Middle School Language Arts

This class is focusing on the six traits of writing; voice, conventions, ideas, organization, sentence fluency and word choice.

We are doing this through 1. Writing Journals, 2. Spelling/Vocabulary tests, 3. Literature Samples as well as Daily Oral Language activites.

What this means to you as parents is this:

1. Writing Journals; I give the students a writing prompt when they come in and they are responsible for a page response. On Tuesday and Wednesday they are responsible to write a page on their own. You may need to help them in this to begin with as I have found many students are struggling to write a full page...with time I have found that this gets much easier!

2. Students receive 10 words on Thursday that they are responsible for writing their definition on a loose piece of paper and turning in on Monday. On Monday they will take a pre-spelling test if they get 100% they do not have to take the test on Thursday.

3. Students will go over literature either orally (outloud reading by me and/or the class) and analyzing what the author means, inferences, and characterization. Students will keep this literature in their 3 ring binder.

4. Daily Oral Laguage drills are when I write two sentences incorrectly and they have to individually solve the mistakes. We then as a class go over the mistakes so that ALL students get the correct answers.

**Students taking both Language Arts and History have their homework assigned after history...students ONLY taking one of the two have individually assignments that are due the following school day.

September 22nd: Students are working on VOICE...they should be able to hear their descriptions, write to a specific audience and most of all know what they want their audience to feel after reading their writing.

September 29th: Students will continue working on VOICE by making a classroom newspaper. Each student will take on the role of a newspaper writer and on Thursday turn in an article that follows their selected category.

October 6th: Students will continue their discussion on the creativity it takes to write a newspaper article. Students will look at different articles looking for the hook, facts, details and the effectiveness of the article.

Great news! Sara Schilling of the Tri-City Herald will be in class on Thursday to share with the students what life is like as a reporter! If you want to come in and hear her or really ANY day feel free to do so!