Mr. Brilla's Musings

Welcome:  Nine weeks down! I can't believe that we are already at the end of the first quarter and that the students will be taking their Civics Exam on Friday! This past week we were able to watch a great video from Goalcast that talks about the wisdom of a third grade drop out and asks the students "how ya living?" The video is a longer one (almost 10 minutes) but is well-worth the time to watch and I pick up new things each time I watch it. I hope you enjoy!  Social Studies (Periods 1, 4 & 5)  This Past Week: Tuesday:  The students did an activity called Iron Chef today. They worked in groups of 4 to create a presentation about 4 amendments in the Bill of Rights and then presented before leaving class. Check out some of the slides they were able to create here.  Wednesday:  We started to look at some of the responsibilities American citizens have today by discussing the process by which we elect our presidents. After playing a bit of a review game for next week'

 Only two more weeks to go and the first quarter is over--this year is already flying by! This past week was a fun one at OJRMS as we had our spirit week to coincide with homecoming at the high school and finished up our Make a Difference Day collection. It was great to see how many kids participated in each of the spirit days!  This week I was able to show another video on Friday and I chose one that fit well with our themes of diversity and acceptance from the advisory meeting we had on Thursday.  For this week's video, I showed a short clip from the movie Dead Poets Society  about finding your own walk and not always conforming to others. The whole movie is certainly worth a watch if you've never seen it!  American History (Periods 1, 4 and 5) This Past Week: The students worked on completing the assignments for the #030-Three Branches Mastery Grid this past week. The students did turn in their ✅ #034-Three Branches Infographic as the culminating (and only graded) assignment

Welcome:  It's that time of year again--the annual fundraiser & Make a Difference Day drives are in full swing so please be sure to help support our school and community if you are able with either of these two drives. It's also time for this year's Spirit Week since next week is Homecoming! To the left is a schedule of what each spirit day will entail.  We were finally able to get back to a normal schedule of inspirational videos this week and I got to show another one of my favorites. This week's video is another TED Talk and it features Mark Bezos. While Mark may not be as rich and famous as his brother Jeff, he is certainly no less impressive! Mark talks about a valuable lesson he learned about helping others as a volunteer firefighter. I hope you watch and enjoy the video!   This Past Week:  Monday: Monday was my last day out--as I was traveling home from Wisconsin the students were working on finishing their ✅ #028-Principles of the Constitution assignment fro

 Welcome:  Six weeks down already, it's absolutely insane how quickly this first quarter is going! This week marked the beginning of the Make A Difference Day collection & the annual magazine drive for our students. Please think about supporting the North Coventry Food Pantry by donating goods for the collection and our school by purchasing goods from the fundraiser if you can.  Last Week:  This past week was all about the documents that helped shape our nation and the ideas behind them as we dove into the Declaration of Independence & the Constitution. Here's a quick rundown of the assignments the students completed in class:  ✅ #024-Friday, September 30, 2022:  The students were given some time in class on Monday to finish up the assignment they worked on last week. The students were asked to turn excerpts of the preamble to the Declaration of Independence into either  "text messages" or "Instagram posts"  #025-Group Interest Form:  This form was p