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We Made It! – Writing in the Last Week of School 2019-2020

We Made It! – Writing in the Last Week of School 2019-2020

I am making a correction to this post because I’ve just realized that LIBBY, the library app is no longer supported by our SDG Libraries. So if you read this post and tried to link up to Libby, I’m afraid you had no luck.  See below for the new app!

Summertime is a great time to do some pleasure reading!  Well, any time is really a good time to do pleasure reading, but summer is certainly a time when you have lots of free time to chill out with a good book.  I know it’s hard to get your hands on the books you want to read during a pandemic so here are some options: Cloud Library is SDG Library’s new app for borrowing ebooks and audiobooks.  If you have a library card with the SDG Libraries, you can use your card (membership number and password) to log in to the Cloud Library app. Download it on your phone or tablet.  Borrow ebooks and/or audiobooks!  Here’s a webpage to help you download and use it!

 

Follow the instructions for the Sora App!  Listen to audiobooks, read books on your phone or tablet!

 

 

Some of this week’s prompts are simple.  Write an ‘end of the year blogpost’ on:

  • What’s your plan for this summer?
  • Thoughts on this school year?
  • How did you survive school during Covid-19?
  • What did you discover about yourself during this school closure?
  • What did you create during the school closure?
  • What do you look forward to in the fall?

 

 

Here are some other prompts for this week:

 

Writing Prompt #1:

 

Writing Prompt #2

 

Writing Prompt #3:

 

Writing Prompt #4:

 

Happy writing, Grade 7 and 8!  I hope you all have a wonderful summer.  I look forward to seeing you in the fall.

 

We Are Writers! – Prompts for June 15-19

We Are Writers! – Prompts for June 15-19

Last week we had some excellent writing happening!  I loved reading your treehouse designs, your restaurant menus, your stories, your “Life Playlists” and all of your blogposts!

I’m hoping that this week we can write up a storm because there are only 2 weeks left of school I’m going to try to write a blogpost about the books I’ve been reading.  I hope you will too. To get you thinking and talking about BOOKS, I’ve collected a few BOOKTALK prompts!

Here they are:

BookTalk Writing Prompt #1

 

BookTalk Writing Prompt #2

 

BookTalk Writing Prompt #3

 

 

And then there’s the regular writing prompts for those of us who want to write something else!

 

Writing Prompt #1: This can be a letter to anyone.

 

Writing Prompt #2: If you want to invent a sport that doesn’t have jet packs, go for it.  Just make sure to describe your sport in good detail. What’s the object of the game?  How many players/teams?  What equipment needed. Where is it played.  How do you win? 

 

Writing Prompt #3: Don’t forget to describe with vivid imagery (sensory details help the reader understand WHY you are grateful for these things).

 

Writing Prompt #4: Indulge by creating your fantasy food!  Make it something so fattening that you gain weight just describing it! 

 

Writing Prompt #5: A story prompt for our storytellers.


 

I can’t wait to see what you write!

Writing for the week of June 8-12

Writing for the week of June 8-12

This week, I am providing you with some new prompts, but I also want you to feel free to go back through previous weeks’ prompts to see if there was anything you didn’t get a chance to use that may be inspiring to you now.  The most important thing is to keep writing!

Remember that the blog is for writing, for revising and editing, and presenting your best effort.  Titles should be interesting to the reader.  They should also have capital letters for all the important words.

 

 

Writing Prompt #1 – C’mon!  You know you want to write a Zombie story!

Writing Prompt #2 – Zombies aren’t your thing?  No problem.  You probably want to write a Star Wars story!

 

Writing Prompt #3 – This is for Foodies!  You get to design the menu.  Put all of your favourites on the list.  OR, make it a Zombie menu or a Star Wars menu or a Menu for people who live in Candyland, or a menu for Smurfs!  Get creative, people!

 

Writing Prompt #4 – This is the Movie of your LIFE!  What songs are playing?

 

 

Writing Prompt #5:  For the designers and builders and dreamers.  Your tree top paradise is whatever you want it to be. 

I LOVE reading your writing.  Have fun!  Be creative!  Then, revise and edit!  Oh yes, revising and editing are important parts of the process!

 

Writing in June! – Prompts for June 1-5

Writing in June! – Prompts for June 1-5

It’s June!  It’s June!  And writing in June is even better than in March or April or May because . . . . it’s JUNE!

