Month: November 2012

As we just celebrated Thanksgiving, one major aspect of KAS that I am thankful for is the support and encouragement I am receiving from parents. Thank you for your hard work, dedication, and support to ensure that the students are receiving a great education. It is a pleasure to work with each of you.

Students need to be reading nightly in order to truly improve upon their reading skills. The DGP (Daily Grammar Practice) notes should be studied 10 minutes a day. Students should study only one section per day.

Monday-Study Monday notes only. Tuesday-Study Tuesday notes only. Wednesday-Study Wednesday notes only. Thursday-Study Thursday notes only. Friday-Study Appendix B.

Seventh Grade

Students are finishing up our introduction to poetry. THE MIC is a new strategy to help students analyze and evaluate a poem. Students completed a poetry scavenger hunt where they were given anthologies in which they used to identify different aspects of poems.

Eighth Grade

Students are working on a specific type of poetry called Spoken Word. Spoken Word poems are created for performance. Students are using a variety of figurative language that portray their topic. This is a very different style of writing compared to writing paragraphs. It requires students to think outside of the box and state something without directly stating it. Students will be expected to memorize and perform their poems. The students also learned a new strategy for analyzing and evaluating poetry called TPCASTT. It requires students to delve deeper into the meaning of the text and use higher level thinking skills.

All

The midterm exam is coming up in about three weeks. Students will have three different types of text. Fiction, non-fiction, and poetry will be assessed through multiply choice. The different types of questions will include, mood, author’s purpose, characterization, theme, comparison, context clues, tone, and analogies. They will have a vocabulary section. Also, they will be given a sentence in which they will use their knowledge of DGP to complete all four days without notes.

The format for the both grades are same. However, the text, text levels, and questions are appropriate to the individual grade level.

October is one of my favorites months because I love Halloween. It is just a fun and interesting time especially when it comes to literature. I hope that the students have been sharing with you what we have been studying in class.

Seventh Grade

The seventh graders continued to focus on non-fiction with a spooky twists. They covered topics such as ghosts, poltergeist, haunted houses, creepy castles, Loch Ness monster, Bermuda Triangle, and other mysterious unknowns. They examined text features and how to gather the information. For their final project, they are completing trading cards for the facts they gathered.

Eighth Grade

The eighth graders revisited plot, characters, and setting as well as the mood of the story. The focus was on urban legends. It was very interesting to see their reactions as we read a variety of stories dealing with different legends. For their project, they created their own urban legends, a poster advertising their legends, and will be creating an audio version of the students reading their legends.

As you can see, we have been hard at work. Please email if you have any questions, comments, concerns, or praises. I always welcome communication. Thank you for all your support.