Week 9/26-9/30

Last week was a nice little break from essay writing! The picture shows students reading "Charles" in their groups, filling out their handouts, and referring to their notes in their interactive notebooks. They seemed to enjoy the story and loved the fact that it was a cliffhanger, which, in turn, made their plot diagram a lot shorter, ha!

This week writing rears its ugly head again. Their assessment for "Charles" will be a mini-essay and then a group narrative. We end the week with beginning our third argumentative essay, at least, the planning stage (the real writing happens the following week). They are going to be deciding who the teachers of GVMS should vote for in the 2016 Presidential Election (Clinton, Trump, Stein, and Johnson are their four choices). Hopefully, they can help me out because I am at a loss (first time ever). This essay will not be a guided step-by-step essay because this will be a chance for them to apply the skills they learned. The good news (for some students, at least) is that they are going to be able to work with a partner of their choice. This will help them bounce ideas off of one another and support each other when it comes to their strengths and weaknesses in writing.

Monday
"Charles" PDF
"Charles" Handout Side 2
Tuesday
"Charles" Assessment
Wednesday
"Charles" Group Narrative
AR Log Check (Log-5 entries/Signature)
  *Students need to be reading an AR book that has a reading level >3.5 for 30 minutes 5 nights per week. Students need to earn 35 points at every quarter checkpoint (10/21, 12/9, 3/10 and 6/2). GOOD NEWS: Students only need 5-entries to take an AR quiz!
Thursday
Presidential Election Argumentative Essay Evidence Sheet and Outline
Friday
"Charles" Summary (E-Portfolio)
In-Class Portfolio Set-Up/Goals

**KROC CENTER PERMISSION SLIP DUE BY FRIDAY**

Week 9/19-9/23

Last week, was definitely a stressful week. Unfortunately, your child came home with homework more nights than not for multiple reasons. This is never my intent. I am not a fan of homework and this will definitely not be the norm. The first guided essay is always the hardest and takes the longest. Students are learning to move beyond structure and to actually analyze the deeper meaning and extend their thinking. I explained it to them as putting together a puzzle that doesn't exist, until they actually have all the pieces put together. This definitely requires think time and some students actually think better at home than at school--whether it is because there are fewer distractions, they are more comfortable, or whatever the reason, they actually like the homework. This means they are usually not using their class time wisely and they are choosing to have homework. Some students are more thoughtful and work at a slower pace taking a longer time to process the information; therefore, homework for them is inevitable and not really a choice. Whatever the reason, they had more English homework than normal. This week they will get a break from that, yay! Hopefully, this allows for more family time or extracurricular activities. 

I am in the process of grading all of the essays. I try to do a 5-day turnaround policy on all work, but sometimes life gets in the way. It takes between 6-8 hours to grade one class period's essays (that is about 30 hours of grading for a single essay). If your child's essay has been graded, there are multiple places where feedback was given: 1) all introductions were commented on in Google Classroom and were given suggestions for improvement by both peers and myself; 2) body paragraphs were given peer feedback in Google Classroom and I commented on some of them; 3) a peer editing sheet was filled out for the entire essay; and, 4) the scored rubric can be found at the bottom of the essay, along with comments made in Google Classroom for suggestions and next steps. If you are curious to see what a Grade 8 "A" level essay looks like, please click here for examples.

We will be starting the short story "Charles" about a very bright, but mischievous young man. We will be reviewing terms about characters (protagonist, antagonist, major, minor, static, and dynamic), setting, plot, and theme. We will also be extending these ideas and analyzing universal themes, perspectives, and motives (there is that evil work analyze again--this year will be filled with it and writing). I think the students will enjoy this week a lot more than the last two (I can admit that essay writing is not the most fun, but it is definitely a necessity that can eventually be E-A-S-Y).

Monday
Interactive Notebook: Plot and Characters
Tuesday
Interactive Notebook: Universal Themes
"Charles" Slidedeck and Vocabulary
Wednesday
"Charles" Vocabulary
AR Log Check (Log-5 entries/Signature)
  *Students need to be reading an AR book that has a reading level >3.5 for 30 minutes 5 nights per week. Students need to earn 35 points at every quarter checkpoint (10/21, 12/9, 3/10 and 6/2). GOOD NEWS: Students only need 5-entries to take an AR quiz!
Thursday
"Charles" PDF
"Charles" Handout Side 1 and Side 2
Friday
"Charles" PDF
"Charles" Handout Side 1 and Side 2

**GRADES FOR PROGRESS REPORTS ARE DUE BY SUNDAY**