8th grade

Mailbag: Writing.

October 11, 2010
By

We had today off for some reason. All hail Columbus the Conqueror! I was camping down at beautiful Refugio State Beach. 85 and postcard perfect, right down to the dolphins frolicking 50 yards from the beach. Anyway I’m back, and one of our loyal readers needs a bit of collaboration. I don’t know how many of you scroll down and read the comments unless you’re looking for a response to yours, so this might be a rerun for some. Hey Mr. Coward. A long time reader here, and I’ve also posted a few times. I still can’t believe you keep up on this great blog, posting materials for the kids, teaching both 7th and 8th graders and like, um, seem to still have a life. Sincere congrats. Anywho, I am looking for some advice. I plan on posting something on the listserver later today, but I thought you would be a good source to start since I’m typically on board with your ideas. I teach 8th grade language arts, and each quarter we have at least one major process writing piece. The other 3 quarters are pretty solid, but quarter one needs a revamp. According to the new common core

Read more »

I can’t believe I’m planning this…

September 13, 2010
By

What do you call a digression before you even begin? Anyway, you should go read Sara’s comment on my “learning styles” post from a couple of days ago. Then you’ll be in on the gag from here on out if I make any references to pudding. OK. This whole teaching eighth grade thing is sort of throwing me for a loop, but I think I’m starting to find a groove.  I’m trying to write new, 8th grade level, academic words exercises; I only used 20 out of more than 50 on each list I got from the academic words guy for the seventh grade lists, so there’s plenty left for eighth grade. I’m digging out my Rorschach blots for “Flowers for Algernon,” and trying to figure out how to get a dose of history of the English language in without boring us all to death. My reading of the standards is that it should be from more of a word origin/vocabulary sort of angle, but maybe that’s just me.  And I’m getting ready to start a novel I have never taught before, Nothing But the Truth. I have high hopes for this one. Seven years ago, when I last had eighth grade

Read more »

8th Grade Material

September 4, 2010
By

Eight days in, and I’m still scrambling a little with having an 8th grade prep. The last time I had 8th grade was 7 years ago, and I was scrambling a bit then (the last round of 8th grade had been 11 years before that), plus I got a student teacher for the last third of the year and I didn’t have to worry about it. So needless to say, I have been rifling through the files (both virtual and paper stylie), trying to figure out a direction through the 8th grade standards. (I know; it’s a little funny to be posting 8th grade lessons on a site called SeventhGradeEnglish…) I have more on this soon, but right now I ‘d like to direct you over to SeventhGradeEnglish.com for a lesson I fished out of the paper archive, and revamped (just) a bit. It’s a poetry thang. I mean writing poetry. Sort of. The 8th grade standards include more poetry kind of shtuff so… It starts with that Robert Frost classic, “The Road Not Taken.” It’s called “Prose into Poetry.“

Read more »

First Day of School Quiz!

August 25, 2010
By

OK. This time for real. Daily, baby. Well maybe… It seems like I wait longer and longer each year to get ready for school. We started today. I went in Monday and started hooking things up, but most of that day was spent in meetings, checking out our district’s latest software purchase, DataDirector (more on this later in the post), and hounding IST to fix all the stuff they broke over the summer (they were actually very nice about it…except for…well anyway…) First Day Quiz Question One: What was the most common computer issue your gallant narrator had to fix for people yesterday, during our one prep day? a) printer not working b) mouse not working c)  software that used to be there isn’t any more d) monitor resolution e) can’t play dvd’s You’d think I might have started earlier this year, what with teaching eighth grade for the first time since 03/04 and all, but you’d be wrong. I was at Refugio Beach all last week, instead of getting ready.  Oh well. Our district has subscribed to a new web-based data service. IST, it seems, has been spending their a good portion of their time entering three years’ worth

Read more »

OH NOOOOOO! (Part I)

June 14, 2010
By

It’s never good news when your principal, as you’re rolling for home, says, “Can I get 5 minutes with you tomorrow morning…(wait a beat and a half)… about a scheduling issue?” (silently) What do you need me for? Scheduling is part of  the counselors’ job…hmmmm. (aloud) “No worries. See you tomorrow.” One of my favorite lines from my favorite movie, The Jerk, is when the repo guys are taking away all the furniture and such after Navin Johnson (Steve Martin) goes broke again. His wife, played by Bernadette Peters, is crying, and Navin tries to comfort her by telling her it’s just money, and they’re still in love, and etc. She says, crying, “It’s not losing all the money…It’s losing all the STUFF!” Well, my line at the meeting with my principal the next morning was, “It’s not teaching the eighth grade…It’s teaching the EIGHTH GRADERS!” Yes, after a 6 year reprieve, I will be having at least one period of eighth grade in the fall. Our incoming enrollment is down, so we have a lot more 8th graders than 7th graders next year. D’oh. It might actually be kind of fun; new novels to get into: Nothing But the

Read more »

Random Featured Post

“Do you love me?” (Also: Weird “Week”)

Wotta “week.” Considering how tired I am, I can’t believe it was only a three-day week – for some reason we had a 4-day weekend for Veterans’ day. And I done clean forgot that I was supposed to give the “District Benchmark Test #1″ (that’s a whole ‘nother post) by Friday. So we spent Wednesday darkening ovals to generate data for the district, AND there was a “multi-media” assembly that, amid the rock and rap, touted the beauty of trust and honesty (also: don’t do those things which I obviously can’t mention, because ads for them started appearing here). AND, yesterday was “parent visitation day.” Whole lotta scare quotes today too. Usually I get a pretty good turnout for these parent visitation days (it sounds like a Catholic holiday). Our previous principal (our present principal is an FNG, both to the job of principal AND to our school) instituted these as a sort of PR for parents. Many parents of ms’ers are more than a little leery of sending their little angels to the big bad junior high. (You should have seen the reaction a few years ago when the district proposed making our school 6-8. OMG. You’d have thought [...]

more -->


Mr. Coward has been teaching on the beautiful central coast of California since 1989.

Archives

May 2012
M T W T F S S
« Apr    
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28293031  

Recent Comments

Links

Privacy Policy

Tags

cartoons Charlotte Doyle Class Activities clickers CPS CTEL Flashback grammar high school idiosyncrasies irony Mailbag Me mechanics middle school teaching Monsters on Maple Street Moodle online learning oral reading Outsiders CHapter 5 Outsiders Chapter 7 RaffleKing Ray Bradbury Reading Richard Cory Seventh Grade Behavior Stories of Seventh Grade substituting Teaching Teaching Tips teaching with technology teaching with technology teaching writing Technology techology testing The Earth Men The Giver The Midwife's Apprentice The Outsiders Tips Tips for teachers Tom Sawyer Wiki Writing