It’s hard to believe that we’ve been in school for two months already, because time is just flying by.  I think that’s because we’ve been so busy!  So what have we been doing over the past 8 weeks or so?  Here’s the low-down:

 

NARRATIVE

In 7th Grade, we’ve been learning about the elements of a narrative or story: plot, characters, point of view, conflict, setting, and theme.  If you want to review the elements click on this link to a post on narrative that I wrote last year.  We’ve read several short stories and talked about the elements in those stories.  In the next week or so, students will be assessed on how well they can identify and describe the elements in a narrative I’ve chosen to read with the class.

 

PARTS OF A SENTENCE

Our 7th grade class has also started learning about what the necessary ingredients are for composing a complete sentence.  Yes, that’s right, we’ve talked about SUBJECTS and PREDICATES!  In the same way that you can’t make a peanut butter sandwich without peanut butter and bread, a sentence is just NOT a sentence without a SUBJECT and a PREDICATE!

 

 

COMPOUND SENTENCES

After learning about the essential parts of a sentence, we got fancy dancy and started writing some COMPOUND sentences.  Compound sentences are really two sentences joined together by a coordinating conjunction like: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so.  Yes, those are our FANBOYS and if you want more information about them, you should click on this link!

 

POETRY

Right now, our 7th graders are writing a poem fashioned after the famous poem called “Where I’m From” by George Ella Lyon.  It is a beautiful poem on the theme of identity, and I am betting that our student poets are going to create some beautiful poems of their own.  Be on the lookout for them, because they’ll be posted on students’ blogs.  If you’d like to read the original “Where I’m From” poem, learn more about how we are working toward composing our own, and maybe even read my version, please click the link here.

 

BLOGS

Speaking of blogs, I’m SO PROUD that students have shown such great enthusiasm for blogging this year.  We’ve composed a number of blogposts on a variety of topics including introductory posts and posts expressing what we’re thankful for, and we’re working on posts about the novels we’re reading for independent reading.  Some students have really taken the plunge by creating stories, reviews, and regular weekly themed posts.  I must admit, I have some blog reading to catch up on!

 

VOCABULARY

In the past couple of weeks, we started working on building our vocabulary by learning some prefixes.  In 7th grade we’ve studied the prefix ‘pre’, meaning ‘before’,  and now we’re working on ‘anti’, meaning ‘against.’  In 8th grade we started with ‘pre’ ‘fore’, and ‘post,’ meaning before and after respectively, as well as ‘sub’ and ‘trans,’ meaning below and across.  We’ll continue learning about prefixes because knowing what these little ‘word parts’ mean helps us to decipher many unfamiliar words that contain these prefixes.

 

READING STRATEGIES AND READ ALOUDS

Another focus for our 7th graders AND our 8th graders this year, has been on THINKING during our independent reading.  To help students learn how to ask questions, make inferences, make observations, show reactions, and make judgements during reading, I’ve modelled how to think through reading using our class read aloud books, “Wonder” by R.J. Palacio, and “Bystander” by James Preller. I use sticky notes in class to capture my thinking, and then I’ve shown students how to use those sticky notes to write a full response journal entry.  Each student in all of my classes was given a pack of sticky notes to record their thoughts during reading at school and at home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

INDEPENDENT READING

Of course, students in all of my classes have been reading their own self-selected novels as well.  We spend at least 10 minutes a day, almost every day, reading books that students have chosen for themselves, and students are expected to read at home as well: 20-30 minutes per evening for 8th graders and 10-15 minutes per evening for 7th graders.  

 

MEMOIR

Eighth graders have been busy for several weeks now working on writing our memoirs.  A memoir is a NONFICTION NARRATIVE, a true story about our own life experience, usually capturing a moment or event that had a powerful impact on us as individuals.  Most 8th graders in my classes have already finished and submitted their memoirs to me and I’m busy assessing their work.  If you want to read some, it’s easy!  Just click on some student blogs on the right hand menu and read student memoirs.

 

GRAMMAR AND PUNCTUATION IN 8TH GRADE

In 8th grade grammar and punctuation we started with some review of the parts of a sentence, FANBOYS, and now we’ve begun to learn about subordinate conjunctions, or, as we like to call them, our AAAWWUBBIS words.  After, although, as, when, while, until, before, because, if, and since are all words that link a subordinate clause to an independent clause.  They are COMMA CAUSERS just like coordinating conjunctions, but they are used to make complex sentences rather than compound sentences.  For example:

After the movie, we went out for dinner.

The first part of the sentence is a subordinate clause (it couldn’t be a sentence on its own), and the second part of the sentence is an independent clause (it could be a sentence on its own).  Together they make a more complex sentence because the subordinate clause provides additional information, in this case about ‘when’ we went out for dinner.

 

CHARACTER TYPES IN A NARRATIVE

In our study of narrative, 8th graders have gone one step further and we’ve recently learned about the different types of characters that stories of all kinds contain.  There are protagonists, antagonists, round, flat, dynamic, static, and foil characters to learn about and identify in our reading.  Students have begun to think about the characters in their novels for independent reading and they’re trying to become more familiar with the function of each of these types of characters.  Want to learn more about the various types of characters?  Click on this link for a slide show!

 

If you’re still reading, well, I’m amazed.  Yes, we’ve been busy at school, that’s for sure, but there’s so much to learn, to read, to write, and to discuss!  Really, we’re still just getting started!