Poetry – Discovering Our Voices

Class News

November 10, 2019 Rhonda Deighton Comments 2 comments

This fall has been a busy one! To update you on everything we’ve done so far would take a while, so I’ll just mention the big ideas we’ve been working on. The BIGGEST news is that we all have finished designing or updating our blogs, and we’ve posted our writing on them, so please take a moment to check them out! I hope that parents feel free to comment on their child’s blog. Everyone LOVES the encouragement that comes with a positive comment on our writing. Writing is hard, and we can all use a boost!

Also . . . .

In Grade 8 we’ve worked on:

Quickwrites – We’ve done several to get the ideas flowing and ready for our more formal assignment on Memoir.
Memoir – We read lots of memoirs (some of which you’ll find on the One Note for Grade 8), analyzed the form and wrote our own. They are ON THE BLOG! Please feel free to read and comment on them!

Vocabulary – lots of prefixes and more to come . . .
Punctuation – Quotation Marks! Test on Tuesday!
Independent Reading – We are all reading our own novels.
Elements of a Narrative – So far we’ve discussed and studied character, conflict, plot, and theme. We’ve written about character, conflict, and now in the process of writing about theme in the context of a short story.

In Grade 7 we’ve worked on:

Independent Reading – Getting into the reading habit by reading in class and at home every day has been a focus for us. I’m proud of the work students have done to get into the reading groove.
Short story study – We’ve read “Seventh Grade” by Gary Soto, “Thank You Ma’am” by Langston Hughes, and “Charles” by Shirley Jackson. Through these short stories and our own novels, we’ve been studying the elements of a narrative.
Elements of a narrative – We’ve discussed and written about character traits, and we’ve touched on conflict and themes in our discussions.
Vocabulary – lots of prefixes and more to come . . .
Media studies – We designed our blogs! Take a look at the way in which we’ve made our blogs unique and expressed our personalities through our designs!
Quickwrites and developing our ideas – We did several quickwrites and we developed the one we did on “My Favourite Place” to put on the blogs. Please feel free to read our blogs and leave a comment!
Grammar – We worked on identifying the subject and predicate (main ingredients) of a sentence. Now we’re working on Coordinating Conjunctions: FANBOYS! Our test is on Thursday!

And what’s coming up? Novel studies in small and large groups will begin this week in both grades! In grade 8 we’ll be reading The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton, and some of us will read Rules by Cynthia Lord. Reading a novel as a group means there will be daily reading homework with specified page numbers. Work the following day may include chapter tests, discussions, and other activities, so it will be important that all students keep up with the reading homework.

We’ll continue our work on vocabulary and punctuation (dashes, parentheses, ellipses and more coming up). We will be writing short stories and newspaper articles!

In Grade 7 we will be reading several novels as large groups. In Grade 7B, we will be reading Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelson. In 7A students will either be reading Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick or Shipwreck by Gordon Korman. Reading a novel as a group means there will be daily reading homework with specified page numbers. Work the following day may include chapter tests, discussions, and other activities, so it will be important that all students keep up with the reading homework.

We are in the process of writing “Where I’m From” poems (check out the original by George Ella Lyons and mine here). We studied the original and developed our own based on the poet’s style of ‘showing’ rather than ‘telling’. They should be on the blogs in a week or so and they are going to KNOCK YOUR SOCKS OFF! Be on the lookout! We will also continue our study of prefixes in vocabulary and in grammar, subordinating conjunctions are up next!

If you’re not convinced that punctuation matters, you should consider this.

Questions and comments are welcomed! Thank you for reading!

Poetry as Response to Reading: Two Poems About Books that Blew the Top Off My Head!

February 4, 2018 Rhonda Deighton Comments 0 Comment

Sometimes a book hits you hard. Maybe it just comes at the right moment in your life. Maybe it’s just brilliant and you read it and feel like the top of your head just blew up.

The Sky is Everywhere by Jandy Nelson blew the top of my head right off! I read it just after my sister passed away, and it’s about a girl whose sister has just passed away. It’s a love story, and a grief story, and when I finished it I had to tell the world about it. Or at least write something about it, so I did.

By the way, these books are on the “Special Permission” shelves in our classroom library.

