Ms Oelkers's DLA Page

Welcome to Ms. Oelkers's 8th grade DLA class 2008-2009. . .

Click here to access 2007-2008 posts

Supplies:

Students are expected to come to class each day with a working writing utensil, lined paper, a folder for handouts, and the materials critical to the unit of study - ie. book, draft of paper, vocabulary sheet, etc. It is helpful for students to have their own flashdrive so as to be able to work on writing assignments at home and at school.

What we're doing now: Some days we work on the social studies research paper - taking notes, organizing the ideas into an outline, and preparing to write the persuasive essay. Other days we take time to read and discuss the short stories we are working with in English class.

download outline template

What we've done this year:

Dec./Jan.

We read the historical fiction novel, Friedrich, by Hans Peter Richter, we identified the main idea of each chapter and discussed how each idea built on itself to develop plot, conflict, character, and theme. We also discussed the connections to the social studies Facing History and Ourselves curriculum. In analyzing the experiences of the young Jewish protagonist, Friedrich, as seen through the eyes of the non-Jewish narrator, we explored multiple perspectives and deepened our understanding of what life was like for a variety of people living in Germany from 1925-1942. As a final project we created an imovie weaving events from the novel together with events from history.

Oct-Nov: In conjunction with the English class we read and studied Lois Lowry's, The Giver. We paid particular attention to the ways in which the Elders of the community eliminated differences and controlled the citizens who lived there. We wrote an essay in which we analyzed the aspect of Jonas's society we felt to be the most controlling and unjust.