What's new in 8th Grade?

Happy New Year!!

I hope that you all enjoyed some quality family time over the break. It is so exciting to start fresh in the New Year. I know that the coming months will be filled with bittersweet moments are your child gets ready for the transition to high school. Please feel free to contact me with any questions that you have along the way.

High School

Mr. Eric Neiswender, a counselor from NDA, came to the classroom yesterday to discuss EXPLORE tests.  Students were given a copy of the EXPLORE test, a booklet called "Using your EXPLORE Results," and their Score Report.  It is important to remember that these tests are just a snapshot of your child's academic profile.  If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Reminder: NDA Registration is Saturday, January 28.

Also, a representative from Green Bay Public Schools will be coming in on Friday, January 6 at 2:15.  Students who are considering East, Preble, West, or Southwest will attend the meeting.  Please let me know if your child will be attending.  We will not excuse students from class without parent permission.

Religion

We are currently studying the 10 Commandments in Religion class.  The Commandments are broken into two sections; the first three focus on our relationship with God and the final seven focus on our relationship with others.  There will be a unit test upon completion of the chapters.

Student should also be working on their service hours.  More information on service hours can be found in a separate entry on this blog.

Literature

Students should be working on their historical fiction novel for our second trimester Book Club.  Please see the post regarding Book Club for more information.

We will also be doing an interactive read-aloud for about 15 minutes each day.  The novel we will be reading is another historical fiction book called Woods Runner by Gary Paulsen.  The story is set in the British Colony of Pennsylvania at the start of the Revolutionary War.  Mrs. Wiliniski and I will be making connections to real events in US History.  While there will be no reading outside of school, students will have to do some research and respond to primary sources from the time.

The rest of our class time in Literature will be devoted to several important and exciting items; public speaking, forensics, and our play.  We will begin by going over public speaking skills and doing regular practice in class using popular speeches from history, monologues and dialogues, as well as improv. 

Next, we will begin practice for forensics.  There is not a GRACE forensics competition this year, but we will still hold an event at our school and are also looking into participating the public school forensics competition.  More details will be sent home soon.

Finally, we will be working on a class play.  Last year, we went big with Shakespeare's Taming of the Shrew.  The class is interested in doing a modern comedy this year.  We are looking at some scripts and will be making a decision soon.  Again, I will send more details as we go.

Grammar

Our focus in grammar this year is less on parts of speech and more on usage.  We just finished a chapter on subject / verb agreement.  The next chapter focuses on using verbs correctly.  Students took a pretest and will be exempt from homework in certain sections based on their mastery on the pretest.  ALL students will be required to complete review assignments.

Writing

A Personal Narrative is the next writing assignment your child will complete.  We are in the process of identifying what makes a personal narrative and then we will begin to go into the writing process.  Even though there is not a writing component to high school applications, I feel that learning to write a personal narrative for future applications is very important.  It also makes us think about how events in our lives make an impact on us.

Vocabulary

Our schedule will be to assign a unit each Tuesday, turn in homework every Friday, and take a test the following Tuesday. Students are required to know the spelling of each term, be able to match it to the correct definition, and use it in a sentence that shows they understand the meaning of the word. I have modeled examples of how to write these sentences using context clues and synonyms.

Additionally, there will be a circular review on each test beginning the week of January, 16 where words from previous tests will be included.