Nothing But Sky

by Rhonda Deighton

Finished a book last night

that tore through my heart,

cut it up in a thousand little pieces;

paper and ink cuts

so deep that I wondered if

the author

had been snooping around my life,

following me with a web cam and audio

equipment.

Finished a book last night

that planted a little sunshine in my heart,

lit it up, making me glow from the inside out,

and I fell asleep

in a bubble of warmth

as if the author was singing to me,

softly,

blowing the warm breeze of her breath

all around me.

Finished a book last night

that took my heart in its papery hands

and laid me at her feet

and ripped her away from me

over and over again

until there was nothing left of her

and nothing left of me

until there was nothing

but sky

The Chaos Walking Trilogy also blew the top off my head. It is one of my all-time favourite trilogies by the now very famous Patrick Ness. He wrote A Monster Calls also, which has already been made into a movie (this one is also in our class library). I was enchanted by these books, couldn’t put them down. After I finished the series, I decided to write a sort-of poem about them.

Read These Books

by Rhonda Deighton

Read these books:

if you love dogs

if you love a hit-you-blindside plot twist

if you have ever asked yourself, “What would, what wouldn’t I do for someone I loved?”

if you want to fall in love, vicariously or otherwise

if you like a main character who is driven not by a strong self-concept but by a strong sense of good

if you like powerful female characters

if you want to learn new words, some of which cannot be read out loud to a class full of middle schoolers

if you enjoy laughing. Out loud.

if you have an interest in studying the machinations of politics

if you have an interest in studying the machinations of war

if you want to understand evil

if you’ve ever wondered if good and evil can exist in the same heart

if speculating on your responsibility towards humankind is something you’ve ever done before

if you’re interested in discussing or debating whose needs come first: individual or collective community?

if you’ve ever put your own needs aside for the good of others

if you relish a creative new world in your dystopian novels

if you are a reflective and spiritual thinker

if you have ever asked yourself, “What binds us as human beings?”

if you wish to contemplate the notion of oneness, of one voice

if you like ‘edge of your seat,’ heart-thumping suspense

if you love an epic love story

if you want to know more about what it means to be a leader

if you’ve ever felt the love of a father . . . or a mother . . . . or a child

if you delight in superb writing

if honest dialogue makes you smile

if you are a conceptual thinker

if you love horses

then,

you really should.

Have you read any good books lately? Try writing a poem about it. Let the poem reflect how it made you feel, what you loved about it, what it made you think about . . .

Your poem doesn’t have to be as long as these are, just give it a try!

Just wanted to let you know that these poems were written a few years ago, probably around 2011-2012. My students are well aware that I LOVE READING, but I wondered if they knew that I also really LOVE WRITING, too, so I decided to share some of my own writing.

Poetry from the Heart

November 19, 2017 Rhonda Deighton Comments 0 Comment

We’ve finally finished our “Where I’m From” poems modelled after the famous poem by George Ella Lyon! Most of the poems are on students’ blogs!

Students read and analyzed the original poem several weeks ago. A line by line approach was necessary because the poem is like a beautiful puzzle; each line reveals a memory, a part of the author’s life, something that has made her who she is today.

Here’s the original poem:

Where I’m From

by George Ella Lyon

I am from clothespins,
from Clorox and carbon-tetrachloride.
I am from the dirt under the back porch.
(Black, glistening,
it tasted like beets.)
I am from the forsythia bush
the Dutch elm
whose long-gone limbs I remember
as if they were my own.

I’m from fudge and eyeglasses,
from Imogene and Alafair.
I’m from the know-it-alls
and the pass-it-ons,
from Perk up! and Pipe down!
I’m from He restoreth my soul
with a cottonball lamb
and ten verses I can say myself.

I’m from Artemus and Billie’s Branch,
fried corn and strong coffee.
From the finger my grandfather lost
to the auger,
the eye my father shut to keep his sight.

Under my bed was a dress box
spilling old pictures,
a sift of lost faces
to drift beneath my dreams.
I am from those moments–
snapped before I budded —
leaf-fall from the family tree.

