Ms. Timpf and Mrs.Schafer 8th Grade Language Arts Class

From Monday, November 18^th to Friday, November 22^nd, students from all three high schools in Dearborn will be participating in the 5^th Annual Battle Against Hunger. Each year, students from the high schools and their feeder middle schools and elementary schools collect non-perishable food items such as canned and boxed goods to help support local families in need. The goods are distributed through Zaman International and the Amity Foundation, two local non-profit organizations in Dearborn. Smith Middle School is joining in these efforts to help local families in need,and we are asking Smith families to donate non-perishable food items through Friday, November 22nd.

Hello Everyone,

Last week we closely read, listened to and watched “The Tell-Tale Heart” by the famous author Edgar Allan Poe. This week students are writing to answer the question: Is the narrator reliable or unreliable?

Students will use Claim-Evidence-Reasoning, a writing strategy used to help students make connections with a text to answer the writing prompt given.

Claim: A claim is a statement that answers the question. It will usually only be one sentence in length. Your claim should NOT start with “I believe” or “I think.”

Evidence: The evidence is the text evidence used that supports the claim. The evidence should be clear, concise, and lacking explanation (that comes later in the R section). The evidence can me taken directly from the text or paraphrased.

Reasoning: The reasoning is the explanation of “why and how” the evidence supports the claim.

Sentence starters to help write a CER are linked below:

The story is linked below:

Sincerely,

Ms. Timpf and Mrs. Schafer

Please join us on Friday, October 25th at 6:00 p.m. for our Fall Festival. We have many exciting activities planned including:

*Giant obstacle course

*Game booths

*Cake walk

*Tin can raffle

*Haunted house

*Pumpkin decorating contest

*Henna

*Food and much more!

Wednesday, October 2nd is Student Count Day. It is VERY important that students arrive to school, on time.

In addition, it is National Walk/Bike to School Day – Join us as we walk or bike to school together! We will meet at our school Community Garden by the football field at 7:20 AM. Then, we will walk around the school together to the front of the building.

Last week we began our narrative unit in Language Arts.  Students took a pre-assessment  and reflected on their scores today in class.  Tomorrow, we will create a foldable, which is a multi-dimensional graphic organizer that can be used to organize information on narratives and reinforce skills taught in class.  We will also start taking notes on the narrative elements and the plot diagram.   A Plot Diagram example is shown below. Next week, students will read the short story “The Elevator” and plot the story events on the plot diagram.

Come join us for an important meeting about O.L. Smith Middle School’s Washington, D.C. Trip. The meeting will be held in the auditorium at 6:00 p.m. Families will learn more about what the students will see, do, and experience in Washington, D.C.

This is a friendly reminder that tomorrow is a late start day. Students will begin school at 8:50 a.m. while teachers engage in professional development on Formative Assessment.

Smith will be closed on Friday, September 13 due to a power outage.