Progress Reports Next Week

I wanted to remind students and parents that progress reports will be sent home September 5, which is next Friday. They will most likely be printed Thursday afternoon, so that means I will be entering AR scores Thursday. Then I will continue to change the grades as students earn points up through the last day for this nine weeks. AR points are actually due October 1. Currently, I have quite a few students who have all twenty-five points for this nine weeks, and others who are well on their way. However, I am concerned about those who have not even taken an AR test yet. I have allowed students to go to the library each Friday, and some have asked for extra visits beyond our regular days, so access to books should not be an issue. I have AR tests on the computers in my room, and students can take tests any day. Did you know that our AR school list is available on the Mountain Gap Middle website? Go to the library page or click here on AR list.

Notebooks and Books

Mondays are hard, aren’t they? We had my daughter and her family visit from the Mobile area this weekend, and it is hard to get back to the regular routine. In class, we worked on the routine daily grammar and vocabulary work today. All classes will be having a notebook test this week. There isn’t anything to study for really. If the students have kept up with regular class work and have taken the notes I have asked them to, they will find all of the answers in their own notebooks. I have some students who do not have a three ring binder, and some who have not kept the papers I have handed out. The notebook check will be quite difficult in that case.

On the subject of supplies, I have received enough literature textbooks for all classes. I do not have any information yet about workbooks or other supplemental materials. I have contacted the office for textbooks downtown, but I do not have any new information.  Regardless, all of my classes will begin using the new literature books this week.

First Computer Lab Day

I wanted to take a minute to thank the many parents who came to Open House on Tuesday evening. It is always nice to meet our students’ families and share a bit of what we do at school.

As I indicated last evening, we spent class today in the computer lab. I thought that we were going to complete the STAR test, but I was asked to postpone that until next week when updates to the program will be complete. Instead, I assigned students partners, and they worked on using correct punctuation and indenting to write a conversation. This skill will be used in the many narratives that they write this year. Dialog brings stories to life and helps make the characters seem realistic. However, if it is not written correctly, dialog can be quite confusing for the reader. We will practice writing quotes through out the year. Most students worked well in the lab and seemed to enjoy the activity. I reminded them that I do take grades on computer lab assignments, so if they miss a lab, they will need to get the assignment from me and complete it on a computer either at home or at school during remediation.

Come Visit MGMS

Tomorrow night, Tuesday, August 19, is Open House at Mountain Gap. Open House is not a conference night for individual students, but rather a chance to walk through the student’s schedule and meet the teachers. If you do want to schedule a conference, you can email your request or call the counselors to set one up. We usually meet as a team (math, science, English, and social studies) during our planning time. This year our planning time is third period. Of course, our schedule rotates, so that time shifts each week.

I’m looking forward to meeting my students’ parents. Hope to see you!

Journal News

It’s Monday again! The weekends fly, don’t they? Friday will be here again before we know it too, so today I discussed this week’s journal with all of my classes. I modeled how to do prewriting for this week. We are trying out descriptive writing this time. For the next few weeks, students will practice narrative and descriptive writing before we move on to a third mode. Again, I posted the instruction sheet for descriptive writing on the journal page of my website. I am working diligently to get last week’s journal graded and returned. I will post grades tomorrow. (STI was not working last Friday, but it seemed to be fine today.) At the beginning of the year, most students earn full credit by following directions and putting forth the expected effort. As they become more confident, I will be a bit more particular about the quality of the writing, of course.

Library Update

As you can tell from the front of the building, construction is underway at Mountain Gap Middle. They are tarring the roof and working on the new office and building entrance right now. The library has been gutted, and everything is in storage except for fiction AR books. Mrs. Rutland has relocated to room 215 until the library is ready sometime after Christmas. Today, all of my students had a chance to visit the library. Our routine day is on Friday, but this week, we knew that the students were anxious to check out their first books. We cannot visit the library together as a class because of space limitations, but I can send about six students at a time. I am very excited about having a new library for the second half of the year!

Getting Organized

Today we started working on our daily grammar and vocabulary bell work. I asked students to use their three ring binder and dividers to set up three sections: sentences, vocabulary, and grammar. We will be taking it slowly for the first few days. The advanced classes and the regular classes will be working on the same kind of grammar and vocab activities, but the words and sentences are a bit different. I will assess students by having them complete a notebook check test from time to time, so they need to be careful to keep the papers organized in their binders.

Journal Assignment Information

I spent all of our class time today discussing journal assignments. I handed out a sheet with the procedures and expectations for writing weekly journals. I also handed out instructions for narrative prewriting (you can download this on the Journal webpage), and I modeled the prewriting process. I usually post the week’s topic on Sunday or early Monday before school, and I want students to become responsible for looking up the topic and reading it by themselves. If they do the prewriting on Mondays, then they have Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday to complete the writing itself. They may struggle sometimes with a particular topic, but that is to be expected. It will become easier as the year progresses.

Students will take the Alabama Direct Assessment of Writing in February. They will have to read the topic by themselves, do their own prewriting, and then write clearly and effectively on that topic. I will not know the topic your student will have, but it will be quite similar to the kinds of topics in their journals. They will have one clock hour to accomplish the writing task. The tests are sent away to be graded, and then we will most likely have results to send home with the year-end report card.

Time for AR

I think we had a successful first week in seventh grade English. Today, I talked to my students about Accelerated Reading requirements. They can begin taking tests on Monday. I will be listing a running total of their points on STI. Sometimes I get bogged down in paperwork, but I try to keep those numbers current. If you have any AR questions, check out my web site page about AR. If you don’t find your answer there, be sure to contact me. http://www.jeanetheridge.com/info/AR.htm

I hope everyone has a great weekend.

Books, books, books

Today I issued books to all six of my classes. My second period class was shortened today, so I will finish issuing books in that class tomorrow. One book students have is Elements of Writing, which we won’t be using that much this year. While I emphasize grammar and writing,  I do not use the text for much of that instruction.  The other book which we will use most often is our new literature book, Elements of Literature. These were not delivered to the school until late Tuesday afternoon. Thanks go to Mr. Lanza for numbering and labeling them and distributing them to my classroom. I do not yet have any idea if or when we will receive workbooks to go along with the textbook.  I have told my students to be sure to cover the new book. I know that textbooks are terribly expensive, so I hope the students take care of them!