Empowering Self-Directed Joyful Learning
Middle School W.A.M.
6th - 8th grade Wednesday Academic Mentoring
Jennifer Mercer M.Ed. is a California-credentialed teacher who facilitates middle and high school classes for small groups of homeschooled students. She loves learning with students and taking the journey together. She believes in non-coercive, joyful learning, so students must choose to participate in the classes. Jennifer offers classes to private homeschoolers and is a vendor for various charter schools in San Diego.
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W.A.M.
Wednesday Academic Mentoring
Wednesdays at 9am - noon
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Session 1: September 13 - November 15, 2023
Session 2: January 10 - March 13, 2023
Session 3: April 3 - May 15
The W.A.M. group is a great way for 6th - 8th graders to learn how to take charge of their academic learning -grapple with literature themes, hone writing skills through meaningful written communication styles, expand their understanding of math concepts and develop personal responsibility for learning information (including doing homework).
Each learner's experience will differ depending on the level they are working at and their personal goals. Learners must:
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be able to independently read/listen to middle school level novels (6th grade and above)
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have experience with and some proficiency in adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing
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commit to working outside of WAM to further their learning goals AKA -do the homework!
W.A.M. participation will require a commitment from families to continue the learning at home. The work will be connected to ongoing W.A.M. projects and should fit easily into your home routine. As a family, you will need to set agreements about how that will work. I will refer to the homework during class and the learners will be tracking and evaluating it. My goal is for the learners to develop internal motivation to work at home. For some, this will be easy –for others, it will be a slowly developing skill needing parent support! If your child participates in WAM, you will NOT NEED to do any other Language Arts work at home other than WAM homework.
The W.A.M. group will include:
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Book club -reading literature together -heated discussions, Socratic seminars, agonizing together over characters and events, and excitedly pondering the future for the story together!
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Writer’s Workshop - fun, silly, EFFECTIVE vocabulary study to enhance our reading and writing skills, heated debates over the use of the Oxford comma and other grammatical ponderings, varied writing projects and personal conferences with Jennifer to set writing goals and improve techniques
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Conceptual, Experiential, Visual, Cooperative Math – building problem-solving skills that will make learning math procedures easier and bring deeper understanding of WHY mathematicians do what they do.