This Week: August 18-22

As we begin our first full week of school, I would like to say that I have been greatly impressed and pleased with all of my new students. For me, the first three days have been a pleasure, and I am looking forward to the remainder of our year!
Parents, you may be interested to know that we began covering our Writer’s Notebooks on Friday. We used magazines, pictures, and anything students wanted to bring from home to cover our notebooks with a personalized collage. My students are very creative! Most of them went above and beyond, searching the magazines for words and pictures, even individual letters to spell out what they wanted on their notebooks. I think this activity got everyone thinking, and I was very impressed with the attention to detail that each student gave as the notebooks were so carefully crafted. This way, each student has a Writer’s Notebook that is uniquely his or her own. We will finish this activity on Friday so that we can begin using our notebooks next week. Also, I bought laminate paper to cover these with (which we will do on Friday) to keep them intact as they are used.
Tentative schedule for this week:

Monday, August 18
Literature:
Introduce and discuss “Why Read”
Read “The Day it Rained Cockroaches” by Paul Zindel
Write our own ten biographical points, using Zindel’s as a model
Look for themes in the story
Discuss purposes for reading
Discuss Author’s purposes
Homework: None

Tuesday, August 19
Grammar:
Subjects, Predicates, and Sentences (8.1-8.3)
Sentence Strips group activity
Notes and Discussion
Homework: pg. 358 (6-10); pg. 360 (11-20); pg 362 ex.5 (16-20); ex.6 (1-10)

Wednesday, August 20
Literature:
Read the short story “Seventh Grade” by Gary Soto
RS1: set purposes for reading; determine author’s intent, context clues, draw conclusions RS7: sequence of events, interpret author’s intent
Homework: None

Thursday, August 21
Grammar:
Subjects, Predicates, and Sentences 8.4, 8.5
Sentence Strips group activity
Homework: pg. 364 (1-10); pg. 366 (11-20)

Friday, August 22
Finish and cover Writer’s Notebooks!