Our first unit is finished! We have parent-teacher conferences soon, and I hope to see you and your child there. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or praise, please email me.
ALL:
Vocabulary-
Parents are often asking about vocabulary, reading, or writing 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 students to prepare for the SAT/ACT or middle school subjects such as Math, Grammar, and Reading. 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.
Grades-
One of the easiest ways to describe how grading will go for my class is called best fit. Traditionally, student’s scores are weighted and averaged out to get a grade.
Ex: 2, 3, 4, 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 5, 7, 5, 6, 5
The exact average and not weighted score would equal 4.15. That would be their final grade.
However, those same scores for the best fit practice would be a score of a 5. The reason students are given that judgement is based on where they end and not where they started. As long as students are growing and improving, their score will grow too. Best fit is about growth and learning.
These cannot be equated to a traditional A, B, C, D, F. For example a 5/8=62% D, but for me that would not be the case. Right now, a 5 is a really good score! I will look at student’s progress and growth to determine a final grade. When you look at their scores for Powerschool, please look and see if students are making growth and improving for each of the criteria. I hope this helps to clarify and ease some of the pressure about grading.
7th:
The seventh graders read the novel Stargirl, completed nightly reading journals, and participated in class discussions on the novel. From that novel, students began writing their own realistic fiction short story. Students read and annotated “Ribbons” and “Thirteen and A Half” as mentor texts to give them examples of realistic fiction short stories. Students brainstormed ideas, wrote test scenes, leads, and conclusion. Students completed their writing in their writing notebook. Throughout, students peer edited and self edited their story. For their final, they typed the draft, created a title page with a visual, and did an audio recording. Please check out their hard work!
8th:
The eighth graders worked on a journalism unit. This unit began by reading news articles and annotating them. Then, we watched CNN Student News to see how a newscast is put together. Students began to make observations around them. They really struggled with this and many wanted to just write about their lives. After a few practice writings, students had a much better understanding of what they needed to do to turn everyday life in their community into a news article. Once the individual articles were written, students completed a newscast in groups. They filmed the newscast here at KAS and did editing. Check out their newscasts and articles they worked on!
Again, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, or praises, please email me at my school email address.
THINK BIG for parents and students from KAS Middle School.