Mr. G Online - Summerour 8th Grade Language Arts

This website discontinued

rawsgordon — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 21:16:38 +0000

I have decided to stop using this website and to do my class updates at the homeworknow.com website that most of my colleagues use. Please go there to learn what is happening in my class.

Week of January 18th

rawsgordon — Fri, 21 Jan 2011 22:23:47 +0000

We’ve been working hard to prepare for the Eighth Grade Writing Test next Wednesday. We’ve been using a graphic organizer practice the planning that take place before the actual writing. Students have a homework assignment this weekend, a repeating of the work done in class for additional practice. The paper I gave them read like this:

This weekend, make and fill in the graphic organizer for this prompt. Have it ready at the beginning of class on Monday: “Do you think professional athletes should be dismissed from their team if they are found guilty of possessing illegal drugs? Support your opinion with reasons and examples.

Thursday, January 6th

rawsgordon — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 18:35:22 +0000

Many of my students were not in class today on a field trip so students who were present did a short, one-day lesson about combining sentences. Students who were absent do not have to make up this lesson.

Wednesday, January 5th

rawsgordon — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 18:01:28 +0000

Today, our lesson was about how to write a strong controlling idea. Here is the Power Point presentation we used. There is no homework, but students were encouraged to review their notes and download this presentation.

Tuesday, January 4th

rawsgordon — Tue, 04 Jan 2011 15:53:59 +0000

Today, we practiced creating a graphic organizer that students are to recreate from memory when they sit down to write their Eighth Grade Writing Assessment on January 21st. Tomorrow, I will ask them to recreate the graphic organizer from from memory so, for homework, students should use today’s work to practice.

November 9th to November 13th

rawsgordon — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 21:54:43 +0000

Monday, students self-evaluated their essays for sentence variety. They examined the beginning of each sentence of their essay to see what percentage of them began with a preposition or an AAAWWUBBIS word. Parents, ask you students about this important activity. Tuesday, students took a 15-item multiple choice test on the ”Tell-Tale Heart” and the accompanied vocabulary. Then, they either practiced their study sheets for the Spelling Bee or prepared for their role to “act out” their persuasive essay, which was written as a speech of a lawyer in court. Wednesday and Thursday are early release days. I will only see each class once during these days. On these days, we’ll enjoy watching our actors perform their skits. On Friday, we’re going to have our class-level spelling contest so a winner may be selected to represent my classes at the school Spelling Bee.

October 25th to November 5th

rawsgordon — Thu, 28 Oct 2010 18:08:39 +0000

This week, in the spirit of Halloween, we are studying some classic American horror! Our warm-up activity will be listening to and discussing the American murder ballad “Knoxville Girl“. It’s a very famous American folk song that I use as to introduce the themes of conscience, insanity, and criminality. It is through this lens that we examine, in our literature book, Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, another classic story of murder. We exerience the story together, listening to the audio as we read, using this power point for writing and talking breaks as we read. (Students who have been absent need to download it and complete the writing tasks in it).

After this activity, we listen to the short story again, so the students can enjoy it uninterrupted. They have this opportunity to hear the voice of the narrator again, for they will write a persuasive essay using the story. The topic of the essay: Is the narrator a criminal who should be in jail, or a lunatic that should be in a psychiatric hospital? Using this power point, the students will learn how to formulate an argument and a rebuttal within their persuasive essays. These essay will be completed by about Wednesday, November 3rd. Then, each class will use their essays to act out a court scene in which two “lawyers” will argue their cases using the content of their persuasive essays. Students will have a homework assignment in which they have to create “soundtrack” to the the life of Edgar Allen Poe, complete with an “album cover“. Finally, students will take a summative assessment which tests them on this unit’s vocabulary: ballad, conscience, vex, conceive, acute, stealth, crevice, argument, and rebuttal. This unit represents about two weeks of work.

October 12 to October 15

rawsgordon — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 17:31:04 +0000

In order that we apply the skills we’re practicing with quotation marks, we spent this week writing “A Dialogue with a Famous Person”. Students were to create a imaginary discussion between themselves and a person they’ve studied or will study in another subject area. Here is the lesson plan which fully explains what was done. Here are the handouts on Mendeleev, Fibonacci, James Oglethorpe, the assignment sheet with model that I provided to students, and the rubric I will grade the writing with.

Thursday and Friday, October 7th and 8th

rawsgordon — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 20:36:41 +0000

Thursday, I was, once again, away from the students at a professional development class, but that’s finally over. While I was away, the students completed a common assessment on apostrophes, quotation marks, common and proper nouns, and prepositional phrases, material covered in the first nine weeks of school. After they completed the assessment, students read their independent reading novels.

On Friday, students worked in small groups to produce and videotape skits about the ITBS test coming up in Gwinnett County Public Schools week after next. These videos, which will be played during the afternoon annoucements, are intended to motivate students to do well on the ITBS, and to explain why the test is important. Why is it important, you ask? Well, ITBS scores are used to help place students in high school classes; also, ITBS scores are used to compare the performance of Summerour’s students with other students in Gwinnett County and across the nation.

There is no school on Monday. Have a great long weekend!

Wednesday, October 6th

rawsgordon — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 21:01:12 +0000

Today, students shared their dioramas with the class in a short presentation. Then, we worked on a study sheet for tomorrow’s quiz, which is on quotation marks and apostrophes.