Week 3

I feel like time is moving along at a steady pace. The students and I seem to be settling into a great routine. Thank you to all the parents that were able to make it to open house. It was such a pleasure to meet you. I look forward to working with all parents to ensure that the students are successful and productive. Please, continue to email me with any questions or concerns. Also, if you have some praise, send those as well. I hope that you have signed up for the parent aspect of Edmodo. Again, I would appreciate any feedback since I am not sure what the parent page looks like.

Recap of Open House

1. Late work will not be accepted due to negligence. Absence and emergencies are the exception. Please, work with the students on time management. It is a skill that will follow them throughout their life no matter their career choice.
2. If you see a 50% on an assignment in Edmodo or Powerschool, this means that the student did not complete and/or turn in the assignment.
3. AR goals will be individual after this quarter. My expectation is that students are reading every night for 30 minutes. My requirements are that the books are AR, not too easy or difficult, and that they enjoy reading it. While it is for a grade, I do not want the students obsessed with the goal. The important part is for them to practice their reading. Also, I want them to develop a love of reading.
4. Students should be writing their homework down in their agenda daily. It serves as a reminder of what they need to accomplish. They can no longer say “I forgot” if it is written daily. Thank you for your help in this. It is another skill that will help them.
5. I offer extra help on Thursday mornings at 7:30. AM. I am offering this only if students are struggling in class or with a specific concept. Students must email me by Wednesday if they wish to be meet with me. The first 7-10 students to email me will be able to come at 7:30 on Thursday. I cut off the amount of students so that they can get an individualized or small group time with me. Any more students it would be too much like a class and I want to be able to speak with every student that shows up.

Seventh Grade

We are improving our grammar through our DGP. The students have a quiz this Friday on Days 1 and 2. We finished our review of plot with the story 7th Grade by Gary Soto. We learned two new summarization strategies. Someone Wanted But So Then is used mainly for fiction texts since it follows the plot of a story. 200NT Summary forces the student to summarize the text in 20 words or less. This helps the students to only get the main points of the story and ensures they are not retelling or paraphrasing the story. We will be finishing the summarizing strategies this week. Students began using a blog this week to respond to a quote selected by me. My goal is to have students improve their analyzing skills as well as their writing.

 Eighth Grade

Students are making great strives in the grammar using the DGP. Their first quiz on Days 1 and 2 will be this Friday. We finished our review of plot with the story Raymond’s Run by Tony Cade Bambara. We learned two new summarization strategies. Someone Wanted But So Then is used mainly for fiction texts since it follows the plot of a story. 200NT Summary forces the student to summarize the text in 20 words or less. We learned that retelling and paraphrasing is not the same thing as summarization. While they have similarities,  summarization only gives the main points or ideas. We will be finishing summarization this week. We began analyzing and evaluating quotes last week. Students will give an in-depth look into the quote and work on their writing skills.