Updates During Week One of Distance Learning

• Reading responses will be suspended for the time being.  Students should still be reading 30 minutes per night, but at this time, an assignment will not be attached to the reading. This will be revisited when we return to school OR at a later date.
• It is important that when your son/daughter completes their work that they check back for feedback.  I am providing feedback, yet I am not finding that students are going back to fix what needs correcting.  Feedback is imperative to the learning process.
• Please have your children review the Screencastify that I create nightly within Google Classroom that previews the next day's work.  This is important because that way when I "meet" with your children on Google Meets, we can focus on the actual work rather than solely going over directions.
• The Google Meets sessions have gone very well. Students have been respectful and they are participating and asking good questions.

Thank you for all of your support and positive feedback throughout this process :)

Update!

We are currently in the midst of RICAS prep as our state testing will take place in early April.  I am hoping to alleviate some of the stress around the testing by offering multiple opportunities to be in contact with RICAS like passages and prompts, given guidance and support.  Believe it or not, I have heard a couple of "this is fun" statements recently, which means to me that its going pretty well!  We have recently worked on a couple of narrative pieces, one was a narrative continuation (Wild Robot) while the other was a narrative in which students needed to change the point of view (Angelo & the Pigeon).

As a reminder there are a couple of things due soon.  The first is the third reading response of the trimester that is due by March 6th.  Also, the biography project is due the following Friday, March 13th.

Final Reading Response for T2

Although the final reading response for T2 is technically due by March 6th, I have strongly encouraged students to get it done by the end of this month so that they may focus completely on the biography project over the next month.  I have been working to teach time management skills, which will certainly be needed to manage a middle school schedule of academics, athletics, clubs, and, of course, balancing their new social lives!

Begging for Tissues!

As a class, we are once again in desperate need of tissues.  If you wouldn't mind donating, we would greatly appreciate it!

Our noses thank you in advance for your consideration :)

Biography Project 2020 Has Begun!!!

By the end of the day, students will have been introduced to the Biography Project that will be due on March 13th!  All book choices must be approved by Friday, February 7th.  Please see the links to the right for further details.

What Can I Do To Help At Home?

IXL ELA: As you know, students have IXL accounts for math and part of their homework is to practice math skills weekly.  On the same IXL website, students have access to ELA reading and writing skills as well.  Although practicing that is not part of my regularly required homework, I strongly encourage students to practice at home.

Have students talk about the books that they are reading.  Refer to the journal response packet that you received at the beginning of the year.  Ask questions about: conflict, mood, theme, character traits, character change, connections they can make to real world experiences or connections to other texts they have read.

Discuss historical events and current events to build background knowledge.

Read over your child's work before they submit it.  Offer guidance, but please do not be their editor for their entire paper.

Weekend Homework!

Several students have weekend homework this week as they have not completed assignments.  Many students owe work around the story Tree Kangaroo from the Journeys Book.  The book is available online through the website: Thinkcentral.com.  The actual work is on Google Classroom.  Additionally, several students owe Silk Road Questions.  That is a paper/pencil task.

Update

At this time, students are finishing up a character change evidence sandwich based on the book Restart. Later this week, we will begin poetry analysis, focusing specifically on identifying themes that can be drawn from poems and creating writing pieces to prove it!

Reading Responses

The mid trimester due date has passed for reading responses to be turned in.  The next date to keep in mind is Friday, March 6th.  Students will have one reading response due by that date.  They will be working on: a fiction response, a non-fiction response, or a journal prompts response, depending on what they have already turned in already.  Each student wrote in their agenda today which one they need to be working on.  I also mentioned to them that a biography project is forth coming so they should set a personal goal to turn in their next reading response by the end of this month to keep on track as the biography project will be due on March 13th.