FREE audio books for SD teens- all summer long!

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• Download excellent books to your device and listen while you:
• Work
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• Available to South Dakota teens age 13+
• Free- and you get to keep the audio files!

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• Downloads are in MP3 format and are Mac and Windows compatible.
• Downloads will operate through the OverDrive app. Put this on your device or computer now so you're ready to "read" when the books become available.
• Most listening devices are supported.
• Each SYNC audiobook is available for download for a period of 7 days (only). But, it's yours to keep so you can listen any time.

And then Gabe strolled by our classroom and said....

Gabe is the middle school vice principal. He helps with kids who are struggling to behave. Today, he popped into our classroom during 9th hour. No, we weren't in trouble.... in fact, here's what he said:

"Wow. You're really into whatever it is you're doing!"

We all looked up, nodded, and then got right back into it.

So, you're wondering, what are we doing?

We're reading a novel. 

A novel is a book. It is fiction. We just started it on Tuesday and we're already 30 pages in. The whole thing is over 300 pages! 

This is a very popular and almost famous novel. The title is Wonder. The author is R.J. Palacio. The story is about a kid named August (he goes by Auggie) and his life when he went into middle school. The novel was made into a motion picture. (That's another name for a movie.)

We started by making a bunch of predictions. Now we are finding out if our predictions were true or not.

We can choose to read independently or with the group. We discuss what's happening in the novel and why. We also write a "check in" or do a short quiz. This is so we can recall what we're reading.

We have a lot to read before the end of the year, but Sister Patrice is confident we can do it. We plan to watch the movie on the last two days of school. We want to find out if the book and the movie are the same or different. We predict they will be different but we are wondering what they will change.

We earn badges for our achievements. Here are all the badges we can earn. Some of them can be earned just once but some of them we can get several times. Sister Patrice is thinking about making a leaderboard. 

Here is a live feed showing the badges we have earned so far. There will be more as this novel continues!

The Brain and Learning (Part 1)

Written by: Maza, William, Winter, Dom, Lannie, Kabryn, S. Patrice

We started watching a video called The Learning Brain. It was about your brain. We learned that the biggest part of the brain is called the cerebrum. 

It was interesting to learn that the left side of your cerebrum controls the opposite side of your body. So, the left controls the right side of your body. 

We learned that neurons are cells. They send messages to your body and in your brain. Practice builds neuron pathways.

We saw that the elephant's brain is four to five times larger than the human brain. The dog's brain is three times smaller than the human brain.

Long term memories are memories that are old, from a long time ago. For example, some of us could remember things from when we were young children. Short term memories are recent. Things like what we had for breakfast or what color socks we put on this morning are short term memories. It's easy to forget them because there is no neuron pathway yet. 

While we watched the video, we had to take notes. Then we worked together in a team to write this summary using our notes. We also used the "sentence stems" to come up with the sentences.