Moving forward

The fourth six weeks is coming to an end! We have accomplished so much since the beginning of this semester! Students have taken a practice STAAR benchmark, and they have completed their fourth six weeks CBA. Everyone is working really hard! We are also coming to. A close on our study of the persuasive genre. Students have created outlines on issues they have chosen to argue. Final essays are about to begin, and I am looking forward to some great arguments!

Parents, continue to encourage our students in EVERYTHING they do. Students, keep rockin it in class! We are soaring to success!

Problem/Solution Infomercials

Students worked really hard completing their final exam projects.  Here are some wonderful examples from different class periods.

After viewing the videos, what do you notice about each one?

What was done well?  How could the creators of these videos improve what they have done for their target audience?  Where the solutions they presented for their problem logical?   

Choosing a Topic-Infomercial Final exam Project

We are moving along through our study of Expository texts.  For the final exam project, students will be creating an Infomercial highlighting a topic that focuses on a problem we see either in our school, community, or world.  Students will work in groups of THREE and develop an infomercial where ALL group members are responsible for developing and finding evidence to support their own solution.

By the end of class today, Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2011, ONE person from your group needs to post a comment with the following information:

• Names of ALL people in your group
• Topic/Problem
• Three Solutions: Who is focusing on which solution?
• 
  
• EXAMPLE: 
• John, Sarah, Jim
•  Topic: Littering in City Parks  
• Solutions:
• John: Installing trashcans
• Susan: Organizing "trash pick-up days" for volunteers
• Jim: Creating signs that remind people to throw their trash away 

Good Luck and make sure you are not wasting time!! :-) 

-Mrs. Carvajal

8th Grade Field Trip

The 8th graders had a wonderful opportunity to visit Alley Theater today.  What a wonderful way to expose our students to Drama (stage plays).  It has been a while since we have talked about this genre in class; however, it is always great to read what students thought about certain elements of the play.

Think about the following:

• Stage Direction:  WHAT is it & HOW was this element exemplified in the play? 
• Dialogue:  HOW was this used to help shape the characters?  (make them unique)
• Theme:  What was the overall MESSAGE the author, Charles Dickens, was trying to convey in the play? 
• What was your favorite part of the play?  Why, please explain in 3-4 sentences.  
• What part did you not understand/were confused about?  WHY do you think that is?

Post your answer. :-) 

Comparing Genres: Expository and Poetry

The poems have been selected and the annotating is beginning!  As we work toward our analysis paper, great thinking is happening.  This short week will focus on students analyzing and annotating a poem of their choosing and an expository article.  The next step will be to compare the two genres.  As we work on this, we will focus on a few elements:

• topic
• organization
• tone
• conflict

What do these things mean?  What do they look like in a text?  Why are they important elements to focus on? Post your response.

Poetry: AGAIN!!

For the sake of our analysis paper, we are coming back to poetry.  The students are really liking reading poems, and the thinking they are doing with it is fabulous!  Right now, we are focusing on TONE, how the author FEELS about the subject they are writing about.  We have learned that there are certain elements, or features, that we can look at to help us figure out what the tone of a poem may be:

• Diction: word choice
• Imagery
• Details
• Language
• Sentence Structure

We are also trying to come up with better words to help us DESCRIBE the TONE of a poem.  We want to move beyond the simple words: happy, mad, sad, excited.  What are some synonyms for these words?  How can we describe the different levels of these feelings that we see in poetry and hear in music?  Post some ideas.  What do you think?!?!

Scan the code and come up with some new TONE words. :-)



Expository Texts: How does an Author organize these texts?

In Language Arts, we have been looking at Expository text structures.  Basically, how are these types of texts organized and WHY???  We discovered that there are 5 basic ways that an author can organize these texts:

• problem/solution
• cause/effect
• sequence
• comparison
• description

As we looked at examples of these types of structures, we s[ent time discussing WHY an author would choose to write this way?  What is the purpose for writing in "cause/effect" structure?  Students did a wonderful job with these questions.  We found that authors write in certain ways because they want their reader to understand information in a CERTAIN WAY. 

The 8th grade Language Arts teachers strongly encourage that parents read these types of texts with their students.  Look through a newspaper or magazine and read an article together.  How is it organized?  How do you know?  WHY? 

Happy Reading!!