click for smiling faces of BJHS students
Throughout the BJHS school year, your son/daughter will be receiving a grade report from his/her teachers. Our team wants to communicate with the parents on a regular basis. This is an opportunity to evaluate your child's performance, praise good work, and encourage effective study habits. Please look for grade reports; dates are noted on school calendarEmail Mrs. Wicker if you have any questions .
Books will bring you happiness every day of your life.
September recommendation: Al Capone Does My Shirt
(Newbery Honor Book) by Gennifer Choldenko.
12-year-old Moose Flanagan and his family move from Santa Monica to Alcatraz Island where his father gets a job as an electrician at the prison and his mother is busy with his autistic sister. Natalie’s tantrums sometimes lands Moose in hot water. Family dilemmas are at the center of the story, but history and setting--including plenty of references to the prison's most infamous inmate, mob boss Al Capone plan an important part of this funny story.
March recommendation: To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
Set in a small Southern town during the Depression, this story follows three years in the life of 8-year-old Scout Finch, her brother Jem, and their father, Atticus, a lawyer--three years marked by the arrest and eventual trial of a young black man accused of raping a white woman. Through the eyes of the Finch children, Harper Lee explores the irrationality of adult views towards race and prejudice in the Deep South. The result is a tough and tender novel of race, class, justice, and the pain of growing up.
The lessons of this classic continue to speak to new generations.
After you've read To Kill a Mockingbird, let me know your thoughts. Enjoy.
April recommendation:A Year Down Yonder by Richard Peck.
Grandma Dowdel's back! She's just as feisty and terrifying and goodhearted as she was in A Long Way from Chicago, a 1999 Newberry Honor Book. It’s 1937, and while rumor has it that the worst of the Depression (timeline) is over, the "Roosevelt recession" is firmly in place. Mary Alice's dad has lost his job, and her parents are being forced to move into a room; her older brother Joey is out west planting trees with the Civilian Conservation Corps. Now Mary Alice must spend a year living with her feisty and formidable grandmother in a hick town where the other kids in school think of her as the "rich Chicago girl." At first, Mary Alice finds herself an unwitting and often unwilling accomplice to some of Grandma's more shocking schemes, but by the end of the year, …….. Enjoy.
May recommendation: Four Perfect Pebbles, A Holocaust Story
by Lila Perl and Marion Blumenthal Lazan.
".........................60 years have now passed since the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, I had been asked, almost a year earlier, to come to this place that holds so many horrible memories for me"
 Homework
Literacy
Students have been enjoying the works of Edgar Allan Poe, the 18th century weaver of horror tales, and other authors who write "Tales Told in the Dark." Lower the shades and turn down the lights as you read Poe's The Tell-Tale Heart.
November 2007
Students read a variety of genres, created bookmark reviews on Publisher, and placed the "Must Reads" in the learning center.
December 2007
Students were practicing and polishing their writing skills this month. Students wrote personal narratives, created Young Author books, and wrote essays for the American Legion and Elks Club. What an exhausting month for all!
SPRING 2007
Students took an emotional excursion through the Holcaust era. The students travelled through many information-filled Web sites and read first-hand accounts of individual experiences. Auschwitz pictures of students
The language classes read The Red Pony by John Steinbeck.
Students have recently read either Mildred Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry or Irene Hunt's No Promises in the Wind. Both novels are set during the Great Depression. Groups researched the time period and created PowerPoints. Click here to view students' PowerPoints.
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