LASS at LJA

LJA is currently engaged in the redesign of our classroom webpages.  Our goal is to create pages that are more readily accessible, easily understandable, and more consistent in format and content across subject areas.  Additionally, they are being designed to complement and align with the new Parent Portal that we are now piloting and intending to implement fully in the fall.  Until new pages are up, please find the course outlines and learning targets under the “Learning Targets” tab on the top of the page!  Thank you for your patience and generosity of spirit as we do this important work!

Welcome to Quarter 4!  This quarter’s a short one– it’s only six weeks long as compared to the usual nine– but we’ve packed it full of exciting learning experiences to support several important learning targets.  Since we received a lot of positive feedback about the student contracts we used last quarter, we’ll be continuing to use them to communicate information regarding learning targets and their supporting activities.  Your daughter should have brought a brightly colored contract home for you to sign this week!  So, what are we learning about in LASS this quarter?

LASS 4th Quarter: Women, Civic Action & Our Community

This quarter, we’ll be shifting our focus as social scientists to the study of our state and federal constitutions, the structure of our government, and how to be an effective and engaged participant in our community.  We’ll be studying these topics through the lens of an exciting current issue in Minnesota: the upcoming introduction of the Minnesota Constitutional Amendment for Equality (MN-CAFE), otherwise known as the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).  The Federal ERA is a change to the Constitution that would clearly add the guarantee of equality between men and women to our nation’s highest law; the MN-CAFE would amend the Minnesota Constitution in the same way.  The full text of the amendment reads, “Equality of rights under the law shall not be abridged or denied on account of sex.”  The Federal Equal Rights Amendment was defeated in 1982 after failing to be ratified by enough states.  Since then, the fight for gender equality has continued, and many states have added a similar amendment to their state constitutions.  For more information and frequently asked questions about the MN-CAFE, please see www.mncafecoalition.org, or give one of us a call!

The enduring understandings, or things we most want students to remember in the future, are as follows:

• Our government is set up so that we can and should use our voices to affect what happens in our state and country.
• For many years, women and men have successfully worked together to fight for gender equality, but there is work left to do.  Women are still not guaranteed equal rights in our federal or state constitution, and Minnesotans will have the opportunity to change this in 2012!
• Representations of women and girls (and men and boys) are constructed, and they frequently convey stereotypes and biases about gender roles and characteristics.

Connected to and aligned with these enduring understandings are the five Language Arts and Social Studies learning targets that will appear on the next report card as Quarter 4 Targets.  Several Long Term Targets will also on the Quarter 4 report card.

Communication Regarding LASS in Q4:

We’re continuing to work to make our communication with parents more efficient and effective.  This quarter, we’ll be using three main resources to communicate:

1. Contracts: We’re sending home an extra contract so you can keep one for yourself and put it on your fridge, on the dashboard of your car, or taped to your daughter’s mirror!  You can also look at your daughter’s copy of the contract that she’ll keep in her red folder; this is the copy that will get marked up as we check off activities we’ve done in class.  Please reference the contract when you have questions about quarter and long-term learning targets in our unit.

2. Website: As a staff, we’re currently re-thinking our use of websites as we develop a standardized protocol for site format and content.  Expect new websites by next fall!  Until then, follow the “Learning Targets” link on the top of the page for a list of the quarter targets and supporting targets. Reading these supporting targets will answer some of your questions about how we are scaffolding the learning to each of the quarter targets.

3. Planners: Look in your student’s planner when you have questions about when an assignment is due.  As a LASS team, we are working very hard this quarter to diligently check that students are not only writing in their planners every day, but that they are writing quality, accurate information.  We’re emphasizing that they need to include the due date for each assignment.  We model planner usage on a large copy of the planner that is in the front of our classroom, and we have routinely been writing in our planners at the end of every class period.  When students don’t have any new homework, we write “No new HW,” or students can write reminders about homework assigned at an earlier date.  If a student forgets a planner at home, they’ll be giving the home number a call immediately, to remind themselves (and you!) to bring their planner the next day.

And of course, please always feel free to ask us your questions as well.  We’re more than happy to talk over the phone, e-mail, or schedule an in-person meeting at (or not at) school.  As always, your continuing support for your child and our school is invaluable.  We look forward to an amazing end to an amazing year!

