The cast of Disney Moana, Jr attended the Broadway Junior Festival at the Knight Theatre in Charlotte, NC on April 10. Students performed two songs from our musical, watched other schools perform scenes from their musicals, and participated in workshops. It was a great way to celebrate our love for musical theatre!
A message from Ms. Chege on "Journaling in the Classroom":
About a month ago, all my Core classes started keeping a Diary/ Journal where the students would spend about 5-10 minutes at the beginning of class to write any reflections, experiences, and feelings about anything that had happened to them or to others around them both positive and negative e.g. on the previous day, after a weekend, after a school event e.g. Sports and other after school activities, field trip, multicultural day, testing, spring break, birthdays, holidays etc. This is also after we had been reading the "Diary of Anne Frank" with Grade level classes and "North by Night" with the English 1 class.
These two diary entries and letters were written by teenage girls [12 & 16 years old respectively] and ended up becoming famous and hence getting published, e.g. Anne Frank's diary has now been published in 70 different languages and sold over 30 million copies.
Diaries/ journals are therefore not just a means of outlet for anyone but also a great and enjoyable way that students can express themselves and explore their talent in writing and can eventually end up earning from them. It's also one form of writing that students don't need AI! Some students could also draw/ doodle their reflections and they could indicate if their entries are confidential or I could read or share them out.
Overall, all my student did their best and had entries amounting to 3-8 pages long by the time I collected the journals for grading.
Shout out to the following students for exceptional work in the Journaling activity:
Glafira Kopt- for the most detailed and thoughtful journal- Glafira has written over 60 pages and still keeps going. She carries her journal everywhere she goes and writes anything that interests her. She has also started an outline for her own book entitled "Sleep Paralysis" Watch out for that!
Haidyn Emmons- for the most colourful and exciting journal. She used all different colours of my pens that she could find on my desk and really enjoyed doing it.
Kendall Edwards- for the most captivating and interesting journal. You should read it!
Several of our 8th grade students took part in National History Day at the state level by traveling to Coastal Carolina University to present their projects. The projects presented were in the Group Documentary, Individual Documentary, and Individual Exhibit Categories. These students worked to revise and craft their projects for the state competition using STEAM skills such as design, research, art, writing, and editing skills. Participating students were Hayden Hughes (Individual Documentary), Lizzie Turner (Individual Exhibit), Cameron Bagley, Quinn Cousar, and Henry Janicke (Group Documentary). Their teacher was Ms. Jordan Hoover.
