Middle School English and Bible Update

Here is the brief monthly update!  Happy March!

7th English: We're in the middle of a Short Story "Coming of Age" Unit!  I am having a wonderful time reading and discussing rich literature from Hemingway, Trudeau, Hughes, Kipling, and more. This unit has nine short stories, and we only have three left to read.  Students have also been writing reflections, demonstrating their understanding of theme, and learning more about internal and external conflict.  I especially enjoyed the students' narrative essays titled "Seventh Grade" after we read Gary Soto's short story, Seventh Grade.  Additionally, we have continued with grammar lessons.  We will complete our grammar unit this Thursday and will begin our new novel unit, Breaking Through by Francisco Jimenez, when we return from break.

7th Bible: We are in the middle of our unit on The Prophets.  This unit covers ALL of the writing prophets and relates their messages us, while giving us a better understanding of God's redemptive history.  We will complete this unit when we return from break.  The memory passage for this unit is Malachi 3:1-6, ESV.  The students can work on this memorization over the break!

8th English: Students did SUCH a wonderful job with Shakespeare, and I thoroughly enjoyed reading their papers supporting their theme of A Midsummer Night's Dream.  Additionally, many of their coinciding projects were fantastic and gave a deeper insight into the drama and the characters. We also finished our Flowers for Algernon unit and had amazingly deep discussions on this riveting literary work by Daniel Keyes.  I was impressed with the written essay response on the assessment for this story, and I can see the growth in their writing and their higher level thinking skills.  Right now we are deep into grammar and will be concluding our current grammar unit before break.  When the students return from break, we will be jumping into our next novel, Lord of the Flies by William Golding.  This novel is an allegory for society as a whole, and the students really get into it!  More writing will take place in this unit as will deep class discussions as we dig into the symbolism of this work.

8th Bible: We are currently in The Reformation in church history.  While most of our students have a solid foundation of understanding, this unit goes much deeper into the meaning behind The Reformation and the results as far as the impact on the church, the Body of Christ.  The reformers have been an inspiration to the students, and we have had excellent class discussions on justification, sanctification, and emphasizing how  The Word of God is our refuge and strength.  The memory passage for this unit is Eph. 2:4-9, ESV. 

Thank you!