Minutes+2011

May 14 1. Steph is going to do the favorite character prompt for TKM - how did this person positively influence his/her community. 2. For Grade 7: Every class finish theme and multigenre/multimedia project. Work on report writing for NECAP. Consider starting next year with the PN/memoir. 3. We tried to write a fact sheet for a NECAP report, but it is WAY too difficult. Please use the Wilma Rudolph fact sheet and have students write a FULL 5 paragraph report. The prompt should read: __**Using information from the fact sheet, write a report showing what made Wilma Rudolph a famous person.**__

May 8 Alyssa and Julie are discussing the idea of a research project for 7th grade. We are looking at maybe a fact sheet on a black activists (like the Wilma Rudolph 5th grade one). We also want to use the texts to help Julie do the Annotating for Info text unit - TV Than and Now is comparison, Deserts is problem/solution, need to look at Lightning - maybe main idea/detail. For the black Activist - maybe childhood challenges, ways they contributed to the black cause, etc.

Mar. 9

1. We discussed showing //The Long Walk Home// as a way to hook the 8th graders into the Jim Crow. 2. Maybe we can find an auto-biography 3. Memoir is more finely crafted, there are more literary devices intertwined 4. Genre/Craft could also be one of the criteria for the Memoir 5. There is a short biography of Harper Lee - just to let everyone know! ( maybe for a nonfiction annotating text)- What were the influences on her life or what experiences did she have that might have led her to writing TKM

Mar. 5

1. We discussed sharing information with staff about what we have done with edmodo. 2. We are thinking about flip flopping //Roll of Thunder// and Short Stories because we need to get to //Roll of Thunder !// 3. Plan on doing a CR for Eye to Eye. " How does the author use specific repeated imagery (i.e. nature/space or silver & diamonds) to show Turner's connection to the whale?" 4. We should be prepared to start Roll of Thunder and To Kill a Mockingbird. 5. Review of Jim Crow for 8th grade. 6. Next...Annotating of informational texts we should have a primary source ( first person) and then a article related to Jim Crow to bump up for 8th grade. 7. Julie wants to start with Memoir for the 8th grade... tomorrow! 8. How do we get on United Streaming for Jim Crow videos? 9. Clips about annotating informational texts also!

Feb. 14

Steph is out sick. 1. We are going to finish relevant questions students should ask when annotating.

Feb. 13 1. Our Friday notes didn't save! 2. Julie is still working on the Relevant Questions Handout. 3. We have still been looking for short stories. 4.Julie is doing a min lesson/unit on poetry. She is going to do Eye to Eye with them for practice annotating and ready comprehension. 5. We want to have seventh grade do Eye to Eye. 6. This has to do with character development. We need to get them away from worrying about Lizzie. The passage is not about his relationship with Lizzie. She is barely in the text so she is not the one that you concentrate on. 7. Night Walk didn't go well for most of our kids Alyssa will be scoring her kids for only annotating not comprehension. Alyssa scored Oolum and Pete at the Beach. She did comprehension for Eragon not annotating. 8. Someone should find some mask voice poems not as easy as Pete at the Seashore. We also need non-mask voice poems because they will be on the NECAP. We will also have to find poems on different themes. They will ask questions about two poems with the same theme.

Feb. 8

1. Alyssa and Rhondi are at the Outdoor Adventure program! Lucky! 2. Today we started to create a mini lesson on conclusions for the 8th grade final essay. 3. Julie found a great site and printed off handouts. 4. Steph had a model she did with her class yesterday.

Feb. 7

1. We are looking at the assessment for annotating Nightwalk. Rhyming couplets 2. Julie mentioned making a sheet of RQ's depending on what type of literature is being annotated. 3. Julie shared the assessment she created for Reading Comprehension of Little Willy of What do we have to learn from a literary text and a writer as they create relationships... this is about people and how they interact with each other and that is what literature is. You can learn from it... you can watch someone grow. 4. We need to start short stories! We can use Little Willy to help get ready for that because it is a about a relationship 5. Other stories we used last year: //Pink and Say// and //A Secret for Two// 6. We need some harder stories for the upper level kids so we can differentiate. 7. Let's call it Short Stories: A study in relationships
 * 8. HW: Look for hard short stories about relationships!**

Feb. 3

1. Today we discussed the Giver final essay and how we can tweak it for next year. Changing the Criteria chart where it says Giver to Alternate Society. 2. Rohndi will rent The Truman Show from Netflix and he will be ready to start that soon. 3. Remind students to not share any details of the movie! 4. Steph, Julie, and Alyssa will be done with the essay by the end of next week ( Thursday?) 5. One of our CCS is about how the same theme is exemplified differently in a movie and a book. We have discussed potentially using "The Help" or The "Stepford Wives" for this standard. 6. We want kids to address the characters, setting, and theme for the movie. 7. We want them to fill out some sort of chart while they are watching the movie.

Feb. 2

1. (Rohndi is absent today) 2. We are taking a look at our calendar to see where we are! 3. Julie showed us some steps she has been taking with the Giver prompt. She emailed us a slide she created to add to the Compare & Contrast Giver notebook. 4. Today we figured out who could cover our classes when we are on the Outdoor Adventure trip.

Jan. 31

1. We looked at pete at the seashore to see what we want them to annotate for: For Night Walk: 2. **Julie HW:** Find more mask voice poems 3. We are trying to find more mask voice poems today!
 * mood/tone
 * punctuation/caps
 * narrator
 * rhyme scheme
 * mood/tone
 * figurative language - imagery, personification
 * vocab
 * rhyme scheme

Next time: Look for /pull together short story units for 7th and 8th grade!

Jan. 30 1. We discussed the comprehension assessments for our close reading texts. We also discussed our school culture trait of not letting kids get 1s or 2s - either demanding it of capable kids who could be getting 3s, and supporting/reteaching kids who are not quite getting the skill. 2. new texts - pete at the seashore, and Nightwalk 3. Julie HW - put the Eragon and Oolum assessments on the wiki 4. Alyssa HW - retype Nightwalk poem and put on wiki. 5. Look for harder poems! 6. Do Eye to Eye MEA prompt from Lizzie Bright and The Buckminster Boy for close reading and annotating.

Jan. 27 Snow Day!

Jan. 26

Julie had a really great idea for making sure annotating is really working for students. We will give them CRs to go with the texts we have and identify the evidence, but they do not have to answer the CR. Steph created a top hat and organizer for compare contrast Alt Society!-Thank Steph! For homework: Find more texts and come up with CR questions for that text Next year, we will do the compare contrast before we make a list of Alt. Society characteristics

Jan. 24
 * Today we looked at //The Giver// essay assignment and found the Giver Novel Compare & Contrast notebook.
 * We looked at what our criteria would be:
 * Setting
 * Character Traits ( main character, mentor, leadership)
 * Conflict
 * Theme
 * For your final lit circle take out our alternate society criteria and discuss in your lit circle which criteria are present in your novel and which ones are present but perhaps presented somewhat differently.
 * Essential Question: What are the characteristics of the Alternate Society genre?
 * For next year - Character Comparison?

