Wednesday, January 28, 2015

This week in:

Projects:

We finished the inflatable globes....finally!  They look great and they will be hung on display in our classroom soon.  We are now moving onto studying global warming.  

8th Grade Reading:

To Kill a Mockingbird is a great, challenging text, and the kids are doing great!  We took our time on chapter one with vocabulary and phrases, and can now move gracefully (we hope) through the rest of the novel.  We are having wonderful discussions already!

7th Grade Reading:

Tomorrow the students will start working on their maps of The Glade in The Maze Runner.  They will use descriptions in the book to build a 3-d model of The Glade, then present it to the class.  Students will work in groups of 4 on this.

Writing:

Argumentative essays are done!  Students worked HARD, and I am very proud of these.  They are up on a bulletin board outside the room.  Stop by and take a look.  You kids chose some very controversial topics to research and report on.

**February 6 is our middle school dance from 6-10.  Please remember to sign up to send something in.  You should have received a signupgenius email with a list of items.  If you didn't get the email, please let me know.

Thursday, January 22

Projects:
Students continue to work on their globes.  They are drawing land masses, lines of latitude and longitude, and labeling everything.  We will use these to show weather related concepts.  Students also took a vocabulary quiz over 8 of our terms.

8th Grade Reading:
Today we started chapter 1 of To Kill a Mockingbird. We will actually spend a bit of time on this chapter, as there are many references we need to work through to build our background knowledge.

7th Grade Reading:
We read to chapter 5 in The Maze Runner. This is an excellent, very exciting book already.  We are all intrigued.

Writing:
Continuing with our argumentative essays....These are slow going.  Students are trying to grasp using evidence-based terms and quotes from text to support their arguments.  We will get there.  I have strong writers and we do a lot of discussion, which helps.

**Please see your email for the permission slip for February's dance.  We will need one from every student who attends.

Happy Thursday!

Tuesday, January 20

Quiz this Thursday over new science vocabulary terms on Quizlet.  The kids know all about it and should be studying!

Projects:
We are creating inflatable models of the earth to show lines of latitude and longitude, as well as land masses and oceans. We will use these to gain a better understanding of weather, ocean currents in the hemisphere, the Coriolis Effect, and more!

8th Grade Reading:
We began researching and reading about the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee, today.  We will read and learn more about the Great Depression tomorrow (Wednesday) and start reading our novel on Thursday. This is going to be a great one!!!

7th Grade Reading:
We started The Maze Runner, by James Dashner today.  Students were given access to the final exam and will be collecting evidence for it as we read. Parents, you might want to ask them about their evidence they are collecting from time to time.  This isn't something students want to be procrastinating on.

Writing:
Students will turn in final copies of their argumentative essay on Thursday.  I have conferenced with all students, and they should be turning in quality work. The writing is getting harder and we are focusing on our Smarter Balanced writing practice.  I told the students that if their grades go down on their essays that it's normal. This was a hard assignment, but they are learning from it.  Remember, it's about growth in academic areas more than the grade. :)

Valentine's dance is February 6th from 6-10.  I am so excited and am looking forward to seeing everyone go and enjoy a night of dancing with friends. Please remember our policy regarding eligibility.  

Tuesday, January 13

Projects:
There will be a quiz over the Bill Nye videos tomorrow.  Students all have notes to study and should look over them carefully.

The experiments were great fun today. We made predictions and formed hypotheses. Sometimes we were even right!

Tomorrow we will continue to study weather vocabulary, weather patterns (current), and tighten up our experiment notetakers so we can turn them in for a grade.

8th Grade Reading:
We will finish the movie tomorrow.....I promise!
Students, please make sure you are prepared for our seminar on Thursday. Remember to use TEXT EVIDENCE and to speak at least twice.

7th Grade Reading:
Students did a lot of individual reading and writing today.  They are enjoying this time to read what they each enjoy.  We will start the class novel on Monday (Mazerunner)

Writing:
Introductions to argumentative essays are due tomorrow.  I will try to conference with each student.  Be prepared!

**Flocabulary homework due Thursday for 7th only.
**Study for Projects quiz tomorrow!

Monday, January 12

Projects:
Tomorrow we will be conducting different science experiments in the middle school classrooms.  Each experiment will be weather -related.  This should be a lot of fun and very exciting!

8th Grade Reading:
Today we watched most of the movie The Outsiders, and will finish it tomorrow.  Also, students will finish preparing for their seminar, which is scheduled for this Thursday.  I'm looking forward to listening to them discuss the book.  Next week we will start the book To Kill a Mockinbird, by Harper Lee.  This is one of my all time favorite novels, and I can't wait to share it with the students.

7th Grade Reading:
Flocabulary lesson today, and the kids rocked the discussion!  The packet is due at the end of the week.  We will start reading The Maze Runner next week. I'm looking forward to teaching this book.

Writing:
Students are still writing argumentative essays.  They are working on planning, and should be ready to start their introductions tomorrow.  Each student has chosen a topic that he or she is passionate about, and I'm looking forward to hearing their arguments.

Once again, we are in need of some gift cards for our auction. Thank you so much to those families who have donated to our fun.  The students love our auctions. They work hard to earn "money," and love trying to be the highest bidder for our items.

Monday, January 5, 2015

Hello and Happy New Year!

We had a great day back and got busy right away.

Projects:
We are starting our weather unit.  Students are researching vocabulary terms and front loading so that they can start their big science fair weather project in the next couple of weeks. We will have a vocabulary quiz over all terms studied this week on Thursday, January 8.

8th Grade Reading:
Continuing with The Outsiders and will finish reading it this week.  We will have a Paideia Seminar next Thursday.  This is a round table discussion of various issues in the book.  Students will be required to speak at least twice, and provide text evidence with their responses.  This will be the final exam.

7th Grade Reading:
Continuing with Daily 5 and leveled comprehension passages.  Today we watched our "Year in Rap" in Flocabulary and discussed happenings from 2014.

Writing:
We are going to head into argumentative essays.  Today we did a "would you rather" exercise, where students looked up "would you rathers" and discussed them with table partners, giving both pros and cons.  We will look at more serious issues in the next few days and move into writing a larger piece.

**Students are asking how they can see their grades.  All information on how to get into Infinite Campus was sent home months ago with usernames and passwords.  If you need this information again, please contact the front office.