Bell Ringer Journal
Students will have 8-10 minutes at the beginning of class to complete their journal entry for the day. They should fill up the entire section for the best results. Each entry will be followed up with a class discussion. It is imperative that students get to class ON TIME to begin their bell ringer journal. Students who miss this time will have to do their journal for homework.
Writers' Workshop
Students will create writers' notebooks and participate in writers' workshop. Writers' workshop provides students with opportunities to improve their writing through detailed instruction, explanation, examples, student models, and activities.
Units of Study: A Brief Overview
The following units of study are not only aligned to the Common Core State Standards, but also across grade levels.
Memoir
Students will analyze memoir structures and experiment with the writing of such structures. They will develop an understanding for literary devices in memoir and learn how these devices can be used to convey meaning.
Argument Paragraph
Students will develop a claim and support that claim with evidence from credible sources. They will revise a piece of writing that improves idea clarity, persuasiveness, and organization.
Literary Essay
Students will engage in theory-building, claim-making, and selecting and organizing supporting evidence. They will also build fluency, flexibility, and decision-making skills in essay writing. In this unit, student will develop and prove a theory as a claim about a character, using direct quotes and paraphrased examples as evidence.
Informational Essay
Students will engage in informational/explanatory writing by examining a topic and conveying ideas, concepts, and information through the selection, organization, and analysis of relevant content.
Writing the Argument
Students will identify a range of local problems that they believe are solvable. They will practice defining these problems and analyzing their effects in order to develop workable solutions. They will conduct research from multiple sources to gain a deeper understanding of their chosen problem and how it can be solved. As they draft their proposal essay, students will seek the best structure for this piece and focus on using appropriate tone and diction for their target audience.
Language Arts PASS Program
- Personalized language arts practice program
- Students learn independently at their own pace
- Enhanses skills in speaking and listening (listening actively, having a discussion, and giving a presentation), writing (planning, introducing and closing topics, gathering relevant information, quoting and paraphrasing data, citing information, organizing ideas, supporting and developing topics, transitions, precise language and sensory details, formatting and graphics, revising, and editing) and language (pronouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs, phrases and clauses, sentence structure, capitalization, spelling, punctuation, and misplaced and dangling modifiers).
