8th GRADE
The year will start out with us going over expectations of behavior and our use of Google Classroom for most of our classroom assignments. We'll practice the necessary skills to be successful. We'll also explore some of the technological skills needed this year and take notes in an online journal, using Google Slides that students may refer back to.
Students will be given options as we begin our year together. We reviewed the importance of fluency and reading with expression. We began the year with a six week independent reading unit. Because not all students are visual learners, I allow students to listen to audio books. Some choose to read digital ones on Kindles (we have 4 classroom Kindles that can be checked out - with the parental controls utilized) or on their laptops. Some students choose to read independently and others opt to read in groups.
I taught a skill on the first day of the week (during the independent reading unit). Students used this skill and told how it related to their personal choice of a book for the week. We've worked on main idea/theme, cause/effect, and character traits/characterization, types of conflict, author's purpose, and backing up our opinions with evidence from the text. The second weekly assignment was a paragraph summarizing what they'd read since the previous Friday. All work for was posted onto our Google Classroom. There were due dates as guidelines which were enforced.
There will be no negative consequence for late work, but students' names will be posted on the board to remind them to get work in. After a week, students will be required to contact their parents to explain why the work wasn't completed. But if students should finish this book AHEAD of schedule and before other groups complete their work, I ask that they read a book of their choice. It IS reading class, after all.
Discussion questions are posted on our Google Classroom throughout the year. Students are sometimes assigned into groups, but usually have a choice of who they work with. Groups are to read a chapter or a set number of pages, then discuss the questions and take turns typing the answers onto a shared source that will be turned in digitally. Students are never to delete a partner's work, but may add to it, since all group members receive the same score for the assignment. All assignments for the book are posted to our Google Classroom. Haug "floats" from group to group, listening for fluent reading, suggesting strategies, possibly guiding discussion or jumping in and reading aloud with them.