 

This week I have lots of prompts for you, and once again I hope I can inspire some of your amazing writing in a variety of forms: opinion essay, nonfiction piece, descriptive writing, story or narrative writing, reflections on life, “How To . . . ” or procedural writing, etc. etc.

I want to remind you that I LOVE reading your writing and I LOVE to comment on your writing, but you can comment on your peers’ writing too.

You can comment on writing too! 

It is so nice to get a comment from another student.  That’s the WHOLE IDEA of the blog, so please please comment on someone else’s blog this week.

I also want to remind you to save the photo for the prompt you choose to your computer and upload it into your blog please!  Then you can give your blogpost a great title instead of “Prompt #2” or whichever number.

Here we go! Five Writing Prompts for June 1-5!

Writing Prompt #1 – Write this story!

 

 

Writing Prompt #2 – Watch the Ted Talk and then write about a Lollipop Moment that you experienced.  OR, just comment on what Drew Dudley means by a Lollipop moment and why they are Everyday Leadership moments.

 

Writing Prompt #3 – Respond to the following video.  Say whatever this makes you notice, feel, or think.

 

 

Writing Prompt #4 – How much do “LIKES” mean to you?

 

 

Writing Prompt #5 – Persuade Me!

And that’s it for this week!

Happy writing!  Happy reading!  Happy commenting!

Class News

Class News

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!

Hard Work Underway!

Hard Work Underway!

If you are new to our class blogs, WELCOME to “Discovering Our Voices” where I try to keep parents and students informed about what’s going on in the classroom, AND where students share their writing with peers, parents, and me.  This year, I am also putting LOTS of information on our two OneNote notebooks – one for 7th grade and one for 8th grade.  If you haven’t had a chance to check it out, please do so!  There’s lots of information in the OneNote notebooks that you will find useful in class and at home.

We’ve been at school for a month now, and if you think of what we’ve done so far, it’s clear we haven’t wasted the last four weeks.  In all my classes, we’ve been reading daily, at home and at school, and many students have already read a book or two!  If you’re a parent, please ask your child about what book(s) he/she’s been reading this year so far!

Here’s a quick list of what we’ve done so far in each grade.  If you’d like more information, please ask your child to show you our grade level OneNote. You’ll find lots of resources there.  Students and parents are also always welcome to email me with questions about our work in the classroom!  I will do my best to keep you informed.

Grade 7:

  • 2 vocabulary units focused on prefixes (sub, contra/contro)
  • short story unit to review/learn the elements of a narrative
  • Writing Territories (identifying the types of things we could write about this year)
  • quick-writes (a five minute writing session in which we just let the ideas flow)
  • reading response journal with a focus on character traits
  • grammar: sentence elements – subject and predicate

Grade 8:

  • 2 vocabulary units focused on prefixes (sub/trans, pro/retro)
  • memoir unit – reading lots of memoirs in order to understand the form
  • Writing Territories (identifying the types of things we could write about this year)
  • quick-writes aimed at ‘mining’ ideas for our own memoirs
  • reading response journal

It’s clear that we’ve been busy in English class so far.  In the near future, all my new students will have blogs, and we’ll be ready to share our writing with our peers and parents.  I can’t wait to ‘hear’ your voices on the blog!

 

Week in Review: A brief look at our first week back

Week in Review: A brief look at our first week back

Thank you to all my students and parents for the warm welcome back!  It’s good to be back to a normal routine again!

We started off the week with this lovely quote:

 

WRITING

After reading and discussing the meaning of the quote, we all (grade 7 and 8) wrote two journal entries:

  • Masterpiece Me! – a journal entry describing something we’ve done over the last few months that we are proud of, that shows expertise or improvement in a specific area
  • Work-in-progress Me! – a journal entry identifying two specific goals for this year.  The first goal – and action plan to achieve it – was to be a goal outside of English class.  It could be a personal goal, a goal for sports or another subject in school, a general goal for learning skills, etc.  The second goal – and action plan to achieve it – was to be about English class (e.g., a reading, writing, speaking, listening, media studies goal).

These journal entries allowed us to reflect on our learning and learn about goal setting, which is an important learning skill.

