Gingerbread Houses: A Little Late

Because of time, the first period class was unable to make Gingerbread Houses before winter break. So, they did so after break....just a little late. Here are the houses that the groups of students made:

Socratic Seminar: Community Service

On March 23rd and 24th, both classes held their first Socratic Seminar on community service. Ten students volunteered to be in the seminar, and the rest of the class observed while taking notes. Many good points were brought up in both classes, and students were mature in the comments and opinions shared.

Team Building: License Plate Fun

For Motivational Monday on March 15th, students were asked to get into groups of 3-4 people and decode what some license plates meant.





Here are some of the examples license plates they had to decipher:

B9S2US = be nice to us

LVNGLYF = loving life

GDAM8 = good day, mate

College Research Project

The next project that the students have been assigned is the college research project. For this project, students chose a college, individually or with a partner. Each student is to write an essay about the college, create a power point presentation, and present the college to the class.

Here are the important due dates with this assignment:

• Introduction due 4-1-10 or 4-2-10
• Essay due 4-15-10 or 4-16-10
• Power Point due 4-15-10 or 4-16-10
• Presentation date varies, chosen by each student

Students should remember that they each need to write their own essay, even if they are researching the college with a partner.

Online Summer Course

Register for Pacific Coast High School's online course for July/August.

• Athletes: register for "Wrld Hist/Cult/Geog A" and "Wrld Hist/Cult/Geog B"
• Non-athletes: register for "PE A"

Steps to register:

• Go to pchs.k12.ca.us
• Click on "Enrollment" at the top
• Click on "Click here" for July/August registration instructions
• Click on "Anaheim School District"
• Click on Complete "Contact and Course Form"
• Fill out form. You need your parent's email address and you need one for yourself.
• Click "Submit" button
• Print out "Registration Forms" from here

If you cannot print out the registration forms at home, see me for help!

• Completely fill out all 13 registration forms. Return them to Mrs. Neubert or Mrs. Bean ASAP!!

The Secret of Getting Straight A's

To read the book The Secret of Getting Straight A's, students were formed into ten groups. Each group was given a chapter from the book. They are responsible for creating a poster about their chapter, presenting their chapter to the class, and administering a quiz on the chapter.

On Thursday and Friday, students created their posters:

Period 1

Period 2

Presentations will be next week.

Save Me a Spot in College

The big project for this quarter is the scholarship contest, Save Me a Spot in College. Click here to read more about this contest. This project is worth 300 points and is due by Monday, March 1, 2010. Students may write an essay or poem, make a visual like a poster, or create some type of TV advertisement. More information will be given to the students this week in class.

The first FIVE students in each class to turn in their project will receive a frisbee.

9th Grade Leadership Conference

Today our students participated in the AVID 9th Grade Leadership Conference at CSUF. All students who attended received a T-shirt (which can be seen in the pictures of the students on the tour) as a complementary gift.

The Keynote speakers were Brian McAllister and Ray Ricafort of Roadtrip Nation. Their main theme they shared with the students today is: "Define your own road in life." (More information on them can be found at roadtripnation.com).

Following the keynote, students were able to pick two different sessions to attend. Choices were: Financing Your Education; CSUF Panel of Students; Leadership-How Do You Measure Up?; Who I AM and Who I AM NOT; My Culture, History, and Community; Engineering Classroom Simulation; How Do I Understand Money? Students responded very positively to the breakout sessions.

After the sessions was a campus tour. Students were shown the different buildings (colleges), the library, the bookstore, and more. One interesting thing that the students were shown was the broken David statue, a copy of the famous statue by Michelangelo. Tradition is if someone rubs the right side of the statue's bottom, good luck comes to that person. Only one brave student tried this out!

Finally, students were given time to eat lunch. Many were excited to learn that places such as Carls Jr and Jamba Juice were on campus.