Our first unit is finished! The students were excited about completing their story. We have parent-teacher conferences soon, and I hope to see you there. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or praise, please email me.
All:
Students should be reading 20 minutes a day 7 days a week. After reading, they complete a short entry into their reading journal. Most of the time, this is their only homework. Occasionally, they will need to finish something at home from class. Students choose their own books unless there is assigned reading from class.
Parents are often asking about SAT prep. Here is a free resource I found at Freetech4teachers. If you click on this link, there will be others resources, but this one is free.
PrepFactory is a free service for high school students to prepare for the SAT and or ACT. PrepFactory offers students a series of tutorial videos and written tips to help them prepare for both tests. After completing a tutorial students can test themselves in a series of practice questions. Each question set is timed and and limited to chunks of ten questions at a time. Students can earn badges for completing tutorials or question sets. Click here for video of PrepFactory in action.
7th:
Students read and discussed Startgirl.
8th:
Students chose a realistic fiction book that had a normal, everyday person who was heroic in some way.
Both:
Students are finished their realistic fiction stories. We followed the Writing Workshop model for completing this story. 7th grade had to focus their story on identity and positive relationships. 8th grade had to focus their story on the main character becoming a here in some way. Students were expected to choose issues that middle schoolers typically have and then create a story to help resolve those conflicts. I am very proud of their hard work and dedication to these stories.