Jan. 23 * WE FINISHED THE ANNOTATING TEXT SCORING GUIDE!!!! - Wee-hoo!
 * We looked at Alyssa's The Rainy Day poem by Longfellow, and discussed using it to annotate for mood - her kids struggled a little with seeing in Eragon where the mood CHANGED - they pointed to outliers instead of really looking at the pattern. The poem is very clear and more simple than the text.
 * We looked at Julie's poem pete at the seashore as a useful text to annotate for author's style and craft (no punctuation, all lower case), rhyme scheme, and mask voice (when the poet takes on the voice of someone or something else). Dramatic voice, where the poet is speaking directly to someone or something (Tyger, Tyger!) is another poetic device we should teach kids about. I don't know what "regular voice" is called in poetry, when the poet is speaking to himself or to the reader!

Jan. 18

1. Julie put a couple of things on the wiki: " Overview of Literary Devices (For Deep Annotating)" and " Glossary of Literary Terms" 2. We can do a review of CUPS and Julie said she is going to have her seventh graders go back and use Favorite Treasure after she does a mini unit on conventions. 3. We are continuing to work on the scoring guide for Annotating. We decided to add in something about 'missed opportunities'. 4. Yesterday in Julie's class she talked about "The Basics". She used pizza as an analogy to explain how the dough, sauce, and cheese is //the basics// and after that everything gets really interesting!

Jan. 17

1. Alyssa will put together a notebook on writing a 5 paragraph and introducing the alt society essay 2. We are finishing up our annotating scoring guide 3. Julie started a notebook about literary devices and she will finish it for homework. DONE - see Annotating Text. I'll attach the Glossary of Literary Devices, but the side with the umbrella is only in a hard copy.

Jan. 12 1. Julie is working on a literary/poetic device notebook. We need to teach/review with kids what literary devices are so they can annotate for them. An intro/recap of literary devices will lead logically into annotating poetry. We can also use a poetry unit to help us introduce Voice as the next writing trait if we wish. 2. Alyssa has been looking at the Jim Crow stuff thinking ahead 3. Rohndi is preparing for snow! We will give students their lit. circle stuff for Wed. today just in case we don't have school tomorrow 4. We are working on an annotating scoring guide. 5. We need to think about what to do next for 7th grade writing. Annotating is very intense and we don't want to burn kids out - we want to mix writing in with annotation practice.

Jan. 10 1. Alyssa and Steph at PBIS conference. 2. Julie and Rohndi are scoring lit circle logs. 3. Julie added some slides to the Close Reading/Annotating Text nb - she added a sort slide for Deep Annotating with Literary Text (Oolum) and several other general info slides. She is still planning on annotating an info text for surface annotations - either Navajo Code Talkers or a slightly easier text, or both.

Jan. 9 1. Julie is doing a short unit on Conventions, focusing on the Big Three editing issues: fragments, run ons, and homonyms. Students will have their Favorite Treasure pieces returned to them with I/C and lead scores, and then begin the editing process and turn them in again to be scored for Conventions (1-2 paragraphs). 2. Julie tweaked the Giver final assessment to have students write a 5 paragraph essay, instead of a 3 3. Alyssa created an annotating bookmark, hopefully Genia will laminate them for us :) 4. Alyssa and her students had a huge discussion about creating meaning for yourself when you read, how it is necessary to be successful at everything!
 * We will require students to list their three reasons in the intro paragraph

Jan. 6 1. Alyssa and Julie talked Friday morning - some of Alyssa's 7th graders are already making Deep Annotations in their literary text samples even as she is starting them on guided practice for Surface Annotations. We think it is FINE to encourage kids to do this - we don't need them to do Surface and Deep Annotations separately anyway, as that would be artificial for most if not all readers. We are only teaching them separately so we can raise everyone's awareness. In conclusion - we decided to change the order of the unit and teach Surface Annotations for Literary Text and then Deep Annotations for Literary Text, rather than Surface Literary then Surface Info, which is what we had thought originally.

2. We need to write up/revise/refine a final assessment for our Alternate Society Unit: a 5 paragraph essay justifying why your lit circle novel belongs in the Alternate Society genre. Writers should use evidence from the Alternate Society Characteristics chart that their class developed. We can certainly combine all 8th grade ideas if you wish. We can even write a rubric specifically for the written part, too, to really hone in on issues of length, development, accurate quoting, etc. 3. Alyssa and Steph had the idea that we should put hints for annotating Info text on the BACK of our Annotating bookmarks - KYB! 4. Julie homework: Set up categorizing for deep text. 5. We reviewed the start of Rhondi's Sentence Combining notebook.

Jan. 5
 * For the bookmark we would like to differentiate between between Surface and Deep but we don't want to make it too complicated!
 * RQ and I will be deep thinking...
 * Let's think about having the students go back to their annotations and highlighting the deep annotations.
 * We are working on a rubric for annotating text!
 * We would like to instill this in students: You are annotating because everything in a text is significant.
 * We need to put our annotating house on the wiki.

Jan. 4


 * Julie and Steph met today ( A.D.- Certification, R.A. - Kenpo)
 * We changed some things in the annotating NB!
 * Steph will email the new version to everyone

Jan. 3
 * Today we taking a look at the annotating notebook and adding the to "deep info" categories. This is
 * We also looked at the powerpoint Alyssa found on text features. Very informative!
 * After reviewing this presentation we decided that "Organization" should definitely be in the "deep" category. "Organization" and "Text Structure" should be combined.
 * We will be helping the students to Use text structure to build meaning!
 * Let's see if we can do some research on : Who is teaching text structure? At what grade level ? Who is being taught? Maybe Cathy Menard can help us find out. Also Jodi might have some information on what lit series is being used at Ella P. Burr.

Tomorrow we need to take a look at the calendar!
 * Next Agenda:**
 * We are behind in 7th grade reading but ahead in 7th grade writing.
 * Ahead in 8th grade reading but behind in 8th grade writing.
 * We might have to bump ROT closer to the end of the year.