READING

Nonfiction Reading:

Grade 8 students read an article entitled: “How to stick to your New Year’s resolutions” from HowStuffWorks and answered 4 multiple choice questions about the text.

Grade 7 students read an article entitled: “How to set goals for the New Year” by WikiHow and answered 4 multiple choice questions about the text.

Each of the above articles was available at various reading levels, so the titles may be slightly different for each level.  Each student received an article that was appropriate for their ability.

 

Independent Reading:

Students also had time in class to read their self-selected novels/books.  We read every day at school, and students were expected to read at home (Grade 8 -30 minutes; Grade 7 – 20 minutes).

 

Vocabulary

We are continuing to work on our vocabulary in both grades.  Almost all of our vocabulary this year will be based on prefixes, root words, and suffixes because learning these word parts helps us to learn the meanings of many unfamiliar words.  It reminds us, also, to look for meaningful word parts in longer, unfamiliar words.  That helps when we are reading and come to a word that we’ve never read before!

We have started using vocabulary.com again, and we had fun doing a vocabulary jam on Friday!  This site is great for becoming familiar with the meanings of the words on our lists, but students should also remember to use the definitions given during our vocabulary lesson.

 

This week’s words in Grade 8 start with ‘dia’ and ‘per.’  In grade 7, our words start with the prefix ‘hyper.’

 

grammar

Although we didn’t do much in grammar this week (none in grade 8), we did get a sneak preview into learning about FANBOYS (coordinating conjunctions) by reviewing what a RUN-ON sentence is and how to fix it.

How can you fix a run-on?  You can: 1) separate the two independent clauses into two separate sentences; 2) Use a semi-colon, but only when the two independent clauses are closely related; 3) Use a coordinating conjunction (FANBOYS)!

 

 

New Year Brings Ice Rain, Snow, and New Learning Goals in 7th and 8th Grade!

New Year Brings Ice Rain, Snow, and New Learning Goals in 7th and 8th Grade!

I hope all of my students and their families have had a great holiday!  I really enjoyed the chance to be with my daughter, who came home from Georgia where she’s working on her PhD, and my son, who lives in Ottawa where he works for the federal government, and of course the regulars around my place: my husband and mom.  I also got a chance to visit with extended family, eat lots of good food (made by my kids), play with my great-nephew and great-niece, catch up on family news, read lots of books, cook, shop, watch TV and movies, play games, learn some yoga from my daughter, and just enjoy a different pace in life (that means I slept in until almost 8:30 a.m. every day!).

It’s kind of hard to believe that we’ve been back to school for two weeks now! That’s probably because we haven’t really been back for two whole weeks.  Three snow days in the first week back made it kind of difficult to get back in the swing of things.  Hopefully, we’ll have a ‘real’ week this coming week because I’m pretty pumped for some of the new concepts, projects, and skills we’ll be learning in the next few months!  Here’s a snapshot of what’s coming!

In Grade 8, we’ve just started working on our Listening Strategies Unit, and I know that students are going to love listening to the podcast I found last summer (when I do a lot of my research and lesson planning) called SHABAM!  I chose SHABAM! because it involves a narrative (story) about a theoretical Zombie Apocalypse!  Who doesn’t love Zombies, right?  But the 9 episodes for Season 1 are more than just a story about a family dealing with a Zombie apocalypse.  It’s also a very informative science podcast.  As we listen, we’ll learn about the brain, cells, epidemics, history, the way science works, digital communication/technology, water, food, and the list goes on!  Another reason why I chose SHABAM! is because it’s so entertaining!  The production quality and use of music, jokes, different types of voices, experts in a variety of science fields, etc. is INCREDIBLE!  We’ve only listened to one episode so far, but I hope that we can listen to one per week adding new listening strategies each time, because listening well requires skill.  We’re going to be learning and experimenting with different strategies to help us:

  • focus
  • remember
  • record
  • paraphrase
  • summarize

The strategies we will use will involve focussing our attention by doing something during the listening.  Active listening can include: note-taking, drawing, re-listening, and stopping to talk and ask questions, make connections, infer, and paraphrase.

 

Also in Grade 8, we’ve started a unit on strategies for reading and understanding nonfiction text.  Reading nonfiction is very different from reading narratives.  The structure of a narrative – even one that jumps back and forth through time – is time sequenced.  Story structure is something we’re very familiar with because, well, life is a story, right?  First we did this, then we did that, and here’s how it all turned out!

