Gymblast
When we were at Outdoor Ed, we started to plan as Grade 8 leaders for Gymblast. Gymblast will take place this Friday, Oct. 13th in the morning. Students are to dress in their group colour. We will be in the gym all morning enjoying team building activities with the grade six and seven classes and showing off our leadership skills.
ELA
We are still doing Telling One's Life Story unit. Students have created their Adobe Spark stories called My Life in 30 Words. We will finish up this project this week with any students who have to still record their voice. Still left to complete in this unit is finishing the novel that I have been reading to the students called The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen. Students will be also reading a couple of short stories that involve some deep issues such as self esteem and responding to these stories with questions and reflections. Students have completed the RADs which is a reading assessment that involves making predictions, finding main ideas, making inferences and making connections. I will be taking some time this week to go over the RAD with the student so that they can look towards setting some goals. I find it is nice to do goal setting around this time as they have had the chance to receive feedback from the assignments that they have completed so far and therefore can set some realistic goals for themselves.
I will also be going over Better Than a Book Reports with the students this week so that they understand the expectations of book reports in grade 8. I have a tab on the blog for this so students and parents are welcome to look at this to get an idea of the expectations. I like doing book reports with the students because it requires them to read which for some students I know that they may not enjoy reading. It also requires students to work on their writing skills by creating an interesting book talk to go with the book report. It also helps to improve students speaking and presenting skills because they need to present their project and book in front of the class.
I will also be taking some time to teach students about persuasive writing and students will have an opportunity to complete a persuasive writing piece on whatever topic they choose. Other than picking their topic, this will be done during class time.
Math
We completed our first unit and students will be getting their tests back on Tuesday. We are currently learning about Ratios, Rates and Proportional Reasoning. I provide a lot of opportunities for students to practice the concepts that they are learning in Math and so you will probably find that if your child has homework, it is usually in Math. My goal is that they will go into Grade 9 feeling confident with the concepts that they have learned in Grade 8. There are many concepts to teach in Grade 8 and therefore, to stay on top of things, I do find that math homework is common for many students.
How's My Child Doing
At the end of every month, students will be bringing home any of the assignments that I have corrected and returned to them. (I didn't do this at the end of September, so they may be bringing things home at the end of this week) Your child may have already told you how they did on the assignment but this will allow you to see first hand how they are doing. You may find that sometimes there are more assignments in some months and subjects than in other months and subjects. The big thing to understand is that it is not about the quantity of assignments but the quality of assignments. For example, in ELA this month the Adobe Spark video was a bigger project and took more time to complete. So although you may only see two or three assignments in ELA it would be because it was a bigger project assignment which had a lot of quality to it.
In Health, you may not see an assignment at all in that month. That is because Health has less minutes in a week compared to Math. Therefore, we may be working an assignment a lot longer in Health because there is not as many minutes in Health.
When it comes time to putting pieces that students are proud of or pieces that the students need to work on in their portfolio, you will most likely have seen all of the pieces and won't be surprised by the marks your child is receiving and this is a good thing! It will allow your child to talk more to that piece at Student Involved Conferences!
Marking and Progress Reports
As you are aware, marking and progress reports have changed quite a bit this year. It is definitely a new learning experience for me. This is why when I mark an assignment, I put a lot of thought and effort and analyzing into the assignment. I also have been constantly chatting with the students ahead of time about how an assignment will be marked and include rubrics for marking. I also explain to the students what does a Meeting and an Enriched Understanding look like. I will usually write a comment to explain things a bit further on the rubric as well.
I understand that it is a new process for you as well as me. If you have any questions at all, I would encourage you to make sure to call me. I would actually prefer that you call me rather than send me an email. It is much easier to explain the process in a phone call than in an email. As you are seeing in this long winded email! :)
Homework Updates and Remind:
Now that I am using Remind, I will most likely update you about homework this way rather than going back to my blog and updating it that way in the homework tab. I find it easier to update you about homework and projects through Remind.
Hopefully in the future, my emails shouldn't be quite as long as this one but with the beginning of the year, there is a lot to say!
Enjoy Your Thanksgiving Day!
