kind of figure out the other topics, but this one is very puzzling- unless we study it a lot more.

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