Cross posted on My Classroom Blog
I cannot believe summer is gone, and a new year has begun. I haven’t been blogging all summer, so I’m ready to get back into the swing of things. I am spending another year teaching Middle School Language Arts and I am thrilled to be teaching the same thing for two years in a row. I have four classes this year. My sixth and eighth graders are both split into two classes. I also have a combo class of seventh graders and some of my eighth graders. I am really looking forward to this group.
We had a great first week of school. The students are eager to learn. I jumped right into the curriculum and have already reviewed several skills. We started each class with a “Mentor” sentence, which leads to my grammar or reading lesson for the day.
I introduced and/or reviewed the following skills:
- linking and helping verbs
- subjects and predicates
- adjectives
- possessive nouns
- declarative sentences
- compound sentences and compound predicates
- proper nouns
- prepositions
- Author’s point of view
- Setting
I started two “read aloud” novels. A couple of classes are reading Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt, while the other classes are doing So B. It by Sarah Weeks. Both novels are excellent.
I started my reading workshop (read to self from Daily 5). Hopefully, we will be able to start our writing workshop next week. I have had the opportunity to have an individual conference with about 98% of the students.
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In order to provide my students with more “reading” time,I am offering “Book Club” starting next week. We are meeting on Tuesday and Thursday mornings before school in my classroom. Book Club will be a time for quiet reading without distractions. We will celebrate completed novels and share ideas for other books to read.
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