Jan. 2
 * Today we are discussing Lit Circles. Today we grabbed the books we needed for each group.
 * We should make a common chart of all of our generalizations for Giver Society.
 * Let's look at the calendar this week so we can make sure we are on task!
 * We will finish the annotating text notebook with 7th graders.
 * We can tweak Alyssa's packet to work with annotating.
 * If we can teach kids what we want them to "take note of" we can score them on that.
 * Alyssa has put the Lit circle calendars on the wiki. Thank you !
 * If you have more students than jobs, Alyssa has 2 students do the summarizer role and if you need to duplicate 2 roles, she does lit. luminary

Dec. 20
 * With 8th grade we will do annotating text and we need to talk about what we should do next for 8th grade:
 * Rohndi offered to do a notebook on combing sentences over break and then we should continue this on a daily/ weekly basis!
 * We also passed out copies of
 * For Organization of informational text we should do a lesson on how different info. texts are organized- we could do a sort just like we did with the NECAP texts.
 * HW: We need to research the way non-fiction is organized - Julie has a handout she found from the internet about different paragraphs to match up with 6 different ways they are organized.
 * We decided to put "Organization" of a non-fiction text into deep thinking.
 * We continued to work on the annotation notebook.
 * Columns for deep annotating? Let's see what we come up with...

Dec. 19
 * Julie Homework-Create an overlay of just the deep annotations
 * We all worked on the annotation notebook, adding text samples for literary surface and informational surface

Dec. 16 Dec. 15 1. This morning we wrapped up our budget questions to get ready to pass them in to Julie tomorrow morning! 2. We worked on labeling Julie's annotations to make sure we are on the same page for this particular lesson. We find that annotating differentiates itself naturally. As we teach kids to annotate more deeply their surface thinking will naturally become deep thinking. Our struggling readers do not even know how to sift through the surface things. Surface thinking doesn't mean bad. Teaching annotation is a process so we will not drop this, we will be doing this throughout the year. 3. Alyssa called Baker and Taylor for us 4. Julie HW: Make the two Oolum annotation overlays for surface thinking and deep thinking. Surface thoughts and deep thoughts. 5. We could make up a list of all the different kinds of annotations that we want to teach kids to make. Kids could check off the different types of annotating they are doing maybe? They can see if they are missing any and we can show their growth from the beginning of the year to the end of the year if we can check off their annotations with their pre-test.
 * Julie created a chart to keep track of the types of students and the types of annotating they use and she made overlays with surface and deep annotations
 * We looked at the close reading notebook

Dec. 14 after school 1. Julie, Steph and Alyssa met to work on the Close Reading/Annotating Text unit and notebook. We read an article called "Beyond the Yellow Highlighter: Teaching Annotation Skills to Improve reading Comprehension by Carol Porter-O'Donnell. The article has some great ideas for teaching annotating - having kids categorize types of annotations, laminating annotation bookmarks for kids to have, reflecting A LOT on annotating, and having different codes for "surface" annotations (5Ws, vocab, important parts) and "deep" annotating (summarizing in your own words, predicting, formulating opinions, asking relevant questions, inferences, analyzing writer's craft, looking for patterns, repetitions and themes, etc.). 2. We like the idea that she doesn't necessarily teach kids to annotate for every possible thing all in one day - they add categories as a class as they arise.  3. Julie annotated the first page of Oolum and our HW is to code S = surface and D= deep, so we are sure we are all on the same page. Our idea is to give kids two different sets of annotations of Oolum, so they are not overwhelmed - surface and deep. We will then guide them through first a noticing activity when we categorize types of annotations together (maybe just the first paragraph of Oolum that is already in the notebook), and then the coding activity where THEY code our annotations. Then we will move to independent practice where they begin to annotate and code themselves. 4. Our questions are: Do you annotated differently for informational text, and if so, how, and is there a Surface and Deep category, and what goes in each of those categories? We will look at the t-chart we did in the Dec. 6 5-8 PLC meeting and see if that helps us. We all had a big discussion about how we did not have any idea how to read nonfiction informational text, so we just stuck with fiction! That's why we teach English and not science! 5. We feel like we are onto something big here - as big as inference. Bigger, because it goes beyond inference. We want to see annotating become part of our school culture like inference has - we want kids to ask in Mr. Gordon's room whe they get a handout or section of the science book, "Can I annotate this?" We are excited!!! 6. We can also tie in Thoughtful Ed stuff - Etch a Sketch, etc. Julie also liked the idea of a double entry journal even AFTER you annotate, where you write a favorite quote or Golden Line on the left column, and write an even deeper interpretation of it than you had room to do in the margin notes, on the right column.

Dec. 13

Dec. 12
 * Julie found some 9th grade texts for annotating, she is going to email them to us
 * We thought about using Navajo Code Talkers for a pretest
 * We all annotated Oolum together and shared what we annotated for
 * The issue we are going to have, AGAIN, is finding the appropriate texts for looking at the different things we want to annotate
 * We really need two sets of texts, a hard set and a gifted set
 * Lets find another text to have students annotate in the nb after we model, as well as an informational piece and a poem
 * Literary texts purposes are to invite to the reader to see their point of view, it is not really persuasive or trying to convince
 * **Homework-Everyone bring some short texts to the table for guided and independent practice**
 * **Julie Homework-Type up the first three paragraphs of Navajo Code Talkers for the annotation nb**
 * Alyssa will be ordering Hunger Games through her budget.
 * We should all be thinking about splitting the rest up between the rest of us.
 * We should be thinking about looking at 9th grade MEAs for some pre-testing for annotating.
 * We need to change our calendar to fit in __The Hunger Games__ in for our Lit Circles!- Thank you Alyssa : )
 * Julie is planning to do the lit circle book talk and make sure they know their choices for Lit Circles. It would be nice to be able to start Lit. Circles the day we get back. Give them 20 minutes to read and then review the roles!
 * We need to think about what more to do with 8th graders concerning writing. SENTENCE FLUENCY? This is great for going over grammar and parts of speech.
 * Each of us will order 25 titles to be named from Baker and Taylor.
 * Let's review Steph's Compare and Contrast and let's review the final essay to compare your book to __The Giver__ book.
 * Review theme with 8th grade and then have them write a CR on the theme of __The Giver__.
 * Rohndi HW: Will look at the Killgallon stuff and maybe think about what he could add to it from what he has done in the past.

Dec. 8
 * For Wal-Mart:
 * Our own ziplock bags- 100 each
 * 70 page spiral notebooks
 * School Specialty:
 * Magnet strips - each get one package of 100- or circle magnets
 * Library Supply:
 * __The Giver__ - Julie will order
 * __To Kill a Mockingbird__ - Julie will order 40 copies
 * __The Hunger Games__ - Alyssa will order 20 copies
 * JULIE email Gay about special focusing tools!!!

Dec. 8 Dec. 7
 * Today we are discussing what the plan is when we are finished with The Giver, which will be very soon!
 * We are trying to decide whether to start lit circles before or after December break.
 * Julie Homework: close reading inference/annotation
 * We discussed Favorite Treasure expectations.

