Spirit Day! April 8

Friday is a spirit day.(April 8) Each 2 teams have been assigned to wear a certain color. Our Phoenix team color is.......

Yellow! So, don't forget to wear yellow on Friday. The Yell Squad would also love it if you helped out and brought a yellow t-shirt for your friends to wear.

Family Connections Presentation

Family Connections (www.connection.naviance.com/lakeviewms) is a district site that allows students, parents, teachers, and counselors to stay connected in the lives of students throughout their school career. This is a place where students can track academic progress, College and Career Readiness, career goals, school goals, and so much more! With all of the tools that are available for students, this is one that the district, Mrs. Olson, and your Phoenix teachers would love for you to be active on! There will be assignments that are posted monthly and extra time at school or at home would be a perfect time to be working on these tasks. 

Mrs. Olson, our 7th grade counselor, did a great job of introducing herself and helping students get started on this website during ELA today. Aside from a short navigational discussion, students also completed a needs assessment that will help Mrs. Olson to drive discussions and lessons she will prepare in the future. So far, students are all very interested in learning to manage stress!

1st Lakeview Spirit Assembly

1st Lakeview Spirit Assembly

What a fun day this has been at Lakeview! Phoenix students rocked the spirit wear with 85.8% of our students wearing purple to school! This was the highest percentage in the school and we were BURSTING with Phoenix pride! We also won the two-person trash bag race! Overall, our students showed a great deal of school spirit and great sportsmanship when the Thunderhawks, another 7th grade team, took home the trophy. We will get them next time, Phoenix! I believe!

To view all of the excitement of the assembly, please take a look at the following photos (even more will be added soon!) as well as: 

• THIS VIDEO (CLICK HERE) of Mr. Wright leading our team chant!
• THIS VIDEO (CLICK HERE) of Mrs. Eisenmenger strutting her stuff out on the runway! 

Analyzing Writing Stations

It has been another great week in ELA! Students have worked diligently at analyzing the three writing pieces they have written since the start of school. These pieces include: 

1. The Value of Writing - Students were asked to make a claim about the value of learning to write well. 

2. Digital Citizenship - After understanding the importance of good digital citizenship, students wrote a proposal to our Missouri State Representative, Nick Marshall, about the need for a new law that would outline digital citizenship regulations for all Missourians (schools, businesses, families, etc.).

3. "My World" Story - A peek into the lives of other students around the world resulted in our students composing fantastic "windows" into their own lives through personal narratives.

After all of this work, it was necessary to take a few days to really analyze our performance as writers. In order to do this, we looked at 6 different aspects of our writing:

Station #1: Do we understand the purpose of each piece of writing? Were we able to accomplish this? Our students were honest!

                                                         

 

Station #2: Does the structure of our writing fit the prompt? Does our evidence appropriately support our structure? Pulling out the pieces to look at them individually really helped! 

Station #3: Does our writing make sense? Does our writing demonstrate a command of conventions? Students realized that reading their pieces out loud and sharing them with a group brought to light some corrections that needed to be made!

After all of that work, we submitted one final essay today for an assessment grade. I can't wait to see all that these students have accomplished!

My World Activities

My World Activities

This week in the Meyer/Rider arena, students explored the essential question: Who are you? In order to answer this question, students learned the essential skill of how to mark & chart text (a tried and true AVID strategy!). This allowed them to discern the structure and content of the texts they were reading, which were all stories from a book titled My World containing personal stories from children around middle school age from around the world! As they worked, they practiced these strategies and developed their own rubric to assess their personal "My World" story which will be done in class on Friday. What a great week of learning!

Digital Citizenship Exploration

Digital Citizenship Exploration

As students spent time working to understand NETS 5: Digital Citizenship, they completed all of the following activities: 

1. Collaboration Counts! - Research & graphic representation of why collaboration is an important skill
2. Technology Expectations - Students brainstorm expectations they have had in the past, their effectiveness, and what teachers should know moving forward.
3. Digital Citizenship Mission Statement - Students watched videos and read articles in order to understand digital citizenship and submit their proposal for our team digital citizenship mission statement.
4. Digital Citizenship Google Presentation - Students created a presentation to help elementary children understand the importance of being a good digital citizen. 

Students did a fantastic job and were able to articulate great arguments about why digital citizenship is necessary to all people!

The First Day of School

The First Day of School

In the early morning hours, decorated walls, organized shelves, prepared activities, empty desks and the quiet promises of a new school year wait for the excitement of the day to come. Welcome to Team Phoenix - a place where passion and excitement for learning reign - where the first day of school is only one of hundreds of experiences and opportunities waiting to be explored and understood. This will be a year of hard work, creative problem solving, and meaningful learning orchestrated by a set of committed teachers who even took their own "first day of school" pictures. Hold on and enjoy the ride!