Our analysis revealed that Lyon talks about many aspects of her life, so we recorded the categories in our Writing Notebooks.

chores
childhood pastimes
important people – grandparents, parents, friends
hobbies
special places
favourite foods, foods shared with others
the voices of others – things that were repeatedly expressed to the author
losses, important moments in our own lives or those of the people close to us

After making our lists, we mined our own histories for each category and tried our best to present our ideas in colourful language, with some mystery. We didn’t want to just say: I am from hockey. or I am from playing video games. We wanted to use all of the senses to describe ourselves, and by thinking deeply about the experience of playing hockey or video games, we came up with gorgeous lines of poetry!

The assessment rubric:

[embeddoc url=”https://rdeighton.edublogs.org/files/2017/11/Rubric-for-Where-Im-From-Poem-qv8dym-1meuu80.docx” download=”all” viewer=”microsoft” ]

Parents, students, and visitors, please take a moment to read some of the poems on 7th grade students’ blogs and leave a comment. They are truly beautiful!

Here’s mine! And yes, I got a bit carried away. Always the wordy one, me!

Where I’m From

I am from the red kitchen table with matching chairs,
from quiet talks and rowdy board games.
From the legend of the Barclay gang,
and playing on the truck in the driveway.

I’m from lunch with the Flintstones,
From Sunday BBQs with the whole gang,
sleeping in the sun
and running in the streets.
I’m from the smell of dad’s pipe
and mom’s apple cake.

I am from Laura’s voice, soft comfort and good advice,
from three of us on New Year’s Eve waiting for number four.
I’m from the furniture that Dad made,
hands worn from the day
spirit never dampened.

I’m from singing the Chattanooga Choo-choo with Sarah
and long walks downtown with Karen.
From Saturday trips to the library,
Twelve books for 14 days
And from waiting in Eva’s living room
to tap the ivory
Fletcher-Kincaid and the scales that made me stronger.

I’m from the bullet in my father’s chin
the war stories he told,
sometimes with vim, sometimes with a tear in his eye.

I am from the Honda,
bugs on my visor
knees buckling in the wind.
From exotic voyages to far off places, alone
and with friends.
I’m from paint swirls and slide-rules
from chalk dust and apples.

I’m from cheering from the bleachers
at that save he made
and the tournament they won,
and cheering in the arena
at the graceful dance of two tiny champions.

I am from him,
lame jokes,
crazy made-up lyrics
and the life we made together
From shoe-shopping and Mario Cart,
from band aids and bruises
from Kiss it Better and I’m Not Tired

I’m from the zesty grandmother who stayed wonderfully late
and the sister who left tragically early
heart torn from my bosom
may she rest peacefully now and forever.

Memoir – A Personal Journey

November 19, 2016 Rhonda Deighton Comments 0 Comment

A memoir is a personal story of a memory that has significance in the author’s life. In 8th grade, we’ve been writing our memoirs for several weeks now. At the start of our unit, students were asked to brainstorm a list of memories that stand out as critical moments in their lives. These moments could be about any experience that the author deemed important enough to have changed them in some way. Perhaps the memory taught them a life lesson, something about themselves, the people in their lives, or the world in general.

In preparation for writing our memoirs, we read several memoirs written by famous authors and not-so-famous students. Some were funny, like the ones we read from the book “Guys Write for Guys Read.” Other memoirs were more serious. We read an excerpt from Jean Little’s memoir “Little by Little: A Writer’s Education” about the time when she discovered her love for writing stories, and parts of Gary Paulsen’s memoir called “Guts” which tells about the real life experiences he had that led him to write books about Brian Robeson – “Hatchet” and “Brian’s Winter” etc. We also read several student memoirs taken from various texts on teaching memoir.

While we wrote and revised and edited our memoirs, I gave several mini-lessons to help students improve the quality of their writing. We reviewed the rules and did some practice exercises on using quotation marks and the punctuation around them so that we could write effective and easy to understand dialogue. We learned about paragraphing and when to change paragraphs. I also gave lessons in using more complex and varied sentence structures. We will continue to learn more about the ‘craft’ of writing, how to edit, revise and punctuation effectively, throughout the year, of course.

Student memoirs are personal pieces, and although I’d love for you all to read them, I left it to each student to decide whether or not he/she wanted to share these pieces with you on the blog. I’ve only seen two memoirs posted so far: Zach’s memoir and Cody’s memoir. Please feel free to share yours with us if you wish.