Dec. 5 Dec. 1
 * We are discussing GT reports and making sure they are all set to hand in to Heather.
 * Today Julie and Steph worked on edmodo after school and we were able to set up Julie's classes and learn some about some new features!
 * Today we worked on grading.
 * Alyssa went over a title vs a label for descriptive pieces. She also did a mini lesson on snapshots. She had them look at a photograph and write what was happening in the moment.
 * We need to go over revising vs. editing with 7th graders- how do we want to review this? ( Julie and Alyssa have started this)
 * Today: We need to look at Favorite Treasure and get ready for that.
 * Julie suggested that we do an editing party before we start Favorite Treasure so they will be ready ! We will be scoring conventions on two of their paragraphs for this piece but they won't know which two!
 * **We are going to add our own slides in the Favorite Object notebook for strong examples and weak examples**. This way the students can practice scoring.
 * Last year the students wrote three leads before they started and they chose their best lead. They were able to conference with a peer too.

Nov. 29 Nov. 28
 * Julie created an annotating text notebook to move kids further along in inference
 * We want kids to see that:
 * annotating is notemaking. They are they same thing.
 * anotate has the word note in it
 * you annotate literary and informational text
 * Homework: Look for ideas for scoring annotating text
 * discussed when kids do not write enough for ideas and content, but what they do write is good - usually ends up being a 2 because the reader has too many questions, or the details they've left OUT make the piece too confusing or incomplete.
 * Possible minilesson with examples and nonexamples - show kids what it means to "miss an opportunity" to develop an idea or chunk of detail. Rohndi will do this for homework in a Smartboard notebook file.
 * Can we come up with a scoring guide for their Giver Journals?
 * Grade 8 writing? Still need to come up with descriptive writing pieces we can score for Ideas and use to review. Rohndi - write about favorite Thanksgiving food. Julie: doing Pet like with 7th grade.
 * Grade 7 writing - favorite treasure is coming up - let's try to finish by Christmas.
 * Grade 7 reading - close reading/annotating text with Inference, moving from short text into short stories, annotating both Literary and Informational texts (Alyssa - an article on the effects of arsenic poisoning!) Don't forget to have differentiated texts for GT.
 * Grade 8 reading - Giver - Alyssa is beginning 13, Steph starting 14, Julie and Rohndi are in 12.
 * Grade 8 writing:
 * HW: somebody please make up an RQ scoring guide for the Giver. Alyssa said she would!
 * Rohndi - giving a cold text quiz that is not attached to the Giver on Thursday, MC questions and CR.
 * Julie is WAITING to do Green Hat (Ideas and Content in a narrative) until AFTER fav treasure, so that the kids don't get mixed up between writing a descriptive essay (treasure) and a narrative piece. She's thinking of even doing the friendship bracelet "weaving" lesson to get them into it, followed immediately by a NECAP practice test: "My best friend and I are always fighting. Like just the other day...".
 * Julie is doing the writing process with her 7th graders - she is teaching the diff between revising and editing, how to revise using SNAPSHOTS, and how to conference.

Nov. 22


 * From now on when we do unit plans, we will add a little piece called extension to have built in g&t assignments
 * Tom is here to help with websites

Nov. 18 * Heather : the law is "in lieu of" instruction, so assignments have to be given "instead of" the regular assignment.
 * If in ELA, we are meeting GT kids' needs in the regular classroom, (Bloom's taxonomy, not reread books they've already read, work they already know how to do), then we put that in the report. (Julie, later: but I still am confused about how that is "in lieu of".
 * We have to show growth for kids - are we meeting their needs, not just "Are we covered".
 * Another issue - a kid who is getting 2s on the RED calendar because of effort, with parents saying ...
 * Very difficult in ELA to find/make the time to meet with kids, even if you do differentiate.
 * In the report, write what you have been doing IN CLASS, FOR THIS STUDENT. For your child I have been...
 * Alyssa - it's like they are always one assessment ahead.
 * Julie: So let's take gr 7. My problem is more with speed. Like I'll give a formative assessment and my GT kid only needs that one or maybe one more to get the skill. But I still have to give a couple more for the rest of the class.
 * Rohndi - doesn't have to be that you bring them faster, but beyond - maybe like vocabulary.
 * Is Word Voyage a possibility?
 * Heather - we can let her know if we need resources - she has an orange book.
 * So vocab would be in lieu of the other inference assessment that they already can do.
 * For PG - just use the Exempt score and put a comment that the student has already mastered this skill.
 * Rohndi - take two texts and have kids compare how the author embeds text clues so that the reader can infer.
 * Homework: Let's all think about, and try to find resources for, some "in lieu of" assignments.

Nov. 17
 * We spent most of our time looking around the ELA DOE website at Common Core stuff. We need to be more familiar with the website itself, the resources it can offer, and the Common Core in general.
 * Also we are really wrestling with the idea of text complexity. We know we need to teach kids to explicate text - we need to do more research on the strategies we can teach kids to do this.
 * Add connotation and denotation as a minilesson to the Complex Text house.
 * Homework - research text explication, close reading, anything related to teaching kids kids how to unpack text of increasing levels of complexity. Even our top readers need these unpacking strategies, because although they can unpack naturally when the text is easy for them, when they get something like the Cask of Amontillado, they don't know what to do - they have no strategies!.

Nov. 16 > Nov. 15 Next Time - (tomorrow after school ) work on **House for Inference**
 * Julie put together an inference house that will move kids from simple texts to complex texts, moving from "hot" texts to "cold" texts
 * Rohndi is going to have The Giver quiz for chapter 9 tomorrow afternoon, this will be a cold text quiz
 * The central conflict we want kids to get out of The Giver is Individual v. Society and can teenagers really make a difference
 * Do we have a standard, quantifiable vocabulary system for The Giver? No-we are all really doing it a different way-how do we get to that?
 * We started to look at standards to revamp The Giver house
 * Where are we going with 7th grade reading
 * We need to move kids along with inference increasing text length and difficulty
 * We need a house! It is really time to build a new unit together continuing inference
 * An easy text and help them find the text clues
 * A moderate text and help them find the text clues
 * A difficult text and help them find the text clues
 * Once text clues get buried and they are no longer explicit, a lot of our kids fall apart, they are really great at following the cake, but not always good at what to put in it
 * See Oct. 28 minutes
 * HW for Rhondi: We are going to use chapter 9 for a Giver quiz.

Nov. 14 1. We printed out student goal setting worksheets for 7th and 8th grade for their binders 2. We talked about favorite treasure, including front loading and prewriting

Nov. 10 Alyssa met with Larry to debrief Kieve SLC stuff

Nov. 7-9 We were all at Kieve

Nov. 2-4 Susan was here for T.E. Steph was with her Wed., Rohndi on Thur., and Julie and Alyssa on Fri.

