First Week of School!
Welcome, students and parents, to my class blog! Was that the fastest first week ever? I do believe so. By Friday, I know that I was tired, a little hot and sweaty because we seem to be getting summer weather this September, but most importantly, really happy with the way our first week rolled along. I had a great time meeting my new (and old) students in 7th and 8th grades, and I can’t believe how much we got done for a first week!
Seventh graders learned how to get those lockers opened! This is always a little scary for 7th graders who are new to lockers, but it doesn’t take long before students get the hang of it. If you or your child is still having trouble, please come and see me and we’ll find a way to help you.
EVERYONE found a book to read! A couple of students have already finished their first read of the year. Wow!
Seventh and eighth graders learned (or reviewed) the 6 elements of a narrative. Seventh graders read the short story “Priscilla and the Wimps” by Richard Peck to apply our learning (will continue with this next week), while eighth graders read the memoir (a nonfiction narrative) “A Mason-Dixon Memory” by Clifton Davis. As we continue to read short stories and memoir in 7th and 8th grades, we’ll delve much more deeply into the elements (archetypes, points of view, etc.) and we’ll look at various literary devices as well (foreshadowing, symbolism, irony, etc.).
How to jot notes using sticky notes during reading is something we’ve started in 8th grade and students have been practicing at home and at school. We’ll be doing this in 7th grade next week. Using sticky notes to capture our thinking during reading will help us to write good reading responses in our journals! We’ve started with 3 Ways of Thinking about our reading.
Using proper punctuation, grammar, and spelling will also be a focus for us this year, and we got our feet wet on Friday with some review work in 8th grade! In the coming weeks, we’ll be studying the various types of sentence structures.
We had a full first week, that’s for sure, and I’m looking forward to continuing our work on these and other topics next week!
Have a great weekend and see you on Monday!