Memoir in Song Lyrics!

We also did a short Media Studies unit on memoir in song lyrics. Many popular songs could be considered of the memoir genre because they speak of significant memories, memories that changed the author’s life in some way or another. They tell a story, a narrative, of the event(s) and convey to the listener the sense of how they might have influenced the author’s life.

The instructions for this two-part assignment were:

Memoir in Song

Assignment #1:
After reading each of the following songs and listening to them in class, answer the following questions about the 2 songs that you like best. Use a separate lined piece of paper. Number your answers. Provide complete answers in full sentences and or paragraphs.
1. How do the lyrics of this song resemble the genre of memoir? Explain using words and phrases that show you know what a memoir is, and using words and phrases from the song to support your answer.
2. In one sentence, explain what this song is about.
3. If you had to choose one favourite line in this song, what would it be and why?
4. Which of the following techniques commonly used in poetry and song lyrics does this song’s author use effectively? Give examples from the song and explain why the technique is effective in portraying the song’s message. Techniques: repetition, simile, metaphor, symbolism, descriptive language, alliteration, hyperbole.
5. How would you describe the singer’s voice? How does the voice of the singer compliment the meaning of the song? What is the ‘mood’ of the voice?
6. How would you describe the music? How does the music compliment the meaning of the song? What is the ‘mood’ of the music?

Assignment #2:

My Favourite Memoir Song:
1. Find a song that you like that you consider a ‘memoir song.’
2. Write blogpost that contains:
a) a video of the vocal artist singing the song
b) the lyrics of the song
c) a three paragraph piece defending your choice of song as a
memoir song.
3. First paragraph: identify who wrote the song, who is singing it, and tell what you think the song means. Second paragraph: explain why this song could be considered a ‘memoir song.’ Third paragraph: explain what you like about the song, including the author’s craft and use of specific techniques.

OR
Write a Memoir Song:
1. Use the topic of your memoir or another memory that you think is worthy of a ‘memoir song.’
2. – OPTIONAL – Find a piece of music that you think would fit the mood of your memoir. This piece of music does not have to have song lyrics that fit the genre of memoir.
3. Write lyrics to your memoir song that will fit with the music you’ve chosen.
Complete a blogpost includes:

a) – OPTIONAL – the name of the music/song you chose and/or a video of the
music/song (only if the original lyrics are appropriate for school).
b) your memoir lyrics

For the first part of the assignment, students to choose to answer the questions on 2 of the following 6 songs that we listened to in class. I gave each student a copy of the lyrics as well so that they could reread and study these songs for evidence of the genre of memoir, for literary devices and techniques, and in order to better understand the underlying meanings of the songs. Yes, I’ll admit that at least 5 of the following songs (with the exception of the Taylor Swift song) qualify as real ‘oldies’ but many would agree with me when I say that they’re also ‘goodies’ at least as far as memoir goes. Here, I’ll just share with you the songs themselves and you be the judge.

Cat’s in the Cradle by Cat Stevens

Fast Car by Tracy Chapman

Thunder Road by Bruce Springsteen

Wide Open Spaces by the Dixie Chicks

This Shirt by Mary Chapin Carpenter

The Best Day by Taylor Swift

To give you a sense of the deep level of thinking that this provoked in some 8th grade students, here are some snippets of their responses to my questions about these Memoir Song Lyrics.

In response to “This Shirt” by Chapin Carpenter:

In response to “Best Day” by Swift:

Another response to “Best Day” by Swift:

In response to “Fast Car” by Chapman:

The second assignment in this unit is still in progress, but hopefully in the near future, you’ll be able to wander through the 8th grade blogs to listen to and appreciate some of the students’ choices for good memoir songs and maybe even read some original memoir songs written by our own 8th graders.

Next up for 8th graders is our Literature Circle Unit. We’ll talk more about that another day!

Where I’m From – Grade 7 Students Delve into Descriptive Poetry

November 6, 2016 Rhonda Deighton Comments 0 Comment

We’ve been working on our “Where I’m From” poems in the style of the famous poem by George Ella Lyon for quite a while now. As you know, we started by studying the poem in depth, looking closely at the descriptive language that Lyon uses to reveal an ordinary life to readers in not-so-ordinary terms.