Nov. 1 1. With 7th grade-upcoming writing moves: -Marshmallow (if you haven't done it) - Julie is having kids blind score from her other class to get a little extra practice scoring -Green Hat -Equipment 2. Julie spent time going backwards with kids from the turkey writing to the observation guide 3. Move kids towards metaphorical senses: If fear had a taste, what would it taste like 4. Giver- Before we get too far into the book, we need kids to hypothesize about what giver society is like and make generalizations

Oct. 31 1. Steph had Thoughtful Ed and Alyssa left early. We discussed what we might have 8th graders do while we are at Kieve.

Oct. 28
 * Julie, Alyssa, Marty, and Jeannie listened to the DOE CR webinar on Wed. Steph and Rohndi should listen when you get a chance
 * We think we should look at adding some more difficult texts for students to annotate for inference - tying inference and cold text reading together in a very concrete way - the difficult part will be finding texts
 * Rohndi offered to come up with some cold text quizzes
 * We could make make inference centers - one center could be vocabulary
 * Rohndi has an independent reading guide for kids
 * Fluency activity-show students a picture (Steph used a picture a kid brought in of a tea party in preschool) so they chose details out of the picture that triggered a memory (The teacup reminds me of using the yellow plastic tea set in my grandmothers musty basement)
 * Lets add a couple of pictures to the intro notebook to use for fluency notebook
 * We are working 7th graders towards the favorite treasure piece

Oct. 24 1.Rohndi shared that he has been working on a homonym NB. 2. Steph has a personal day tomorrow (Tuesday) and Rohndi has a personal day Thursday. 3. Rohndi and Julie is ready to set up the Giver journal and start reading the book. 4.Steph and Alyssa will be ready to start reading the book on Wednesday and Thursday. 5.Julie- Make sure to remind the students about not sharing information about the book if they are ahead of another class. 6. Julie HW- put rubric on the wiki for scoring guide letter ( Snakes/Pellet Gun) Julie had her students write a letter to the authors of Snake and My Pellet Gun and she is scoring it (1-4) and putting it in powerschool. 7. We can even score for relevant questions concerning __The Giver__ (They have to come up with three original questions that they have not heard during class ) 8. Alyssa has been doing assessments for inference with 7th grade (Pronouns assessments for inference). 9. Review ideas and content with 8th graders. 10.We want to start sentence fluency for 8th grade after we have reviewed ideas and content and read a couple of chapters from __The Giver__. 11. We are going to use The Giver to weave ideas and content practice - we will continue to generate CR prompts throughout the whole novel. 12. We are planning on about 4 descriptive writing pieces for __The Giver__. 13. 8th graders: Their CR's should be deeper, more thoughtful, and more polished! Maybe three or four sentences of frosting!

Agenda for Tomorrow:
 * Scoring!

Oct. 21 With Anne 1. Book recommendation: Brain Rules, Why Kids Hate School, 2. tappedin.org is another tool like Edmodo 3. Management is always an issue - potential for us being overwhelmed with the amount of information coming in, potential for bullying - Edmodo DOES allow you to see kids' history, etc. 4. We would be able to do a unit on social network etiquette 5. Remote Desktop - Alyssa piloted it in study hall last year - let's find out what happened to it. We would love it to be able to privately support kids - maybe with spelling, etc. 6. Edmodo has a parent feature, too. 7. Voice Thread - it's a website to show collaborative work - PowerPoints, etc. You can do voice overs. People can respond and leave comments. It does cost money, but Anne has 100 seats left over that she would give to us. We could embed! 8. Find an embed code, say on Edmodo, and plunk it in. 9. We could use wikis and blogs with kids. Elementary kids do book reviews in their blogs! 10. Glogster.edu is education and tightly watched. Kids or teachers can create interactive posters, it's private, you can embed them. On the free side you can 11. Weebly.com is a free website creator. Everything is drag and drop, very professional graphics, can set up student accounts.

Oct. 20
 * We are discussing how to weave ideas and content into the Giver unit.
 * We need to look at the PDF file on the wiki for the Giver unit.
 * We are looking at the standards for The Giver and using the Common Core Standards for this : )
 * Let's wait to look at standard # 9 - NEXT YEAR
 * Agenda for tomorrow
 * We would like to be trained to use **Edmodo** in order to get our hard copies available to students electronically ( standards, handouts - there is a library with virtual backpacks where kids can choose these electronic handouts and put them in their very own virtual backpack) how do we sign up for it and get the kids signed up for it?
 * **We want kids to be able to do what they are doing at home - at school too, only BETTER : ) They already have the skills but we want to be able to teach them to utilize this program in an effective and clear manner.**
 * We need information on how kids can work collaboratively together - we need some techniques on how to score for that!!

Oct. 19


 * We are moving along with 7th grade Ideas and Content. Scoring went well today. We need to make sure we have enough writing "moves", If we don't we need to do some creating
 * Julie showed Rohndi the Jan Chappuis binders about
 * We had a discussion about PowerGrade and our school's grading system. Rohndi didn't know that we leave all of our assignments unchecked for "include in final grade"
 * We need to review the I&C notebook with 8th graders.
 * We should incorporate writing for I&C into The Giver with short narrative or descriptive pieces.
 * Homework for all: Read through the Giver PDF Response Journal
 * We are all going to do a summative piece on recess. Julie is putting the assignment sheet on the wiki. Thanks, Julie!
 * For RED we are all having kids come up with 3 golden lines per week. Rohndi thinks he will up this soon. Julie is planning to add inferences or relevant questions.

Agenda for tomorrow: Finalize ideas and content for The Giver

Upcoming things: We need to fatten up and gradually increase the difficulty of our text for inference

Oct. 18
 * We reviewed the minutes from yesterday
 * Julie will be glad to meet with Rohndi any time to share Powergrade scores. We left it that he would contact her for a time that is convenient with him.
 * We divided up Giver books.
 * Julie added a three reflection question about freedom to the types of society sort. Students chose one and wrote a constructed response. These will be scored and added into the grade book
 * In power grade, we do not need exactly the same number of assessments, but they should be close. Our formative assessments should be assessing the same standard, and our summative assessments should be the same.
 * Julie homework-write up an assignment sheet for summative persuasive piece about recess and we should also be scoring for editing (conventions)
 * In pages, lets all have students turn on the feature to have red and green lines show
 * We should look at a few other societies from real countries and create mystery societies A, B, C (Rohndi is going to do this for homework)
 * Relevancy is a huge thing for students to learn
 * Reading journals for the Giver will ask students to list characters, Rules, English Vocab, Giver Vocab, and Relevant questions (I wonders...) As we read aloud, students should be filling in their journals. How can we get a summative score out of this, for RQs?

