7th Grade ELA

We are continuing to work on the articles on Athletes’ Salaries.  We worked on building an argument for each side today using the text and will continue to work on the steps to building an argumentative CER on Athletes’ Salaries.

Reminder that tomorrow is the SAT 4 quiz.  This week they will begin to count as a Summative.  You are now used to the process and have experienced it for several weeks so there isn’t anything unfamiliar about it.  Be ready!

Your CER for the article on Loneliness is due on Sunday, October 14, 2018.  All CERs from last week have been graded, except 6th hours.  I am working through those and they should be done by tomorrow so please make sure to review the comments so that you can apply those to this week’s.

Tomorrow is a 1/2 day.

Today we worked on annotating along with thinking aloud.  Students, you need to finish reading the packet I gave you – both articles.  Read, highlight, and annotate.  There is a 5 question quiz over the reading (T/F and Multiple Choice).  This will count as a Summative.

Make sure you are preparing for your SAT 4 Quiz on Friday.

Reminder:  Newsela CER due Friday evening

We are continuing to work through annotating our articles.  For this week, 2 articles have been assigned on Newsela and are due by Friday evening:

Article 1)   Who’s to Blame for Athletes’ Salaries (you must read, even if you read it last year, highlight or annotate according to this year’s expectations)

Article 2) The Dangers of Loneliness (you must read, highlight, annotate, and write a brief CER with 2-3 pieces of evidence/reasoning)

In class today we read Who’s to Blame for Athletes’ Salaries and shared the various perspectives.  This will be a good lead in to our class reading this week where students will write an argumentative CER about Athletes’ Salaries based on the articles.

H.W.  Study the SAT 4 terms as some of you struggled on the quiz last week

Those of you who struggled, need to come in for lunch for a tutoring session so that you may re-take the quiz

You should have already submitted your NewsELA assignments but you haven’t done so, you have a few hours left.

Weekend H.W.:  If you didn’t finish the SAT 4 worksheet, make sure to do so this weekend.  This is due on Monday and will be a grade.

Thursday H.W.

Study for your SAT quiz

Work on your NewsELA articles due Friday evening

The focus has been on argumentative terminology and looking at what argumentative writing entails.  We are practicing the writing of an argumentative CER this week as a class we look at how to best support our claim with evidence and reasoning.

SAT 3 quiz is on Friday with an extended section in there where students can choose to learn 5 additional words for the quiz – it doesn’t count for or against them, it is just a way to enhance their vocabulary.

NEWELA:  Students are required to complete two articles a week due by Friday:

1st  Article)  assigned by me and requires highlighting, annotating, and a CER

2nd Article) student choice at their individual Lexile level (they have this in their planner based on NWEA score) where they will highlight, annotate, and take the quiz

In class, we are working on close reading and text features.

H.W.  to finish annotating the reading “REEFS IN PERIL”  and to review for the SAT quiz on Friday.

Extension:  Students have been offered an opportunity to extend their SAT quiz to 10 words.  The additional 5 words will be given on the quiz as a matching.  Only these 5 additional words will be given in this form.  The 5 original words will be given in the same form as last week.  Good Job to those kids who are taking on the challenge.

Students took their first SAT quiz today.  Yesterday, we had a practice quiz to assess where each student is and what they need to do to better prepare for today’s quiz.  Quizzes will be returned by Monday.

H.W.  for the weekend:  complete the SAT #2 worksheet for Monday

Reminder to have a composition notebook specifically for this class.

We finished reading our first story and have gone through how to annotate a text as a class.  Students (at different places depending on the hour) wrote responded to a prompt following CER.  We will be sharing our CERs tomorrow and discussing quality and solid claims, evidence, and reasoning.  Students, feel free to continue working on this at home but that I will give you some more time in class.

Reminder that the first SAT quiz is on Friday.

Parents and students, please note that I am still working through my retake policy but that I will let you know the next few days what it will be.