Nonfiction, on the other hand can be challenging for several reasons.  The structures of nonfiction can vary.  Five text structures used in nonfiction text are: cause-effect, description, problem-solution, compare-contrast, and sequence.  We haven’t watched this video yet in class, but we will!

 

So far, our learning goal: to read and fully comprehend complex nonfiction text, and a related learning goal: to read and summarize a nonfiction article, we’ve read an article entitled “How long does it take to form a habit?” using several reading strategies to better understand the article and summarize the key points.  The strategies we practiced include:

  • rereading
  • paraphrasing
  • identifying important words to highlight
  • vocabulary skills (breaking words into parts, using a dictionary, using the context of a sentence to understand the meaning of unfamiliar words)
  • summarizing each paragraph or section with one sentence

 

We are presently working on understanding an article entitled “All the cells in the human body” which is a very challenging read since we know very little about cells in general (no background knowledge makes reading even more challenging). We use the following strategy on Thursday of last week.

 

 

In grade 7, we are working on our Book Talks!  Each student has chosen a favourite book that they read in our class this year to tell the class about in a brief 2-4 minute Book Talk.  Students have a set of guidelines to follow that include all of the information their Book Talk should include:

  • title
  • author
  • genre
  • number of pages in the book
  • how they chose the book to read
  • a brief summary of the book (no giving away the ending)
  • what they liked about the book
  • who they’d recommend it to

Before we began our planning, we watched two videos that showcased a) a BAD Book Talk and b) a GOOD Book Talk!

We discussed the two videos – what went wrong in the BAD example and what was good about the GOOD example, so that we’d have a fair idea of what we needed to do in our presentations.

We are hoping to be ready to present later this week.  While we listen to other students talk about their favourite books, we’ll make a TO-READ list of ones that sound particularly interesting.  Each student will, of course, find different books most interesting to them.

Grade 7 students have just finished up their news articles, and we’ll be ready to do some nonfiction reading and writing in the coming weeks also!  Nonfiction reading in grade 7 will involve some short pieces, like news articles, but also some nonfiction books!

These are just a few of the books we’ll be reading in 7th grade in the coming weeks.  Students will form nonfiction literature circles so that they can read, summarize, and discuss the ideas they’re reading about!

 

 

 

 

 

Stay tuned to hear about how things are going with our nonfiction reading!  In the meantime, please take some time to read our blogposts!  Students have been writing and blogging on a variety of topics that interest them!  Don’t forget –

WE LOVE COMMENTS!

 

Poetry from the Heart

Poetry from the Heart

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.

 

Novel Studies in 7th Grade

Novel Studies in 7th Grade

After a few months of self-selected reading, where students chose their own books to read and their own ‘reading homework’ (as long as they read for 20 minutes per evening), we’ve recently started our first class novel studies for the year.  Since I have 2 grade 7 classes limited number of copies of each text, each of my classes is reading a different novel now, and we’ll switch later on this year.

That’s why it’s really IMPORTANT to avoid giving away the juicy bits of the novel YOUR class is reading to students in the other class.

7B is reading Freak the Mighty by Rodman Philbrick.  It’s a humorous, yet poignant story of two friends, Max and Kevin, both outcasts in their own way, who become a force to be reckoned with – Freak the Mighty (that’s what they call themselves).

 

7C is reading Touching Spirit Bear by Ben Mikaelsen.  This story centres on Cole Matthews, a young teen whose behaviour has gotten him into much trouble, and he now has the option of either going to jail or participating in Circle Justice by spending a year alone on an island in Alaska.  Part survival story, part coming of age story, this young adult novel appeals to both boys and girls, and it gets everyone thinking!

In both classes, we’re reading deeply by enhancing our reading through discussion, chapter questions, reading responses, character studies, vocabulary work, and chapter tests.

We’re reading on a collectively agreed upon reading schedule, too.  Each day we decide the number of pages we’re prepared to read as a class for that evening, and so far I’m proud to say that most students have kept up with the reading.  It makes our novel study and our discussions so much more enjoyable when everyone is able to contribute, because all have completed the reading.

Keep up the great work, Grade 7!  And stay tuned for updates and photos on our novel study!

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