-Ms. Emily & Ms. Amber

We’re looking forward to the next nine weeks of learning in LASS class! One of our goals this quarter is to make our learning targets and activities increasingly transparent to families. We hope this letter and the student contract sent home with your daughter last week will help you feel more informed about what we’ll be studying and doing in LASS over the next nine weeks.

3^rd Quarter Unit: U.S. Immigration, Past and Present

As we continue our study of U.S. history, we’ll explore how immigration has made the United States “a nation of nations.” This unit’s enduring understandings are:

• Immigration is central to our national history and identity.
• People have always been “pushed” from their homelands and “pulled” to new places.
• The amount of opportunities available to immigrants varied greatly based on the country of origin, ethnic group, and perceptions of the dominant group.
• Students will have empathy with immigrants as they understand the challenges of the immigrant experience

Connected to and aligned with these enduring understandings are the seven Language Arts and Social Studies learning targets that will appear on the next report card as “Quarter 3 Targets.” Also on the report card will be several “Long Term Targets.”

Last week, your daughter brought home a student contract that lists the Quarter 3 learning targets, long term learning targets, and the individual assignments and tasks that will create the scaffolding needed to help students meet these targets. (These are the same learning targets that will appear on the report card.) The purpose of this contract is to help students and their parents/guardians keep track of work so they can be successful scholars. We will refer to this contract frequently in class and check off work as we go; we encourage you to use the contract as another way to check-in with your daughter throughout the quarter.

Students will be engaging this quarter in an independent reading book project. They will select a book from a list we’ve created and read it independently while completing various small assignments as they think and read. All books on our list are middle grades / young adult fiction that somehow touch on the topic of immigration.

There are four total long-term targets on the contract, three of which are language arts targets. One target, I can increase my confidence with words and how they work, will be new to the report card. In order to gain a secure on this target, students need to be making progress in vocabulary study, spelling, and grammar. This quarter, some students will be working on spelling through the established spelling routine while others will be working on spelling through the process of systematic word study.

If you haven’t already, please take a look at the contract and sign it to indicate that you have seen it and reviewed it with your daughter(s). The long-term targets, quarter targets, and their smaller supporting targets are all also available on this website under the “Learning Targets” tab.Please also help your daughter to choose and obtain one of the selected novels for her independent reading project, and sign the contract as a supporter for the project.

The support you show your child in this work is incalculable. As always, please email or call us with any questions, comments, or concerns you might have about your daughter’s progress. We look forward to seeing you at conferences!

-Ms. Emily & Ms. Amber

LASS class is rockin’. Thanks for checking in.

After a short delay due to a shipping issue, we’ve at last begun our book groups! Girls are reading a historical fiction novel with other members of their class. They are being assigned readings in (what we call) “chunks” that are to be completed at home, along with doing some response / tracking of plot in a reading journal. They are then regularly meeting in their book groups to discuss the chunks and further their learning and understanding. Please support your daughter as she reads about an intense period in American history by asking her about her responses to her text or maybe even reading the book along with her!

We are doing some explicit work with main idea and detail to get students prepared to craft a thesis statement for a short essay. It is kind of an elusive concept, but the girls are doing some great thinking! This essay will be on a topic of their choosing and will come out of their responses to the work we’re doing. We did a lot of writing work with their prose poem that will support the writing of the essay as well!

Keep up the great work, ladies of LASS!

We hope you all had a wonderful holiday. Happy 2010!

Things are back in full swing at LJA. The full week back to school was quite something – really exciting, and a little bit tiring at the same time. We’re super excited though for the remainder of our studies in quarter two.

We are finishing up revision, editing, and publishing of our prose poems and getting ready to start our historical fiction book groups. (Check out the book group books under Texts!) We are still working hard on the Geography Challenge and the MCA Challenge. Look for a mid-week post this week! Hope you had a great weekend!

Hello!  What a week.  It’s been a busy one.  This week we…

• worked to generate thoughtful responses to historical pictures and text relating to the issues of racism, inequality, and slavery*
• started the word study process and spelling
• continued to draft the prose poetry writing piece and get it typed into Microsoft Word
• talked about the MCAs and standardized testing in general, and introduced a student challenge around it (check out the “MCA Challenge” page for more information!)

Great job this week ladies; we accomplished a lot.  Next week we’ll be building on word study, revising and publishing our prose poetry writing, choosing a historical fiction novel related to our study to read this quarter, and learning more about the origins of slavery in the United States.