Grade 7 students worked hard to capture the essence of ‘where they’re from’, their hobbies, passions, memories, friendships, family life, and the things that make them who they are. They worked exceptionally hard at using descriptive language, not just telling the reader, for example, that “I’m from hockey,” but showing the reader what it feels like, looks like, sounds like to be ‘from hockey.’

Please enjoy our “Where I’m From” blogposts! You will find many students’ versions of this poem, each unique, each lovely, on their own blogs. While this was an assignment that all students had to complete, students were given the choice to post their poem or not. Most chose to post, but there are some who wanted to maintain their privacy with this assignment. I respect that. Perhaps they will change their minds, but it is not required.

I’ve written this poem myself several times, the last being a few years ago. Because I’m no longer 12 years old, mine is long (that’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it) and could be longer if I decided to rewrite it. There are many important events that occurred after this version that I’d want to include, but for now, this is my most recent version.

Where I’m From by Mrs. Deighton
I am from the red kitchen table with matching chairs,
from quiet talks and rowdy board games.
From the legend of the Barclay gang,
and playing on the truck in the driveway.

I’m from lunch with the Flintstones,
From Sunday BBQs with the whole gang,
sleeping in the sun
and running in the streets.
I’m from the smell of dad’s pipe
and mom’s apple cake.

I’m from the bullet in my father’s chin
the war stories he told,
sometimes with vim,
sometimes with a tear in his eye.

I am from the Honda,
bugs on my visor
knees buckling in the wind.
From exotic voyages to far off places,
alone
and with friends.

I’m from paint swirls and slide-rules
from chalk dust and apples.
I’m from cheering from the bleachers
at that save he made
and the tournament they won,
and cheering in the arena
at the graceful dance of two tiny champions.

I am from him,
lame jokes,
crazy made-up lyrics
and the life we made together
From shoe-shopping and Mario Cart,
from band aids and bruises
from Kiss it Better and I’m Not Tired

I’m from the zesty grandmother who stayed wonderfully late
and the sister who left tragically early
heart torn from my bosom
may she rest peacefully now and forever.

If you’ve taken the time to read some of the beautiful ‘Where I’m From’ poetry on our blogs, please take another moment to leave an encouraging comment for the blog author. There’s nothing like knowing you’ve touched your audience to keep an author writing.

Thanks!

Reading, Writing, and Happy Halloween

October 30, 2016 Rhonda Deighton Comments 2 comments

Happy Halloween!

I hope you all have a fun and safe Halloween tomorrow, trick or treating, partying, or just handing out candy to the ghouls and goblins that stop by your house. I’ll be home, hoping I get some little people knocking at my door. Because we live on the edge of town, we rarely get more than 10 trick-or-treaters. Cross your fingers for me!

Blogging News:

We’ve been blogging up a storm in both 7th and 8th grade. Most students have completed at least 2 blogposts: one about Thanksgiving and another that was either about their favourite place, a good book that was read this year in class, or an introductory post to introduce themselves to their readers. If you haven’t had a chance yet, read a few blogs and leave a few encouraging comments. I’ve noticed that a few parents have taken the plunge to comment on their child’s writing. THANK YOU! It’s so lovely to see you here.

I want to remind all students that they should write their blogposts on a word document to make full use of spell check and Word Q to correct spelling errors and then copy the writing into their blogposts. Reread your writing out loud to yourself! You will likely catch errors in omissions (missing words), punctuation, and grammar that way!

7th Grade News!

We’ve worked hard on our Where I’m From poems, and they’re almost done! Students began typing them on Thursday, and we’ll finish them this week. I hope that some of you choose to share your work on your blog. Students worked very hard to use descriptive language, strong vocabulary, and they are absolutely beautiful poems. I know that parents, especially, will love reading them because they capture the moments in each student’s life that stand out as important, vivid memories. I can’t wait to read them all myself!

