Ms. Boyce’s Blog

8th Grade: Happy Halloween! In continuation with our public speaking unit, students will be practicing some effective debating skills, writing their speech outline, and preparing their visual representation for their speech. We’ll also continue work with our third vocabulary unit.

7th Grade: Happy Halloween! This week is a continuation of our punctuation unit, but also a review and practice of debating skills. There will be a pop quiz on commas, semicolons, and colons near the end of the week; please make sure students are reviewing their punctuation marks daily. We’ll also continue work with our third vocabulary unit.

8^th Grade: Students will be continuing on their public speaking unit. The speech topic will be assigned by Thursday, research will be done in the computer lab on Friday, and the outline will be worked on the following week. Vocab #2 Test is on Monday (definitions need to be written out on the test). The third Vocabulary unit will be handed out later in the week.

7^th Grade: Students will be continuing the punctuation unit. Workbook pages from the Zaner-Bloser Grammar Series will be the main source of homework this week. Later in the week, we’ll be discussing and practicing effective debating skills (to prepare for the debate next week in History). Vocab #2 Test is on Monday (definitions need to be written out on the test). The third Vocabulary unit will be handed out later in the week.

8th Grade:

-In English, we’ll be working on writing thoughtful responses to literature that summarizes and analyzes the writing. Our challenge will be learning how to differentiate between summarization and analysis. Two writing traits that will be the focus of our compositions will be sentence structure and word choice.

-Don’t forget that papers are due this week (see below for due dates).

-Vocab Unit #2… interactive guide completed this week with acronyms

7th Grade:

-Don’t forget that the final due date for papers is Monday, October 6th (no exceptions)!

-Vocab Unit #2… interactive guide completed this week with acronyms

-During English, we will focus on a review of how to structure a paper, the difference between a general sentence and specific sentence, and varying sentence structure.

8th Grade:

-We’ll review how to structure an introduction and conclusion; students will then write the intro and conclusion for their toy essays. Later in the week, students will switch papers for a peer edit with a rubric. Papers should be typed at home (they have an entire week to do so). Final papers are due on Thursday, October 9th. If students hand them in a day early, on Wednesday, October 8th, they will receive five points of extra credit for their paper (this is the only extra credit I offer in English). All papers need to be typed and double spaced, in Times New Roman size 12 font. We will complete the title page in class on Friday.

-On Friday, we’ll start the next unit for vocabulary.

7th Grade:

-Seventh graders will be completing their first peer edit on Monday and Tuesday this week. Students switch papers with a classmate, edit the paper, and use the rubric to assess their classmate. Students are expected to proofread their own papers and ask for help whenever it is needed. Papers should be typed at home. Final papers are due on Monday, October 6th. If students hand them in a school day early, on Friday, October 3rd, they will receive five points of extra credit for their paper (this is the only extra credit I offer in English). All papers need to be typed and double spaced, in Times New Roman size 12 font. We will complete the title page in class on Friday.

-On Friday, we’ll start the next unit for vocabulary.