Monday, March 31, 2014

Testing, testing... is this thing on?



The first day of testing was today, and I believe it went really well!  The students seemed up to the task and said that it was mostly easy for them.  That is always an encouraging sign. 

Please make sure your student comes to school with No.2 pencils, an eraser, and they are also allowed to bring a snack for the break times.  Also, bottled water is permitted in the classroom.

We only do testing for 2-3 periods of the day, but I still am not giving homework this week to ensure complete rest and focus. 

Enjoy your week!



Thursday, March 13, 2014

MARCHing Onward!

Here's a glimpse of middle school happenings in the classroom...

7th Bible: Our current unit is on prayer.  The students will be keeping prayer journals (starting on Monday), and we are learning the various prayers of our Biblical role models to explore what God's word says about prayer.  The students just memorized a scripture passage of their own choosing according to the topic of prayer.   

7th English: Our current unit is on folk tales and legends as we explore literature from other cultures.   The students will also be listening to several speeches along with writing and executing their own persuasive speech.  For grammar, we continue to classify sentences as we become confident with parts of speech and their various roles in a sentence.  Writing and vocabulary are always on the agenda, and we only have ONE lesson left in our vocabulary books!  Way to go, guys!

8th Bible: We continue in our study of church history as we learn about Roman Catholicism and the rise of Islam.  The students just memorized various Bible verses that have the phrase "one another" in them since we are studying the importance of unity and community within the body of Christ. 

8th English:  Our poetry unit is underway, and students are currently reading, analyzing, and writing various forms of poetry as well as learning about a variety of poets. Soon (the end of March) we will begin reading the classic novel, Lord of the Flies.  The students will also be writing PSA's (public service announcements) and creating multimedia presentations.  Grammar lessons continue through the venues of proofreading, editing, and classifying sentences.  In vocabulary, we only have one lesson left, and then we will begin an analogies unit that encompasses vocab as well. 

Keep pushing, kids!

Love,
Mrs. A