TAKS Camp
by Mrs. Donna Jordan
Mrs. Jordan’s 7th grade ELA class has been quite busy this week traveling all over the world! Flying TAKS Airlines, they reviewed important TAKS elements while visiting interesting geographic locations.
On Monday, they toured Hawaii and studied: Point of View, Style/Tone/Mood, and Opinion/Influence. Through a beachside activity, they practiced alliteration through funny name tags, becoming various sea creatures. These “creatures” told their stories from a unique point of view about a cruise ship incident.
Tuesday, visiting Ireland, students practiced Personification, Main Idea, and Graphics while on the airplane to the Emerald Isle. Once there, they played a trivia game for prizes and became experts on finding messages and meanings in stories.
Wednesday, students ventured into the African jungle, flying over a savannah filled with wild animals. Here they practiced Cause-Effect, Symbolism, Flashbacks, etc., while listening to “African” music and using “animal-skinned” spiral pads to take notes.
The tired jet-setters ended their journeys in New York City Thursday, flying in to the music of Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” and a photo collage of NYC famous sites. In their “taxi” notepads, they summed up what was learned all week, including Inference/Critical Thinking, Author’s Purpose, and Text Organizers. In a game show format, they divided into groups for a TAKS review activity with the winners earning chocolate!
All in all, the 7th grade class took the “trip of a lifetime” through various cities, countries……and through all major TAKS Reading Elements. Their passports are full of stickers, hearts full of memories, and hopefully heads full of TAKS-passing information.
Mrs. Jordan, ELA Teacher
