Mrs. Slaviero's Blog

My Language Support Historians have been very busy in class these past few weeks. The start of the school year (especially this year) is all about assimilating to a new country, state, city, and school. We are building community and are now ready to roll! Last week and this week was spent diving into the five themes of geography and focusing on different regions of the United States. Groups selected two states from a particular region to study through the 5 themes lens.  I  introduced students to Noodle Tools, helped them create a project, showed them how to link their project to my teacher inbox, search our Media databases and e-books, select sources, cite those sources in Noodle Tools, and use those sources for research! It is affirming for all of us to see the momentum build as we dive deeply into 21st Century learning! The next step in our project is to practice speaking skills. I am learning how to even better support and scaffold work for these students and I created a c...

This week in NHD featured presearching and researching topics in order to finalize choices next week. Student Historians continued to wonder and find questions about the topics they learned about last week in the Media Center. The Speed Topic-ing lesson was a hit and left many students wanting to know more about at least some of the topics they examined that day. This week started with a mini-lesson from Mrs. Chatel as she asked this group if their topic questions could simply be answered with a "yes" or "no" or if their questions were "Big Mac" questions--ones that would take many weeks to complete. A Big Mac question is the perfect National History Day project endeavor. Presearching and researching went well. These students are going to decide their project topics, partners they will work with, and what type of project they will create this week. Language Arts teachers will support this work with helping students begin to formulate a thes...

Yesterday's National History Day work featured the power of support. Eighth Grade Student Historians were once again fortunate to have Ms. Bradfield, State Coordinator for Michigan History Day, join us, along with our Teacher Librarian Mrs. Chatel. I'm happy to say that Ms. Bradfield will be joining 8th Graders from Smith Middle School in two weeks. Students were able to ask Ms. Bradfield questions about topics, finding sources, and thesis development. They were also able to learn more from Mrs. Chatel about maximizing the benefits of Noodle Tools for research, digital note cards, and citations for their Annotated Bibliographies.  My expertise in assisting students with National History Day projects is strong. My reaching out to other experts, though, hopefully demonstrates to my students my firm belief in Synergy. This notion that we are stronger together when we work with and learn from others should be practiced and reflected upon often. I have worked alongs...

Tomorrow students will go to the Media Center for National History Day work. This year's theme is our focus. Here's our agenda: Noodle Tools app (approximately 5 minutes) Databases (from last week's Sway) Read the 2017-2018 NHD Theme Narrative and answer 6 short questions on Socrative (these questions are simple if you have read the information). Link: https://b.socrative.com/teacher/#import-quiz/30553462  Complete tasks left from last week's to-do list on Noodle Tools The day is once again very technology-centered. Students will use many sites and apps (is that app-smashing??) and will explore the theme "Conflict and Compromise" in depth. The theme is two-fold this year and both parts must be analyzed and represented in projects.  The National History Day organization has developed a Theme Narrative that gives students examples and breaks down the concepts of historical compromise and conflict. I've written a very short quiz on Socrative--al...

This week in NHD featured "The Shift". The Shift is moving from my planning what we are doing the entire class period to the students taking responsibility for their own planning. Our agenda: *Noodle Tools--write to-do list (we will do this one together to model it--you will create individualized to-do lists from now on) *take survey (if you haven't already) *see Symbaloo updates (links to previous category descriptions, etc.) *search MS Media Databases (they're on Symbaloo ) *write research question in Noodle Tools *write 1-2 checklist items of your own This project, as previously stated, is multi-faceted. Students need to have some general guidelines so they aren't overwhelmed. What they equally need, though, is the parameters to take on planning themselves . To-do lists are an excellent way for students to clarify what needs to be done and note when these tasks are completed. (Many students know how to do this, but just as many do not.) I in...

I've been trying to come up with a way to update our National History Day journey when the name jumped out at me--I suddenly remembered "This Week in Baseball", a sports show I used to watch with my Grandpa when I was a kid. (Google it for some great baseball memories!) "This Week in NHD" it is! I met with all 8th Grade US History students again yesterday and we completed a few business tasks--we logged onto NoodleTools, the website that will help us organize our sources and ideas this year, joined the Schoology 8th Grade NHD Group I made for all 8th Graders so that I can easily send every student, not just my students, information and resources, gave a brief overview of the project this year, and shared the Symbaloo Webmix I created for them.  This Webmix is going to become an essential resource. The necessary resources are all in a user-friendly format, color-coded and organized for ease of use. I will add tiles to the mix as the need arises and I look...