Communication is key.
Letters to parents and guardians
Q1 halfway over already?
9/17/2016
Hello!
I hope this note finds you all well. I have enjoyed my first month with your darling. I love teaching middle school because there are so many unique personalities in a room at once! It's never a bore! Perhaps your child has mentioned my ridiculously lame dance moves, the way we enjoy our reading time, or one of our writing prompts. I hope your kiddo is enjoying class as much as I am! We just finished up our unit on folk literature. The test was Friday and those grades will be in the gradebook this weekend. I think the comic about Perseus and Medusa myth may have been the favorite! Monday we will begin a new novel, Ungifted by Gordon Korman, as a class. Students will participate in a Socratic seminar discussion. Socratic seminar combines the social aspects of learning with the power of questioning. Students will be asked a guiding question before reading and will respond in their journals. We will then read a few chapters, and students will use sticky notes to mark passages that connect to the guiding question or generally spark their interests. Finally, we will discuss the guiding question together, and after hearing the viewpoints of their classmates, students will expand upon their original written answers. Socratic seminar allows students an opportunity to think critically, articulate thoughts, and appreciate the opinions of others. I know they will enjoy it and learn a great deal. We will continue writing daily in our journals. We have several drafts so far, and next week students will select one to edit, revise, and polish. These finished pieces will be placed in portfolios eventually passed on to seventh grade English teachers. We will write several more drafts and select another to finalize at the end of the quarter. The DAR essays will be completed in mid-October, at the beginning of quarter two. More information about that in the next email. Next week students will receive information about the Varsity Letter E. That information is on my website under Resources. We are currently reviewing parts of speech. This is often a struggle for students when taught in isolation via worksheets, so I try to connect the lessons to our own writing. Students who have a solid grasp of the content will complete extension activities. In Advisory, we are currently listening to Serafina and the Black Cloak by Robert Beatty, the first in a trilogy of books about a girl who lives in the basement of Biltmore Estate. I was lucky enough receive a class set of the novel from the author himself and have met him several times. Hopefully we will take a trip to Biltmore Estate after the SOLs so we can see in person how the novel connects to the history of our region. As always, please feel free to contact me with questions or concerns. I keep my website current with class events and homework, often including documents students need for studying. Remember that the Funbook has those same notes for review purposes as well. Thanks for your continued support. The parent/guardian survey is still active. For those of you who have not yet responded, please feel free to do so! Have a great weekend! -Aimee
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