Hello,

It is Monday which means that Reading Logs were due in class today.  I hope students asked their parents to sign them over the weekend.  If you did not get it done, please turn it in Wednesday as a late assignment.  I will accept it for partial credit.  Please take a look at the grades for this marking period.  I will be submitting the names of students who have a D+ or lower for progress reports this Friday, November 8th at 3pm.  I have been doing my best to keep grades as updated as possible so parents are aware of their child’s progress in Language Arts.

Today in class the students worked on their journal writing when they entered the room.  The topic choices for today were:

What will you do with your day off tomorrow?

Write about a time when you were proud of yourself.  What did you accomplish?  How did it feel?

Once journal writing was complete, the students were given back their quiz on Story Elements that they took Friday.  I was pleased with most of the scores they received.  Today we focused on the story from out Literature Books called “Thank You Ma’am.”  We read the introduction to this story and predicted what the story would be about.  We shared these with a partner and discussed them as a class.  While reading with a partner, we were using the strategy, Talking to the Text.  The students were given a copy of the short story in order to take notes on their partner’s thinking.  The students then switched roles while reading.  Once the students were done reading, we discussed people who have impacted our lives.  For homework, the students are creating a web of people that they are thankful for or who have made a difference in their lives.  This will be due Wednesday.

All of the Seventh Grade Language Arts teachers have begun to teach mini vocabulary, spelling, and grammar lessons on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.  Today we focused on defining a noun.  We also discussed the difference between a Common Noun and Proper Noun.  They were given a worksheet that corresponds to the lesson.  It will be due Wednesday as well.

The Language Arts Lab students continued to work on the website Write to Learn.  They will continue doing this project work for the remainder of the semester.  This can only be done in class and all writing assignments will be due on Tuesday, November 26th at 2:55pm.  Other students began to focus on the research component of the paper that the seventh grade students will soon be writing in their Social Studies classes.  Some of these students were researching while others were looking at the rubric that corresponds to the paper.  These students discussed the vocabulary words in the rubric and what they can do to receive the best possible score.

Enjoy the day off tomorrow and make sure that you get all of your homework assignments (late ones too) completed for Wednesday!