Scoring:

The Giver Mystery Society - Check Freedom CR - Score Anticipation Guide - Check

For Next Time: A review of Ideas and Content for 8th graders, and some type of narrative/descriptive ideas and content piece for 8th (memoir or a few short pieces)

Oct. 17 Alyssa was absent

1. We looked at the 8th grade NWEA scores and made lists for Jodi Bisson. Steph and Julie have decided to break labs into small groups, so Jodi will take the lowest, and Steph and Julie will divide the rest, with support from Pam Pietras. 2. Rohndi asked that during PLC, we add to the protocol/agenda to talk about what formative and summative assessments are going into Powergrade, so we can all be on the same page. 3. Rohndi did a formative persuasive piece (or was it summative?) with his 8th graders: a letter to Mr. Malone asking to have recess or not. (The USed Car letter was guided practice, and last year's independent practice prompt was about taking laptops home.) Every 8th grade ELA class needs to do this, as well - does it matter which topic we choose if it's formative? Let's decide. Also, we need to bring student work to the table to make sure we are all using the scoring guides and scoring in the same way, and giving the same amount of feedback. 4. Also, some time soon let's bring 7th grade writer's notebooks to the table and discuss fluency assessments/fluency scoring, too, and make sure we are giving kids the same opportunity to learn fluency, stocking the fridge with high quality ingredients, sensory memory chains (smells), etc. And decide how much we want 8th graders to do intheir writer's notebooks, and how much review of ideas and content they need. Julie is feeling badly about not givng 8th graders any creative writing yet - she felt guilty about this last year as well. :(

Oct. 14
 * Rohndi raised the issue of The Giver being at a 5th grade reading level, and proposed that we read aloud/study a harder book with the groups, his idea being that we could better support kids' learning if we read the harder text together, and then have them read the Giver on their own. The unit was designed to unfold in a specific way (Ed Jadallah's Reflective Inquiry lesson design), but can certainly be evaluated, tweaked or even revised. Our discussion was a bit of a challenge, but the agreement ended up being to teach the Giver unit as it stands this year, and then debrief and make changes for next year as needed. It was also a concern that we did not have enough time to effectively change the unit, find a new text and design new activities, by Monday.
 * Year long homework: choosing more complex texts ( think about the common core standards and appendix A)
 * How are we unfolding __The Giver__ unit and scaffolding ( easier read aloud), (hard
 * Julie Homework: FInd your or a lit circle book for Rohndi because he asked about lit circles... Folks can do some research on the Net to better understand how lit circles are run.
 * Alyssa proposed a PLC protocol so we can stay on task, and so PLC can be productive for all members, veterans as well as newbies. This is important.


 * AGENDA for Next Meeting:**
 * Get out books and make sure everyone has what they need.
 * Are there ways we can tie in the concept of freedom more closely?


 * NOTEBOOKS NEEDED for Monday October 17:**
 * Giver Foyer.Notebook


 * MATERIALS:**
 * Mystery Society Handout
 * Make ( Mystery Society Role Cards) cards that say :
 * Law Enforcement
 * Child
 * Parent
 * Leader

Oct. 13

We did not meet this morning as we were all proctoring NECAP writing tests.

Oct. 12 No PLC - it's the dreaded Wednesday. Julie did do the first part of a new notebook that connects Fluency Practice to Ideas and Content detail work - thank you, Steph. She will put it on the wiki under Fluency //and// under Ideas and Content. She will also email it to you now, Tuesday night at 8:34 pm.

Oct. 11 1. We reviewed our Ideas and Content House. Our initial discussion centered around the efficacy of expecting kids to do a 5 paragraph essay format for the summative assessment - do we want to ask kids to focus on the trait of Organization while they are learning Ideas and Content? Rohndi pointed out that it might be to our benefit if we want kids to end up there with a 5 paragraph descriptive essay as a summative assessment - on the other hand, if we want them to end up embedding description in a narrative piece like a personal narrative or memoir... we actually want both, so there is still more discussion to have!

The discussion got interesting when we looked at a student sample from last year on the Favorite Treasure piece. We discussed whether it qualified as a descriptive piece, or was it really organized like a narrative (we could not agree on this!) Rohndi agreed to bring in an example of a "pure" 5 paragraph descriptive essay so we could compare. Maybe we want kids to be able to use their Ideas and Content skills in all three genres - "pure" description in 5 paragraphs, more personal description like Favorite Treasure in as many paragraphs as it takes, and narrative pieces as well. Maybe we can embed lessons on Organization into our Ideas and Content writing, without having it take over or overwhelm kids. We could easily do a Thoughtful Ed Comparison/Contrast lesson among the pure descriptive 5 paragraph genre and the more personal descriptive genre; Criteria might include Transitions, Number of Paragraphs, Types of Paragraphs, Overall Tone and Style and Author's Purpose, meaning when might a writer choose to write one over the other, and why.

Steph pointed out that it's really good for middle level kids to be able to write about something they really value, like a favorite treasure. Alyssa pointed out that the very prompt encourages kids to write very voicefully and personally, which may make their pieces have more of a narrative flavor, even if they are not organized chronologically like a story. Julie said she likes having her thinking shaken up a little and challenged, to have her teaching decisions up for discussion, so she knows she is following best practice and can articulate where her teaching decisions come from. We should also certainly check the standards, especially those in the Common Core.

2. We agreed that we are stumped on reflection ideas for our Ideas and Content Porch. We think students should reflect on their process as writers, and the difference between vague and specific. Other than that...? We agreed for homework to look at our Thoughtful Ed books more carefully. Maybe we can even email Susan our Ideas and Content House and she can suggest.

Oct. 6 (Julie was absent, Steph had a mentor/mentee meeting)

Alyssa and Rohndi decided to use this as a time to score. We did discuss the status of the ideas house and are planning to work on it on Tuesday.

Oct. 5 after school (Steph went home sick) 1. We continued to work on our house for Ideas and Content. 2. We NEED to find a way to teach kids be more specific in their answers. For example, they will write as a Golden Line explanation "This GL shows how the character feels." Well, how DOES the character feel? NAME IT!!! This is a chronic problem among our students, no matter what they write. 3. Alyssa and Julie discussed starting Sentence Fluency with 8th grade. With 8th grade this year, we would like to concentrate strongly on Voice, in particular teaching kids style and mood. 4. Julie HW: rewrite the Sensory Detail/ smell/taste part of the Fluency NB so we can get some I/C scores. Also add a group guided practice to the Equipment Creating Specific Details nb. 5. Move: groups of 5 words, Kids have to arrange in order from vague to specific. 6. SDT: Two rules A. Every reader has to get the SAME mental picture from your words - THAT'S how precise your words have to be. B. The reader has to feel like he or she is IN the story with you.

Oct. 4 1. We did a house for Ideas and Content.