*A note in regard to curriculum:   We are studying the Civil War time period this quarter.  Over the break we made some changes to the LASS scope and sequence for the 6th and 7th graders, considering (again) their unique needs as the first students at LJA.  Fifth graders will follow the regular scope and sequence we have developed.  Contact our education director Ms. Dorothy if you’d would like more information about this change!

Hi everyone!

How is life?  Thanks for being patient with us during the last week of Q1 and this first week of Q2.  It’s so easy to get completely wrapped up in the teaching and learning that happens every day that sometimes documenting it doesn’t take first priority. We’ve also been trying to fill out the site to make it more informational and useful.  Anyway, we haven’t been keeping up with our weekly post, so our apologies if you’ve felt in the dark!

The first quarter of this year wrapped up nicely.  Students worked at their own pace to complete the summative assessment tasks, and many student confident student voices could be heard throughout the hallways the last days of school.  The recorded video clips are excellent, and we hope to use them sometime in the near future as part of a LJA video.  Nice job girls.

We’ve had a great first week back.  First piece of news – in case you haven’t heard – we got desks!  That’s right, we have bright, shiny, basket-for-materials-underneath, no-chair-attached desks.  We love them, and so do the girls.  We also have five classroom computers up and running!  These are two changes in our classroom environment that will make a huge difference!  As for work, girls have learned about the GEOGRAPHY CHALLENGE, a new routine for LASS that involves mastering geography learning targets at students’ individual learning paces.  We have also begun a writing assignment that will replace our “Where I’m From” poems on our picture boards.  It is a “prose poetry” piece about something that each student loves.  Good stuff.

You can expect to see word study homework next week!  Ms. Amber has been working hard to get the program in place.  This week we finished up some diagnostic work with several students and finalized the differentiation preparations.  We are really excited to get this in place, as we think students will really like it and benefit from it.

Apologies for being a little sketchy with the website.  Edublogs has been a little weird, and we’ve been a little busy. 

Our filmmaking is going well.  Girls have been working at their own pace over the last week or so to articulate, both in writing and out loud, what they’ve learned about LJA through the lenses of  geography, history, sociology, and economics.  It’s been a lot of work for all of us, but it’s been good work.

Talk soon!

Hey everybody.  Happy Wednesday.  We’re trying to spice up our page and make it more informational and fun.  What do you think?

Wow, the quarter is wrapping up.  We’re lamenting the quickly diminishing minutes of learning time! We’re very excited though to be beginning our summative assessment.  We have taken some time each day to do some exercises that help us practice speaking with authority, and we’re getting organized for the process of demonstrating our learning in this way.  Filmmaking will begin on Monday!

This week we’ve been learning what it means to study as a sociologist.  It was perfect that this week included a no-uniform day, as we have done some reading, writing, and talking around how clothing affects us and the way that we act, both individually and in groups. 

We’re also continuing to learn about word study and how it looks and feels.  Girls have not been assigned word study homework just yet; we’re still learning about the process. 

Talk soon!

Hello!  This is our second post this week!  We just feel compelled to let you know about the rigor of the work the girls have been doing this week.  We’ve been learning what it means to study as historians by studying the story of our namesake, Laura Jeffrey.  The girls analyzed a primary source (a photo) to create inferences and questions; they then studied a variety of historical data, in the form of charts and graphs, that answered those questions (and, truthfully, created more questions!).  The historical data they looked at was about access to education for women and people of color.  Tonight for homework they have a reading on Laura Jeffrey to complete, along with directed notes.  Second-year students, since we did do some learning around Laura Jeffrey at the beginning of last year, were assigned a different, a bit more lengthy reading.  Tomorrow we will merge our work with historical data with our reading on Laura Jeffrey in order to acknowledge the greatness of her achievements given the historical context!  So cool.

We would like to commend our period 1 on the bravery and maturity that they showed this morning in our beginning-of-class talk.  Not only was it a great discussion in which students learned a lot, but it also built a sense of connection and community among the girls!  Rock on, sisters!

Next week we will begin working on our summative assessment!  We are so excited for the girls to begin this extraordinarily authentic work.   We will be working with our voices – literally – to confidently express what we’ve learned about LJA through the different lenses of the social sciences.  Students will be working on articulating their learning on camera and/or into an audio recorder, and some of these clips will be kept to be worked into an “What is LJA?” video, one that we can hopefully use both for general public awareness and recruitment of new students!