Our shared reading over the past couple of weeks was a story by Shirley Jackson called “Charles.” It’s a humorous little story, with a strong message about not being too quick to make judgements of others before we take a good, long look at ourselves. After reading the story, we discussed the two main characters, Laurie and his mom, identified some of their character traits, and supported our ideas with some evidence from the story. We colour coded our character responses to ensure that we had all three parts: the claim about their character trait, the explanation as to why we felt they showed this trait, and the evidence or examples to support our idea. Here’s an excellent example for you:

We also thought about what Laurie’s mom needed to learn from her experience with ‘Charles.’ Students in 7th grade will be introduced to our sticky note strategies (see below) in the next little while so that they can apply this strategy to their independent reading.

In grammar, we’re learning about compound sentences. We’ve already had several lessons in what the essential ingredients for a sentence are – subject and predicate – and now we’re learning how to join two independent clauses (sentences) using a comma and a FANBOYS word. The FANBOYS are coordinating conjunctions. This will help us to vary sentence structures and to avoid those nasty comma splices.

Want to meet the FANBOYS? Here they are!

ORposter_jpg

8th Grade News!

Speaking of Halloween candy, tomorrow I plan to share a podcast about the history of Halloween candy with 8th grade students in the morning. This is part of our unit on using active listening strategies. Tomorrow we’ll be listening for specific kinds of information and using a graphic organizer with the questions listed to take notes during the listening. It’s not easy to listen and do jot notes at the same time, but it certainly does force the listener to attend to the audio.

The podcast can be heard here if you’re interested! We’ll be listening to several podcasts on this site – www.missedinhistory.com – particularly those that relate to Canadian history.

Our memoirs are almost complete, and I hope students will be ready to submit them by Monday of next week. We’ll have two more lab periods this week for typing them and a lesson on writing good endings.

Last week we also read “The Veldt” by Ray Bradbury, a strange but intriguing story that is considered a classic short story. Reading this story was a perfect way for me to introduce students to our Sticky Note reading strategies. These strategies involve:

stopping frequently during reading to think about what we’ve read, the characters, setting, mood, vocabulary, craft of writing, theme, conflict, etc.
taking some time to write what we’re thinking about, confused about or questioning, inferring, noticing

This practice enriches our understanding of texts. First, we read a few pages and I modelled how to write each type of sticky note. If you’re a parent interested in knowing what these notes are about, ask your child to show you his/her reading journal. We’ve pasted a copy of the instructions on the inside cover of our notebook. Then, students read together and worked on writing some sticky notes in pairs.

Here we are working away.

Well, we’re almost at NOVEMBER! I look forward to reading all the poetry and memoir that students have been hard at work creating.

Happy Halloween everyone!

It’s OCTOBER Already!

October 3, 2016 Rhonda Deighton Comments 0 Comment

The first month of school has flown by! It’s hard to believe that we’re already in October, but when I recap below what we’ve been up to lately, I’m sure you’ll agree that we’ve been pretty busy this September.

Firstly, we’re all here! Everyone has a blog, and I can’t wait to read all the great things that you’ll write this year. Students are always welcome to read and comment on one another’s blogs. Please check out the Blogging and Commenting Guidelines to make sure that your comments follow the guidelines. In a nutshell, the guidelines suggest that you:

be kind
remember to use punctuation and real writing (no text talk please)
be positive when commenting on the writing your peers are doing because writing is hard and we all need encouragement more than criticism
respect your own and others privacy by not using first and last names and not leaving tracks (no personal information about where you’ll be and when you’ll be there)

Parents are also always welcome to comment on our blogs! We’d love to have your voices here to encourage us to keep reading and writing, thinking and creating!

Secondly, I want to congratulate EVERYONE for doing so well in getting into the reading habit. So many of you have already finished your first book for this school year, and you’re well into the second one! Congratulations! At this rate, you’re sure to read at least 10 books this year, and that is definitely something to celebrate.

7th Grade News!