Oct. 3: 1. Discussed making sure kids have their NWEA scores in the My Data section of their binders. We also discussed offering incentives for kids who meet or exceed their spring target. Maybe a free week or two of RED, or a movie? 2. 8th grade personal persuasive essay: Alyssa put an electronic copy of the persuasive essay template on the Wiki under the Persuasion section. 3. 7th grade: Writing Fluency and Writer's Notebooks, Ideas and Content Intro and continued Inference (move into text). We need a house for Ideas and Content. 8th grade: Personal Persuasion and continue other NECAP writing test review (report writing) 4. Julie will make an Extended Fluency Practice notebook that includes sensory memory chains to get kids ready for Ideas and Content //writing//. She will also make sure there is Writer's Notebook section in the Fluency Intro nb. 5. Homework: Read/View the Ideas and Content notebooks and everything else in the I/C section on the wiki.

Sept 30


 * Today we have talked about clearing things up with how we are approaching cake with consistency.
 * Julie has an intro to fluency notebook.
 * Make sure to take a look at the Notebook for 7th grade Ideas and Content. This will dovetail really well with the fluency
 * We can get an assessment from fluency by have them use one of their memory chains and give them ten minutes to write- Julie has a scoring guide for this and we could do a couple of summative and a formative.
 * Next week we need to sit down and do a house for Ideas and Content.

Sept 29:

Cake, Frosting ( knees), Plate ( Feet) !
 * Today we talked more about NECAP and where we are with the process of reviewing.
 * Steph will get Rondhi a copy of the released items for the NECAP writing.
 * Julie talked about utilizing the writer's notebook to teach sentence fluency.
 * You have 25 seconds to draw a cake and stand up when you are done. ( practice the Sprinkles ( head), Cake, Frosting ( Shoulders, Cake, frosting ( hips
 * Fluency for 7th grade can start next week!
 * We can go back to inference with 7th grade next week too.
 * Party when the NECAPS are done!
 * On the 17th we will start The Giver?

Sept 26:

> Sept 23:
 * We are all frustrated with the character limits on the NECAPs, so are the students. There is just not enough space!!
 * Julie put her persuasive writing nb on the wiki documents
 * We need to decide together what categories assignments fall under
 * We are really liking adding checks to powergrade to show parents what we are accomplishing, it really shows that we are still working even if it isn't showing up
 * Rohndi is putting his theme practice sheets on wiki documents
 * If we want to get summative grades for NECAP prep, we can let kids chose their best 2 for a score and we can change their others to a check with a note that says it was completed but was not one that the student chose to count
 * Next year we should categorize by type of question instead of by type of text
 * Julie had the kids do an outline for the NECAP writing practice test.
 * There is a highlighting tool- let's make sure they are using this as a tool!
 * She had them look at all of the prompts
 * They ask sentence combing questions.. Rohndi will look into making a "skit" for this : )
 * Remember to mention that the universal access settings are for visually impaired only.
 * We are looking at the NECAP released item list to make sure that is complete. Maybe we can say to 8th graders " Let's do these 5 CRs by ..."
 * We will have the kids practice the same ones in class :
 * Rohndi had the idea that we could fill out part of the cake and have the students fill out the rest ( e.g. we could fill out the sprinkles on one, a detail on one, and the clincher on another. This would be a great way to unpack the lesson for 7th graders!

Sept 21:
 * Today Alyssa let us know she is is working on reformatting our cake template!
 * Julie will be emailing us half of her HW and someone can put it on the wiki if they would like.
 * 7th ELA:
 * CR pre-assessment (Check) Writing Argument/Analysis
 * Sprinkles Practice (Check) Writing Argument/Analysis
 * Sprinkles Quiz (Scored) Writing Argument/Analysis
 * 8th ELA:
 * CR pre-assessment (Check) Writing Argument/Analysis
 * Sprinkles Practice (Check) Writing Argument/Analysis
 * Sprinkles Quiz (Scored) Writing Argument/Analysis
 * 7th Reading:
 * CR pre-assessment (Check) Reading Informational Text
 * Visual puns (Check) : [ their drawing of the visual puns!] Reading Elements
 * RED Week 1 (Scored) Reading Elements or Reading Literary Texts
 * 8th grade Reading:
 * CR pre-assesssment (Check) Reading Literary Text
 * Theme pre-assessment (Check) Reading Literary Text
 * Theme carousel (Check) Reading Literary Text
 * Red Week 1 (scored) Reading Elements or Reading Literary Text

Let's talk about:
 * Coming up with a **theme quiz for 7th and 8th grade**. Let's find two separate texts for each grade level and we will have them choose which theme statement they would like us to score. (Rohndi)
 * Practice for the 8th grade writing test - **Julie will do a part two NB** . ( We definiteley should have them write a 5 paragraph personal persuasive piece before the NECAP)
 * Personal Persuasion Julie HW: look for anything she has about for personal persuasion

Julie HW: Find 2nd inference NB with pro-nouns in it. Also, personal persuasion NB with Uncle Henry's Alyssa found the Inference Cartoons NB. It will be on the wiki.

Sept 20:
 * Today we are working on doing a Notebook on NECAP Writing for 8th grade.
 * We can use most of what we had from last year, we just did a little tweaking.
 * Julie is going to add her handout about types of prompts to the wiki and to the notebook.

Sept 19:
 * With 7th grade: Alyssa has been teaching CR and going over
 * Julie has gone over CR questions that are similar.
 * Explain what personal qualities helped Ballard become an underwater expert... ( or something, hehe).
 * What qualities make Gilpin a good photographer?
 * Describe two qualities that make Ida a successful lighthouse keeper.
 * Example: They are brave, courageous, and persevering.
 * We would like the kids to practice writing at least a couple of each type.
 * For our labs on Wednesdays: NECAP prep
 * For lunch time labs: Alyssa will continue with the Vocabulary Notebooks she has created.
 * Julie HW: She wants to make a question for 8th graders for two texts. This will most likely be in a couple of weeks- maybe the last thing we get to.
 * We will make a vocabulary section in documents so we can share the load with vocabulary activities

Sept 15:
 * Today we worked on setting up a notebook for 8th grade review of theme!
 * HW:
 * HW - Rhondi : We need to set up a worksheet for our Theme Carousel... make sure they know that they need to come up with a universal theme.
 * Everyone HW: We need to look for fairytales and fables that have a clear theme.
 * Julie HW: Find a couple of NECAP practices for theme.

Sept 13:
 * We will be doing fluency and inference with 7th grade. Fluency is to help them get started with writing and help them be a fluent writer.
 * Upcoming:
 * Theme for 7th/8th
 * 8th grade writing test
 * Introduce NECAP to 7th
 * CR practice ( starting at the end of this week and into next week)
 * For 7th grade- To practice identifying texts break students into pairs and grab six or seven different types: we shared different ways to go about this sort Julie has students label the different type of text using sticky notes and then she guides them as they fill out the blank grid together as a class.
 * Claim (Sprinkles)
 * Evidence (Cake)
 * Reasoning (frosting)
 * For 8th grade: we can give them a blank NECAP Text grid, break them into groups, and have them fill it out the best they can from what they remember.

