Mt. Healthy JH Newsletter
Week of December 13
Students of the Month
Congratulations to the following students who were named student of the month for the month of November: Mar'shaun Dean, Xavier Hughes, Melina Gonzalez Bernardo, Taylor Reeves, Chessie Chess, and Antonio Heard. We are so proud of the dedication you have shown to your academics. Keep up the great work!
Spotlight on Literacy
Mt. Healthy City Schools will empower students to read & write universally, think critically, and communicate effectively.
Reading and Writing Universally
To prepare her 7th grade Speech and Debate students for their unit on argumentative writing, Ms. Savage used a concept map to see what her students already knew about the word purpose. By generating background knowledge about the concept, Ms. Savage was able to assist students in making connections between an author's purpose for writing and how students viewed the word purpose in their own lives. Check out Amirah Sutherlin's example below in which she was able to identify relationships between the content being covered and her prior knowledge.
Communicating Effectively
Students in Ms. Nielsen and Ms. Murphy's 7th Grade Language Arts class practiced working collaboratively through chalk talks. During this particular chalk talk, students took a minute and a half to write down their thoughts on their assigned topic. Once time was up, students passed their papers to the right. Once they received a new paper, they were responsible for responding to their group member's thoughts. During each rotation, students were asked to respond in a different way. By scaffolding the process, students were able to practice their skills of collaborating and responding to others' thoughts and ideas in a systematic manner.
Thinking Critically
Mr. Jones asked his 8th grade Social Studies students to think critically when sorting vocabulary terms being covered during their unit on the Revolutionary War. Students had to show a deep understanding of each term and its characteristics in order to determine which category each belonged in. After sorting terms into categories, students could extend their thinking by completing a semantic features analysis to identifying similarities and differences between terms.