"Mr. Popper's Penguins" Novel Study (Flex)

****All sessions scheduled during the Holiday Season will observe the following vacation dates: Thanksgiving - Sunday, 11-24-2019 through Sunday 12-1-2019; Christmas/New Year: Sunday, 12-22-2019 through Sunday, 1-5-2019. Other holidays observed by students and their families will also be respected.****


"1939 Newbery Honor book is both tender and funny."  (Common Sense Media)
Common Sense Media Review:  https://www.commonsensemedia.org/book-reviews/mr-poppers-penguins

** As this is a flexible schedule class, there will be no live meetings.
**Assignments will be provided between the first and third days (Monday- Wednesday) of each week.
**Students’ responses and products will be due one week from the date assigned.
**Any discussion questions must receive an initial response by Thursday of each week, and at least one response to another student and/or teacher by Sunday of each week in order to create as robust a conversation as possible.
**Students can expect to share their creativity, writing, research, thinking, and more with fellow classmates throughout our course.

Week 1:  Chapters 1 - 3
Week 2:  Chapters 4 - 6
Week 3:  Chapters 7-10
Week 4:  Chapters 11 - 14
Week 5:  Chapters 15 - 18
Week 6:  Chapters 19 - 20
Week 7:  Culminating Project

Our novel study will consist of the following activities:

•	Information and activities will be delivered through a variety of methods (videos, interactive postings, shared documents <teacher to student/student to teacher>;
*       author study (videos, discussions in Google Classroom);
*      pre-reading activities/discussion (in the Google Classroom);
•	weekly chapter reading assignments;
•	journaling to a prompt (…and sharing some of our journaling in Google Classroom);
•	vocabulary practice and quizzes (Quizlet);
•	discussion board (Students will answer a weekly discussion question and interact with other students and the teacher.)
        •	Google Classroom for sharing and discussing our book’s content with critical-thinking/high-level questions (inferencing, author’s purpose, summarizing, sequencing, comparing/contrasting, comprehension, etc.), weekly journaling, and any questions you may have;       
•	chapter quizzes (using Google Forms through Google Classroom);
*      cross-curricular connections (often requiring some research and sharing);
•	fluency practice (documents that I will share with you for use during the week/Students will report their fastest fluency time to the teacher each week.);
•	enrichment activities that give us a unique way of sharing with each other (teacher and fellow students/using Padlet, etc.);
•	fun stuff (crosswords, activity pages, etc.);
•	and a culminating product (last week.)  I’ll provide a selection of ideas  so that you can get your creativity moving!  These options will offer activities in several different learning styles and will allow students to create and share through documents, photos, or videos.  They could also be a presentations through Padlet, Google Slides, or another app that you enjoy.  Rubrics will be provided for each project option.

We may also use Flipgrid to interact with one another, and Animoto to make video presentations.

Participation and performance in the above activities will be used for evaluation.  Student submissions will have teacher evaluation that will often lead to further discussion.