Sept 12:


 * We are feeling that we need something meaningful to do with our once a week labs, but we do not have a lot of time for prep. We are looking at two possible programs to possibly purchase: Word Voyage and SRA Reading Labratory
 * Alyssa and Julie are investigating Word Voyage and Rohndi is investigating SRA
 * We are going to use Androcles and the Lion by Aesop as a theme preassessment. Thanks, Julie!
 * We divided up Writer's notebooks-Thanks Steph & Julie. Next year we should only need to buy them for the incoming 7th graders, as they can move to 8th with them.

Sept 9: Sept 8:
 * Grade 8: preasess for theme - we need a folktale
 * Grade 8: start locker posters next week if you haven't already - Julie wove in Writer's Notebooks and they taped their love/hate lists into the first page of their notebooks.
 * Homework All - look for short folktales for 7 and 8 theme preassessment
 * Grade 7: We need a folktale to preassess theme.
 * Grade 7: start Inference Notebook
 * We discussed a couple of kids who read the CR preassess pieces (KIte and Woodsong) but struggled to answer the question. We are talking about new kids who have NO knowledge about CR and the cake template at all - we need to be picking up those kids in lab.
 * We have discussed whether or not we will give the cake template to the 7th graders for the pre-assessment.
 * We teach the magic rule of three and in Socratic argument ( European style argument) you always need three reasons. A stool cannot stand on two legs... patterns..three little pigs... etc.
 * For this constructed response prompt we can say to the 7th graders they only need three ideas (two similarities and one difference or vice versa) - not three similarities and three differences.
 * We will be using the term argument analysis when we re-teach constructed response.
 * Next Week :
 * 1) Locker Poster
 * 2) CR/AA
 * 3) Theme
 * 4) 6 Traits
 * The only test for NECAP that will be online is the 8th grade writing test.
 * The CR's that students TYPE we should be asking for two sentences of frosting.
 * We have discussed doing locker poems in labs - we will have
 * Steph and Julie's Labs : **8-4 Alyssa's** ELA class we see on **Wednesdays** period 6/ **8-5** **Thursday** ELA class we see on Thursday
 * Homework: Let's all look at whatever we have for theme. Julie will email whatever she has for theme ( theme notebook for 7th grade) and everyone will look at it tonight and decided whether or not we want to start on that next week.
 * Homework: Julie and Alyssa work on a pre-assessment for theme.
 * Heart of a Chief for 7th grade read aloud? Alyssa will be doing this and Steph is going to try and find a book to get her hands on before this weekend so she can read it!

Sept 7:

Here we go! Lessons - Week of September 6 - Procedures and Introductions - The tools lesson - Golden Lines lesson - Cake pre-Assessment - When Julie did the tools carousel she ended with handing out ELA binder "tool boxes". She taught them how she wants them to handle the binders and procedures about retrieving them and putting them away.

Steph HW: 7-4 ( Make a poster from their responses!) Golden Lines are lines that: Stand out ! are FANCY are EXPRESSIVE Steph HW: Add in slides to Golden Line Notebook about wordle!


 * We chose question # 21 for the 7th graders on the Fighting Kites piece
 * However, we need to go over question # 22 with 8th graders (later on as we review the NECAP) because the sprinkle sentence is hard to come up with.
 * Wordle is a great tool for vocabulary practice!

- We can make wordles and/or have kids make them for their peers to guess the vocabulary word.

- We are going to use our Friday PLC to make sure we are all set for Monday!

Sept. 2:

- Today we are going over the yearly syllabi for 7th and 8th grade

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">**7th grade ELA**... We will start the year off with:
<span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">Intro and practice for the trait of Ideas and Content - WRITERS NOTEBOOK ! "You can't create a meal for your readers if you have two loaves of stale bread and dried out mustard" so we need to STACK OUR FRIDGE ! Give students things to smell, have them hold there breath and write about the sensation, etc... <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">We want them to be able to sit for ten minutes and JUST WRITE!! <span style="color: #000000; font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;"> **Goal**: We need to decide on what our SF assessment and scoring guide looks like <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;"> **- THANKSGIVING BREAK-** <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;"> **- WINTER BREAK -**
 * <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">Prep for NECAP/Constructed Response
 * <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">Quick Reminder of 6 Traits
 * <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">Writing Fluency
 * <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">Ideas & Content / Writer's Notebook
 * <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">Introduction & Ideas and Content Activities
 * <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">More practice with Ideas and Content
 * <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;"><range type="comment" id="769595">Introduce Voice ( 2 weeks)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">Voice writing practice (3 weeks)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">Weave poetry in with Voice
 * <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;"><range type="comment" id="210809">Cheesecake

<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">//**So on and so forth : ) See Syllabi for the rest of the schedule !**//

<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">**Homework Assignmen**t: Find some kind of authentic site base in the community to go along with our service learning

<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">Alyssa used the SAT vocab words last year in her lab and it worked really well so she is going to do something similar with her regular classes.

<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">Julie or Alyssa Homework: Please put the 7th grade Intro to Theme on the Wiki : )

<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">**The First Two Weeks:**

<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">**Day 1** <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">**Day 2**
 * <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">Run through procedures
 * <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">Mock Fire Drill
 * <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">Where things are- things to know !
 * <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">Name learning activity
 * <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">How to sign out a book
 * <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">Tools activity- go through what is in the binder
 * <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">Tools around the room...maybe do a carousel walk around the classroom
 * <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">Practice Golden Lines : Model how to pick them out ... do it together (especially for 7th)
 * <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">Wordle Activity with 8th graders- have them help us teach the 7th graders about Golden Lines. Have students embed a simile or metaphor to describe a Golden Line for example, finding a prize at the bottom of a crackerjack box or the cream in the middle of a cupcake. Do not use the words Golden or Line because we will ask the 7th graders what their wordle posters are about.

<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">**Day 3**
 * <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">More practice with Golden Lines
 * <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">Cake Pre-Assessment: Let's go cold! We will not even go over the scoring guide. We can tell them that we aren't even going to put this on powerschool. Remind them See what the kids know and this way we will know who will need re-teaching. We will be using //Fighting Kites// for 7th grade and //Woodsong// for 8th grade

<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">**Day 4**
 * <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">Keep working on the Cake Pre-assessment

<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">Everyone should have an RED book by next Monday. Kids can bring books from home but they need to run it by us first.

<span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">Bio Poem Posters: <span style="font-family: 'Lucida Sans Unicode','Lucida Grande',sans-serif;">Start Tuesday of the Second Week