Pennies for Patients Fundraiser

Students in Mrs. Wright's homebase count their donations for the Pennies for Patients Fundraiser.

Poetry Cross-curricular Unit

Mrs. Wright and Mrs. Drakeley are implementing a cross-curricular poetry unit during the month of March. Students have been reading poetry and analyzing poetic techniques in language arts with Mrs. Wright. Students will now be applying the poetic techniques to their own poetry, written in English class with Mrs. Drakeley.

Spartans of the Month

Congratulations to Isabella and George, our Spartans of the Month for February! We are very proud of you!

Spartan Field Trip

The annual Spartan Field Trip took place on Wednesday, February 24, 2010. We enjoyed seeing the novel The Lightning Thief come to life on the movie screen as the culminating event in our cross-curricular unit. Check out these pictures of our excited Spartan Campers getting ready to join Percy at Camp Half-Blood!

Spartans of the Month

Congratulations to Madison and Cameron, our January Spartans of the Month! Keep up the great work!

Spartan Geography Excellence

Congratulations to Spartan Jonathan for qualifying for the state level competition of the National Geographic Geography Bee! Jonathan will be competing on April 9th at Penn State University. If successful, Jonathan will proceed to the national competition in Washington, D.C. Way to represent Sparta, Jonathan and good luck at Penn State!!!

Persuasive Essay - English

The Spartan students are working on their Dumb Law essay in English class.

The assignment is to take one of the laws that was provided and explain why this is a great law that should definitely be enforced!

A few examples of laws:

• You may not sell your eye in the state of Texas
• It is illegal to sell your children in Florida
• In Alabama, it is illegal to wear a fake mustache that causes laughter in church
• In Nevada, it is illegal to drive a camel on the highway

Students will spend the next few weeks utilizing the entire writing process as they write five paragraph essays defending the law he/she chose.

These should be great essays, and I look forward to reading the end product!

Outlining in Spartan English Classes

The Spartans have just completed a persuasive editorial in their English classes. This went along with our thematic unit about gods and goddesses! The students wrote an editorial that selected the best god/goddess and the worst god/goddess. They had to defend the choices that they made.

Now that we are wrapping up the essays, we will begin learning about outlining. Outlining is a great technique to organize an essay or any writing assignment. It's also helpful with note taking, so this will be a skill that will definitely be useful to the Spartan students in the coming years!

Spartan Campers: Camp Lightning Thief

On Wednesday, Spartan students wore their Camp Lightning Thief tee-shirts to begin The Lightning Thief Cross-curricular Unit. Each homebase stood in front of their god or goddess' "cabin" for the picture!

Kick-off Event: The Lightning Thief

On Tuesday, January 5, Spartans attended The Lightning Thief Kick-off Event to begin the cross-curricular unit on the novel. The seventh grade teams came together to watch the movie trailer for the movie The Lightning Thief which the students will go see in theaters in February for our field trip. Spartans also received special instructions from an "oracle" to go and decorate our rooms to look like Camp Halfblood in the novel. See the students and teachers turn our 3rd floor hall into Camp Lightning Thief.