Reader's Workshop Introduction

We had a great start to the Reader's Workshop Unit.  The students chose biographies, autobiographies, or memoirs that were "just right" or a little above their reading level. Yesterday, we talked about the goals and expectations of the unit. Please see the Reader's Workshop Introduction and Expectations presentation for more information.

There are two key parts to the Reader's Workshop. The first is a daily and weekly focus on specific reading strategies or grammar concepts. These will be introduced in a mini-lesson. After a brief practice and then sharing with a partner, students will be expected to use these strategies or identify the grammatical structure in their reading. Progresse will be assessed each week with a short  quiz on Fridays.

The other key component of the Reader's Workshop is the teacher/student conference. This gives students an opportunity to set goals and identify challenges that they want to address. It also gives the teacher another opportunity to assess individual student progress.

This week's mini-lessons are on context clues and prepositions.  There will be a brief quiz on Friday to test the students' understanding of these concepts.

The following links should be helpful to those who missed class this week:

• Reader's Workshop Introduction and Expectations
• Context Clue Mini-Lesson
• Context Clue Practice 
• Fun Context Clue Video

As always, thank you for your support. Please email me if you have questions or concerns. 

Stay warm and safe!

Enjoy the Snow Days!

I hope everyone is enjoying the snow days.  The Opinion Essay is due tomorrow, Feb. 18.  If you have checked and you are sure it is ready, you can submit it to me through Google Classroom. However, students who need a little more time because of the snow days, you can turn it in by Friday. Please make sure that you have completed your Persuasion Map #2 and your Advanced ACES Outline before you work on your essay.

Please email me if you have questions and enjoy these days off.

Wrapping Up the Opinion Unit

We are finishing up our unit on reading and writing an opinion statement.  We began the unit with an Accountable Talk lesson in which students learned to participate in class discussion.  We noticed that some students need to work on talking more, but many others need to work on listening more.  We are applying these skills to our reading and writing lessons.  

The main focus of the past three weeks has been reading, summarizing, and analyzing position papers.  We found that the students are really good at summarizing, but the analyzing proved to be more difficult.  Students learned critical reading and thinking skills by identifying the thesis, claims, and evidence in articles on opposing sides of a controversial issue.  This week students really stretched their mind as they were asked to form their own opinions and write an essay based on their own opinion with their own claims and supporting evidence.  We used Accountable Talk discussion, a graphic organizer, and the ACES outline to help them plan their essays.   

Students should have turned in their ACES outline yesterday and their final essay is to be turned in, submitted through Google Classroom, by Wednesday, Feb. 18.  The assignment, rubric, and supporting documents are all in Google Classroom.  It would be great if a parent or older sibling could read the students’ essays before they turn in their final copy.  

Ms. Grinnell and I are looking forward to starting a Reader’s Workshop in our classes next week. Students will be choosing a biography, autobiography, or memoir, and we will be reading and setting goals for improving their reading skills.  This is a much more individualized form of instruction than they are accustomed to and we think the students will enjoy it. More about this next week!

Thanks so much for you support of our students. Please email me if you have questions.

United Against Terror

Here is the link to the United Against Terror article.
6th period - please send me a brief email stating why you think this article could be used to support the claim that releasing CIA reports may provoke terrorists to attack the US.

Great Week!

We had a very busy week this week. I have been enjoying getting to know the students better and they have been learning my expectations.

We finished reading the Pro/Con article and are working on our opinion papers. The students are writing opinion papers using the Advanced ACES format.

Here's a copy of the outline for the ACES essay.

Please feel free to email me if you have any questions. My email is hmotta@chccs.k12.nc.us.