Update for Sept. 28 - Forensic Anthropology

             Today we are starting our Forensic Anthropology Unit. We will be close reading informational articles related to the field of forensic science and exploring author's techniques in these articles. 
Today we will watch a video and do an online simulation of forensic pathology in action.

Simulation Instructions

• Use your Reader/Writer's Notebook (Journal) to answer the questions in this activity. 
• Click on this link to begin the simulation: The Secret in the Cellar
• Stop on slide 14 and read "Can you date the site?"
• What date do you guess?
• Stop on slide 16 and discuss the activities with your partner. 
• Write down your guess for gender, age, and ancestry.
• Was your guess correct?
• At slide 21, write, in your own words, the definitions of perimortem, antemortem, and postmortem
• At the slide 24 activities, look at the pictures and browse through the captions (some difficult words here). 
• At slide 26, make your prediction.
• Read through to the end. How close was your prediction? 
• Now go to Google Classroom and complete the activity.

Helpful Links for Writing and Final Due Date for Essay

As you are finishing your rough drafts, please use the following links to help you with word choices and transitions:

Transitions
Powerful and Meaningful Words to Use as Alternatives to "Show"

Just to clarify dates: Final draft of your essay will be due on Wednesday, Sept. 30.  After today, we will not be working on it during class. If you need more time with the computer or help from me, please come early in the morning, right after school, or during PA.

Another helpful hint--your paragraph numbers should be at the end of the sentence that references the text in parenthesis, before the period.

For example:

Unlike Americans, Europeans detest air conditioning and refuse to use it because of its potential hazardous effects on the environment (par. 6).

If you are quoting the text, your citation should be after the quotation marks and before the period:

In Germany, for example, "a recent government website offered sweating citizens the advice of turning on a fan and only 2% of the homes are air-conditioned" (par. 8).

Please look at Purdue University's Online Writing Lab for more examples.

Vocab Test Next Wednesday

I had a great time at the picnic last night and enjoyed the food, company, and the music presented by Mr. Jones. Thanks to Catherine Duncan and our PTSA for a wonderful evening!

Tips for Studying for our Vocabulary Test

This is a reminder that we have a vocabulary test on Wednesday. Many students have asked how they should study for the test.  Here are some suggestions:

• Read all our notes from our vocabulary lessons in class. The words are posted on this blog, but your notes should also have additional information from our class discussions. 
• Review the Study Guide and review the vocabulary notes to see where we covered each of the concepts in the study guide. 
• Review all your words maps and make sure you know several synonyms, antonyms, and words that share the same word parts for each vocabulary word.
• You should know the word parts -- prefix, root, and suffix-- and be familiar with their meaning. Know how word endings change the part of speech of a word.

• For example, in the sentence 
• "Because most voters are apathetic, the city council is concerned about voter turnout on Election Day." 
• You should be able to answer the following questions:
• Which part of the sentence is the dependent clause?
• Which part of the sentence is the independent clause?
• What are the subjects and predicates of each clause?
• What part of speech is apathetic?
• Another example:
• In the sentence, "The sad student rebuked herself for her careless mistake on the math test. "
• What are the subject, predicate, and direct object of this sentence?
• Is the verb transitive or intransitive? 
• What is the part of speech of rebuked?
• What are the prepositions in this sentence? What are the prepositional phrases? 
• Please use the grammar links on my blog or the textbooks in our classroom if you need help or ask me questions if you don't understand something!

Fungi Extra Credit

Read the following article from the Daily Tar Heel:

Culture Shock: Surrounded by Norts and water bottles

Prompt:

Read this opinion statement from the Daily Tar Heel. How does this article connect to the air-conditioning article? Respond in an ACES paragraph.

A: Answer the prompt

C: Cite evidence and use parenthetical citations. (You can use more than one piece of evidence.)

E: How do these pieces of evidence prove your claim?

S: Summarize and conclude the paragraph

Only do this after you have finished your graphic organizer.

Update for Week Ending September 18

Parent Night Follow-up

Thanks to everyone who came to Parents' Night last night. I enjoyed meeting with all of you and speaking with those parents who came up to me after.  I'm sorry I didn't get to talk with more of you. We will be having an ELA Curriculum Night in October, and we will have more specific information about our ELA units this year.

