Language6

No, I wasn’t captured by aliens. 

Each student has a Reading Response Journal that they are to write on nightly for the remainder of the week.  Their historical fiction AR book is due on Wednesday, November 1. 

Fourth and fifth are reading Letters from Rifka. The other classes are reading Journey to America and Memory Coat.  This is to support the material covered in Social Studies.

We are starting our study of historical fiction.  All classes will read a historical fiction novel that should be finished Wednesday, November 1.  I want each student to read a minimum of 10 pages a day in the book.  Historical fiction can be more difficult to read than realisitc fiction, so if they need to read more slowly, or reread, they will have time.

Each night students need to respond on a Reading Response Journal.  The directions are at the top of the journal. 

We are also learning about nouns.  To develop a booklet on common, proper, concrete and abstract nouns, each student needs to bring an old newspaper or magazine to class on Wednesday.

Fourth and fifth period classes will read Letters from Rifka.  I love this book!!!!

Seventh period needs to finish their acrostic on one of the characters from Belle Prater’s Boy and the back of a worksheet on characterization.

Fifth period has ex. 1 and 2 for the lesson 2 spelling/vocabulary words.

Students in fourth and fifth period were introduced to the author Edgar Allan Poe today. 

I apologize for not writing frequently last week. If you have a child at Austin, you know it was homecoming week. My son, Kirk, is the junior class president. We had a float to build. That was not the problem. The problem was that he was diagnosed with mono on Monday. He could have very little involvement in the work. I tried to take up his slack. Anyway, I’ll do a better job!
Fourth and fifth period students need to get by The Learning Tree sometime this week and purchase a copy of Karen Hesse’s Letters From Rifka. We will start the book on October 17th. This is later than I had planned, but it will still be a GREAT connection to their study of immigration in Social Studies. It will also allow us to study another genre of literature, historical fiction.
First, third and seventh period will also look at historical fiction. We will begin with The Journey to Ellis Island and move on to The Memory Coat.
I changed the background to candy in honor of Halloween!!!!!

All classes will have a major test on Friday.  It will cover the four kinds of sentences, sentence fragments, run-on sentences, compound sentences, complete subjects, complete predicates, capitalization and punctuation of sentences, and context clues.

Fourth and fifth period classes will also have a spelling/vocabulary test this week.  Fourth periods test is Tuesday.  Fifth period will have their test on Thursday.

Each class has assigned pages to read tonite.  We will focus on setting, character, plot, theme and point of view with this book.  Fourth period had sentences to write with the words from lesson one.

Each student has identified in their composition book the items they can study for the assessment tomorrow.  Please be sure they look over these tonite at home.  There will be no reading homework until Monday.

On Friday, all students will take the Decatur City Schools pacing assessment.  The skills assessed will be conflict in literature and personification.  We have been working on these skills for several weeks.  Each student has a homework assignment to write 10 sentences that contain personification.

All classes will go to the computer lab to take an AR test tomorrow.  Some students have already finished their book and taken their test.

We have been working on conflict in literature and personification.  On Friday, students will take an assessment from the Central Office to determine if they have mastered these concepts.  Each student has notes in their composition book on these concepts.  Please review with your child.  If you have any questions, please E-mail me at Cindy.Averitt@dcs.edu.

All classes have an AR book due on Tuesday, September 19.  We worked on personification today.  Fourth and Fifth period  floated on rafts in the commons while doing their work.  Be sure to ask your child about life on a raft.