Week of 11/2/09

News for this week: 

• Remember that 1st Quarter ends this week.
  
  
• For all 6th, 7th, and 8th grade classes, keep thinking about the following words and in what different situations you would use each:
  to, too, two; they're, there, their; it's, its; our, are; then, than, your, you're, now, know
  
   

• 
  6th Grade: 
• On Monday, we are going to go over the homophones and tricky words listed above.
  
  
• We are going to finish vocab lesson 5 this week.  After correcting the lesson, we'll use those vocab words in sentences that also incorporate the homophones and tricky words.
  
  
• We'll do a little review work of pronouns and antecedents before moving on to verbs - identifying and correctly using helping, linking and action verbs - and verb tenses.
  
  
• Finally, at the end of the week, we'll start working on our next writing assignment which will be a narrative paper.  We'll review dialogue rules and start pre-writing on Friday.  The rough draft will be due Monday, 11/9/09.
  
  
  
  
  7th Grade: 
• Monday I will check in your short story rough draft.  I will also be collecting the homophone work that you completed last week.  Finally, remember that character sketch presentations will start Monday.  After you present your character, I will collect your final draft.
  
  
• We will do a little more practice work with writing dialogue this week, and I will check everyone's short story dialogue in class on Wednesday.  Students will have time Wednesday to do peer review with their short stories.
  
  
• This is a change from last week: the short story final drafts will now be due Thursday, 11/5/09 (not Wednesday).
  
  
• We are also going to finish vocab lesson 5 this week.
  
  
• Finally, at the end of the week we will do a short review of verbs before moving on to adjectives and adverbs.
  
  
  
  
  8th Grade:
• On Monday, I will collect the homophone worksheets from Friday's class.  I will also collect the homophone - vocab sentences you completed last week.  We are going to do some class discussions about the Reader's Digest stories, and then I will collect your brochures - remember to finish those during IM on Monday!
  
  
• This week we are going to spend time reviewing punctuation rules - specifically commas and semicolons.  We are also going to discuss capitalization rules.
  
  
• We only have 2 parts of speech graphic organizers left to do: conjunctions and interjections.  These graphic organizers will be due Wednesday, 11/4/09.
  
  
• Finally, we will have our next vocab quiz on Friday, 11/6/09.