December/January News...
Readers' Workshop has had students enmeshed in a number of different historical fiction novels, which they are reading in small Lit. Circle groups. These historical fiction narratives have been the springboard for discussions on how writers craft fictional narratives, focusing on lessons about telling the story (using focus, details, & structure), developing dialogue,and using powerful word choices. When we complete our historical fiction Lit. Circle work, we will be embarking on a poetry unit in January.
Our current Read-Aloud is Greg Mortenson's Three Cups of Tea, a nonfiction narrative tracing Greg's journey to build schools and futures throughout Pakistan. We have also read a number of nonfiction narratives in the Literature Anthologies, including "My Furthest Back Person" by Alex Haley and "From an American Childhood" by Annie Dillard, in order to immerse ourselves in that writing genre.
Writers' Workshop has students developing fictional narratives based on the historical topic of their Lit. Circle books. For this narrative, students are drafting electronically, attempting to incorporate all of the essential elements of narrative writing. After vacation, we will revise and edit to create scrapbook pages for this narrative assignment. Eighth grade peers will be critiquing these scrapbook pages, in an effort to expand viewer audience and motivate student writers!
After practicing with a couple of MCAS open-response questions and receiving feedback from peers & from me, students have written reflection letters about their MCAS writing. They have begun to look insightfully at their own writing, to reflect upon what they do well as writers and what they need to work on as writers. This should be excellent preparation for their Long Composition testing in March.
Word study warm-ups continue to center on vocabulary development and grammar lessons. Our unit on verbs currently focuses on types & tenses, as well as the importance of verb choice and using consistent tenses in our writing. Our vocabulary and grammar lessons each culminate in different forms of mini-assessments.