BINDER  CORE:                 4/8/2013

QUARTER’S END The 3rd quarter ends Thursday (4/11).

Friday (4/12), is a teacher work day to finish grades—students do not have classes. For the most part, work completed this week will start off the 4th quarter grade.

GRADES [repeat]

I continue to receive a lot of emails, phone calls, and other communications regarding grades. Most of this is a repeat from last week. Please allow me time and space to offer global comments.

My first recommendation is to have a conversation with your student(s). Communication with a middle-school student can be difficult (to put it mildly). It is the best starting point. I ask the students to do the same thing—communicate with the parents. Going around people, asking not to tell “so-and-so”, and other tactics do not support good communication. Please do not ask me to do something I would not do with my children. Communicate…communicate…communicate. If at first you do not succeed, try again, but use a different approach.

My second recommendation is to use EdBox. I spend a lot of time entering grades and comments in a timely manner. Please read the assignment description (the narrative explaining the assignment) and any comments I entered regarding the assignment of the student. In most cases, if the grade is 79% or below I enter specific comments about the student’s performance. If the assignment was a multiple-choice quiz, however, I just enter the score. There is little comment necessary.

EdBox will provide a sensible and appropriate snapshot of the student’s grade. At the beginning of a new grading period it is a little skewed, however, owing to the lack of assignments. A poor performance on one of the two assignments at the beginning of the grading period will have a large influence on the grade at the time. If you do not have access to EdBox, check with the office for instructions on how to access the system.

Third, and final suggestion, is to communicate with me. Please do your homework before contacting me (the first and second recommendations) so that we can discuss grades from an enlightened position. You will have to complete the first two step anyways, so you might as well get them over with before communicating with me.

I have met and had fantastic conversations with a good number of parents and students in the past several weeks. It is wonderful to sit down and make sure everyone is on the same page and to hash out any issues. Please let me know if you would like to have a conversation, but please do so sooner than later. My schedule is a bit hectic and I want to work with you to schedule meaningful time together.

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READING 4TH QUARTER DISCUSSION GROUPS [repeat]

Students will be reading and working on the first assignment of the fourth quarter’s discussions this week. The list of chapters or pages to read and each person’s assignment is listed on the bookmarks that were handed to each student in class last week. The assignments for the fourth quarter and the bookmarks are available on the “Reading” page of my website.

I recommend keeping the bookmark and assignment with the novels the students are reading. Students should work on the assignment as they read, not try and cull meaningful quotes or descriptions after reading the entire section. The only exception might be the summarizer, but even then the student could be summarizing each chapter into a sentence as s/he goes. Yes, reality says that most students will not do that. It would, however, make their lives a lot easier.

Discussion #5 assignments are due at the beginning of class on Thursday (4/18) and the discussion is Friday (4/19). Students will complete the “post discussion” portion of the assignment after the discussion and submit it to the correct (AM or PM) reading tray.

The assignments, like all good things, have changed slightly. Rather than focusing on a specific task, the assignments will be a bit of a hodge-podge of literary and linguistic fun. There are different versions of the assignments. Some will ask students to create discussion questions, draw a picture, and find a few quotes. Other assignments will ask students to describe characters, the setting, and the plot. As always, directions should clearly delineate the expectations and the point values. Questions should be asked earlier, rather than later.

LITERARY SCRAPBOOK The culminating activity for the fourth quarter discussion

novel is a literary for a significant character in the novel. Students will be constantly and continually reminded (which, of

course, means that most of them will forget) to take notes and document information on their character as they read. It is too difficult to comb through a 200+ page novel after reading to cull information on a character. It can be done, but it is much more difficult.

For the chosen character, students will be creating a scrapbook—a visual and written memento illustrating several aspects of the character’s life within the novel.

As students read the novel, create a scrapbook that represents a main character. This is an opportunity to use creativity—add art, poetry, music to demonstrate your “reading” of the book. You will be given thirty minutes a week to work on the scrapbook. You will be provided a minimum of seven work sessions before the project is due. The scrapbook is due at the beginning of class on Friday, June 7. You will make a brief presentation of your scrapbook to the class. There are only four rules:  

1. The scrapbook must be at least twenty pages long—the front of the scrapbook should be decorated, but does not count as one of the twenty pages.

2. Your scrapbook must demonstrate that you’ve read the entire book.

3. Your scrapbook must include writing. 4. Okay…there are only three rules. I just like to use

numbers.

Please do not fool yourself…the 30+ minutes provided each week are barely sufficient to complete the artistic aspect of this project. Students who do not keep up with the work will suffer. I will be awarding weekly “work” points for progress attempted and made.

Students have been given a handout delineating the requirements and providing a list of suggestions. Questions, alternatives, and variances should be discussed sooner than later for the project.

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WRITING

POETRY POTPOURRI We continue our voyage into poetry.

Students will be working on a different type of poem at the beginning of class every day this week. At the end of the week (4/11, because there is no school on Friday 4/12), the openers are due. This is a departure from the online calendar, but I have updated

that silly thing. The types and variety of poems may

include an acrostic, shape, ABC, etc. The idea is to expose the students to a variety of poetry and to have them experiment by creating examples for each type.

VOCABULARY #13 We will not start list #13 (or whatever the real list’s number

is for an individual or group based on their progress and development in vocabulary) until next week.

Again, we continue to struggle with the same issues. Many regular vocabulary students are using part, parts, or all of the definition to provide context for the vocabulary words. Many Word Within the Word students are still not rereading the example sentences with the definition they created to see if their definition “fits and makes sense” in the example sentence. I have pontificated on this subject ad nauseum. During the fourth quarter I will simply hand back the entire assignment for revision. My repeated requests and offers for help have fallen upon deaf ears (what?).

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HISTORY CURRENT EVENT #13

We will not start current event #13 until next week and the news item must come from Asia. We only have two more world regions left to study—Oceania and Europe.

The daily show presentations have been falling a bit flat. Students are not coming to class prepared and rehearsed in what they will be presenting. The reading time I provide the daily show groups should be used for practicing transitions, “commercials”, special segments, etc. The twenty minutes should be used effectively and with a purpose. That, unfortunately, is not happening.

In an effort to adapt and make things better, I will be slightly altering the format of the presentations in order to help students. The assignment will remain roughly the same, but the presentation will be from the article. I will review the updated guidelines and expectations with the students this week. I presented an example as part of the current event #12 review last week.

MEDIEVAL STORYLINE Each student will choose five entries,

from the twelve submitted to finalize into a medieval journal. Students will work this week to select, workshop, edit, revise, and rework the entries. Students will continue to work on the entries next week, adding visuals and historical flavor to the entries, and a finalized journal is due at the beginning of class on Tuesday, April 16.

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