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.