In 7th grade, we’ve been working on a ‘close reading’ of the poem “Where I’m From” by George Ella Lyon. Close reading involves:

reading the piece through once to just get a ‘sense’ of it
rereading, part by part, at a slower rate to take the time to really think about what the author is saying
use a pencil (in this case a piece of chalk) to jot down ideas as you reread
making inferences, asking questions, making connections and judgements about what we’ve read and annotating the text (taking notes on it)
putting it all together to get a good idea of the main message that the author is trying to convey

Today, we finished our close reading and we started working on writing our own “Where I’m From” poems. Our writing process so far looked a little like this:

We made lists of the various categories of memories that the author included, such as parents, siblings, pastimes, things people tell us, hobbies, foods that we share with the people we love, etc. etc.
We added a few categories of our own, like ‘sports’ and ‘friends’.
Then we started writing by taking one idea and really trying to use descriptive language, sights, smells, sounds, and feelings to describe the idea.
For example, when we looked at the category of ‘chores,’ instead of saying, “I’m from doing the dishes,” we said things like, “I’m from the clean smell of sudsy Dawn, the hot water, and seeing my reflection in each plate”

Yup! We’re getting creative, and I can’t wait to read all of the poems when they’re done! I hope everyone posts them on their blogs so that we can enjoy them, learn more about each other, and learn more about writing from one another!

8th Grade News!

In 8th grade, we’re reading Memoir in preparation for writing our own memoirs. What is memoir? Memoir is nonfiction narrative, true stories about moments in our lives that we will never forget because they taught us something about life, about ourselves, about the world.

Here we are reading lots of student memoirs and memoirs by accomplished authors.

By mid-week, we hope to all have decided on a topic for our memoirs. We’ve done a few ‘quick-writes’ to help us decide which memories mean the most to us and have the greatest potential for being rich and interesting memoirs. Once we have our topics, we’ll get busy drafting our memoirs.

Well, it’s no wonder September has flown by! We’ve been working hard. I’m proud of all of you, and look forward to a jam-packed October.

If It’s October, Time Must Be Flying!

October 26, 2014 Rhonda Deighton Comments 0 Comment

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!

Where I’m From

September 30, 2011 Rhonda Deighton Comments 1 comment

This week we’ve been writing Where I’m From poems, fashioned after the famous poem by George Ella Lyon. Here is the original:

Where I’m From

I’m from Artemus and Billie’s Branch,
fried corn and strong coffee.
From the finger my grandfather lost
to the auger,
the eye my father shut to keep his sight.

Under my bed was a dress box
spilling old pictures,
a sift of lost faces
to drift beneath my dreams.
I am from those moments–
snapped before I budded —
leaf-fall from the family tree.

by George Ella Lyon

At first, we read the poem and went . . . huh??? It’s not an easy poem to understand after just one reading. So, we took it slowly, read a few lines at a time and tried to figure out what G.E. Lyon was telling us about her childhood. That helped us to focus on a few words at a time, and we discovered that Lyon provided us with some good clues.

Then, we made a list of the kinds of things that Lyon spoke about in her poem to give us some ideas for our own. We brainstormed ideas about our own lives and tried to use descriptive phrases to make our poems personal and intriguing. We wanted to give our readers enough information to get them thinking.

We looked at the structure of the poem, at the stanzas (the poetic paragraphs) and the line starters. We decided that we didn’t want each line to start the same way (BORING!!!!), but that repeating the ‘I am from’ and ‘I’m from’ and ‘from’ starters here and there would give our poems structure.

Then, we wrote.

You can read all of our poems by using the blog list on the right hand side of the screen.

And here is mine:

Where I’m From

I am from the red kitchen table with matching chairs,
from quiet talks and rowdy board games.
From the legend of the Barclay gang,
and playing on the truck in the driveway.

I’m from lunch with the Flintstones,
From Sunday BBQs with the whole gang,
sleeping in the sun
and running in the streets.
I’m from the smell of dad’s pipe
and mom’s apple cake.

I’m from the bullet in my father’s chin
the war stories he told,
sometimes with vim, sometimes with a tear in his eye.

I am from the Honda,
bugs on my visor
knees buckling in the wind.
From exotic voyages to far off places, alone
and with friends.
I’m from paint swirls and slide-rules
from chalk dust and apples.

I’m from cheering from the bleachers
at that save he made
and the tournament they won,
and cheering in the arena
at the graceful dance of two tiny champions.

I am from him,
lame jokes,
crazy made-up lyrics
and the life we made together
From shoe-shopping and Mario Cart,
from band aids and bruises
from Kiss it Better and I’m Not Tired

I’m from the zesty grandmother who stayed wonderfully late
and the sister who left tragically early
heart torn from my bosom
may she rest peacefully now and forever.

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