One thing I spoke about is the importance of students keeping organized binders.  It is helpful for students to be able to find important papers in each class quickly.  Instructional time is lost if students are going through stacks of papers looking for their homework or for that article or graphic organizer that we are working on that day. Here's some suggestions for how to set up and maintain an organized binder if you need some help:

Binder Organization Tips

Student Support

I also wanted to let parents know that I am available to support students before school and after school on Tuesday and Thursday mornings.  Please encourage your child to take advantage of these times if they have questions or feel like they need extra help.

Weekly Update

This week in Language Arts we introduced the ACES format for planning an essay. If you haven't heard of it, ACES stands for:

A-Answer the Prompt
C-Cite Evidence
E-Explain/Elaborate
S-Summarize

Students are using the ACES organizing strategy to plan their analytical essays on an informational text that we read last week.  Writing ability varies from student to student, so we have made several different templates available:

Basic ACES Organizer for Essays
Analytical Prompt - Standard ACES Format 
Analytical Prompt - Support Version
Analytical Prompt - Advanced Version

I have assigned these templates to students based on my observations of individual needs. However, if you feel you need more support or more of a challenge, please feel free to use a different template.

Here is an example of a completed essay to give you a preview of what you are going to do next:

Example of ACES Essay on Central Idea

As always, please contact me if you have questions.

Update for the Week of September 9

What a crazy week it's been so far. I am so proud of our 8th-graders for their behavior during our unexpected dismissal yesterday.  The students' positive attitude and behavior made a difficult situation easier to handle.

This week we are continuing to work on analyzing informational text to find and prove the central idea. The students are reading an article about changing attitudes toward air conditioning in Europe and completing a graphic organizer to help them determine and defend the central idea.

Grade Level

Below grade level

Advanced

This work is being done in small groups in class.  We will be working on ACES essays about this article next week.  

We will complete our vocabulary for Unit 1 this week and will have an assessment late next week.   Students should be completing Word Maps (Remember to add in Word Families.) at home for each word that we cover.  Please check the Fungi Team Homework Page for ELA daily homework assignments. 

Students should also be reading a book of their own choice for 20 minutes every night (5 nights per week).  If they come across our vocabulary words, they should write down the sentence, book name, and page number to share with the class.  

Also, a few things to remember: 

• Bring a book to read in ELA every day
• Bring a notebook or a folder with lined paper for journal writing by Sept. 18. This will be left in the classroom. 
• I am available to help those who need it on Tuesdays and Thursdays after school till 3:45 or mornings at 7:50. 

Please feel free to call (919-929-7161, ext. 51701) or email me if you have any questions.  

Thanks!

Back in the Swing!

The work is starting to kick up this week, and I think many of our Fungi students are feeling it.  Please let us know if your child is feeling stressed or is not able to keep up with the work.

We started with our vocabulary instruction on Monday.  I have explained to the students that they will learn forty new words this quarter.  So far his week we have learned abhor and apathy. Homework on Monday was to complete a word map for each word.  Some students, who scored 90% or greater on the vocabulary pre-assessment, have been given an alternate set of words.  We will complete ten words over the next two weeks and then will have a quiz.
Here's the list of all words for Unit 1, if you would like a preview:

Vocabulary Unit 1

Word Map  (Don't forget to add in the Word Families under the Picture box.  Write three examples of other words using the same prefix, root, or suffix.)

Today, Tuesday, we completed our close reading of "Hey Mom, I'm Home!" with a discussion of Central Idea.  Students completed a graphic organizer asking them to write the central idea based on evidence.  Here is a summary of the work that was done in all classes:

Central Idea Graphic Organizer

We also read the article about the "Kennewic Man," in preparation for a Fish Bowl Seminar Discussion with Ms. Martin.   We did not get a lot of time in class to read the article twice, so students might need to review it this evening before completing their homework.

Kennewic Man
Discussion Questions

Please remember that I'm available on Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 7:50 and Tues/Thurs afternoons from 3:15-3:45 for students who need extra help.  Please feel free to call or email me if you have questions.