#kim johnson

Windy day

Aurora Borealis Dec. 1, 2023, 06:32 am

Good Measure Farm, Atlanta, MI, 2004

Interested in adding to your summer reading list? Check out these five books that are out today:

(New Young Adult Releases Coming Out Today! (June 11th, 2024)

___

Have I missed any new Young Adult releases? Have you added any of these books to your TBR? Let me know!

___

New Standalones/First in a Series:

There is a Door in this Darkness by Kristin Cashore

The Ghost of Us by James L. Sutter

Love, Off the Record by Samantha Markum

Brownstone by Samuel Teer & Marina Julia

The Wilderness of Girls by Madeline Claire Franklin

Hearts of Fire & Snow by David Bowles & Guadalupe Garcia McCall

Dead Girls Talking by Megan Cooley Peterson

Six More Months of June by Daisy Garrison

How to Get Over Your (Best Friend's) Ex by Kristi McManus

The Color of A Lie by Kim Johnson

New Sequels:

Icon & Inferno (Stars and Smoke #2) by Marie Lu

___

"Wind Day"

This morning, The Principal walked into our PLC meeting as we were talking about the people who are still showing up to the school board meetings to shout profanity at the board members and demand that the district end its mask mandate. Immediately, my department head switched gears- like, midsentence- back to talking about learning progressions and enduring understandings. It was masterful. 

I forced myself not to laugh so I wouldn’t ruin it. Heh.

I love my department.

I’ve mentioned a couple times that World always starts with fifteen minutes of reading. Students chose books off my shelves on the second day of classes, and they’ll be writing a paper about the themes in their chosen books sometime in November. I know some of them haven’t finished a book since elementary school, which is why I build in time- and a lot of it- to build up the habit (and students who are avid readers can finish at their pace, start on their papers right away, etc... no need to wait till November if they’re ready sooner). 

I do have a few students who try to avoid the reading time, but I’m working on that, and, in general, I’m happy with how it’s going. I have a ton of books, which makes it easier for me to find one that a student will like. The most popular one this year seems to be Kim Johnson’s This Is My America, which is a great book. The kids who are reading it want to talk about it everyday (and they’ve convinced some of their peers to switch books and read that one with them), and if they’re at a suspenseful part when reading time is over, they’ll ask for one more minute (which I give, of course). Always cool when something like that happens. 

Today, after we were done reading and chatting about reading, I assigned the first major project: the Culture Project. Basically, students can research any cultural group, and they have to create a multi-media presentation describing that culture’s traits. So they’re showing me they have the research and citations kills they’ve been practicing over the past several classes. I’m giving them until the end of class on Monday to finish a rough draft; final drafts will be due next Thursday. After that, students will take a lot at each other’s work, provide feedback on it, and we’ll discuss how these cultures could be effected by and/or react to some of the current events we’ve discussed (ie- climate change). That’s how it’ll all tie together. Boom.

In GOV, we were discussing federalism again today. I fielded questions about cooperative federalism, and gave students links to some relevant news articles (one about NH voting not to accept federal grant money for family planning, one about “marijuana federalism,” one about emissions standards in California being higher than federal ones, one about the Bundy family). We discussed those, and chatted more generally about the expansion of national government power. I’d like to get a few more of the students to participate in the discussions- there are three dominant speakers, usually, and a handful of others who will chime in here and there, but a couple stay totally silent- so figuring out how to change that n is on my to-do list.