NAME:
Ms. Borkowski
SCHOOL:
Madison Meadows
CLASS:
7th and 8th Grade Language Arts
SCHOOL PHONE:
602-664-7600 (the fastest way to reach me is mborkowski@msd38.org)
I am delighted to be here at Madison Meadows teaching seventh and eighth
grade language arts. Over the last twenty-two years, I have taught middle
school, high school, undergraduate, and graduate level students. I'm happy to
report that middle schoolers are my favorites.
I earned my undergraduate degrees in English and Psychology from the
University of Notre Dame. I earned my Masters in Education from the
University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
My hobbies include reading, traveling, golfing, biking, and
watching Notre Dame basketball and football.
My goal is to help students become better readers, writers, speakers, and
thinkers. My mission is to create a supportive learning environment with
well-crafted, standards-based lessons that enable students to sharpen their
skills, develop their voices, and understand and appreciate a variety of
literary works. I hope to help each student grow in achievement and
confidence. I will work hard this year to make learning meaningful and fun
for students!
Seventh graders will be studying short stories, novels, folklore, nonfiction
texts, and poetry. In the second quarter, they will be reading either
Mildred Taylor's Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, or Francisco Jimenez's The
Circuit. In the fourth quarter, they will be reading Lois Lowry's prize-
winning book, The Giver, or Sharon Creech's Walk Two Moons. They will be
studying language mechanics in class (grammar, capitalization, punctuation,
spelling) and writing either in class or at home each and every night.
Students will have quizzes on Fridays over recent reading assignments,
vocabulary/spelling, grammar, capitalization, or punctuation.
Eighth graders will be studying the play version of "The Diary of Anne
Frank"; George Orwell's important book, "Animal Farm"; short stories by
Shirley Jackson, Gary Paulsen, Robert Cormier, Walter Dean Myers, Isaac
Asimov, and Amy Tan; Harper Lee's classic, "To Kill a
Mockingbird"; and poems from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and Walt Whitman to
e.e. cummings and Nikki Giovanni. See the calendar on this website for a
tentative schedule for the year.
