8th Gr. English Language Arts News
Issue #1
Welcome!
Dear parents,
The 8th grade ELA team has decided to pilot a monthly newsletter to share what's going on in our classes, provide reminders, share student voices, and recommend books.
We hope you'll find it useful for both your own information, as well as to encourage discussion with your children.
Please feel free to email us if there's a particular topic or issue you'd like us to address.
Up for a poem?
We’ll be reading and discussing two poems for our Class Reads this unit. Feel free to read and enjoy them; we find kids have lots to say about “To a Daughter Leaving Home” especially.
Reading Reminder
Students need to be reading at home most nights of the week. Many studies show that time reading at home, in addition to reading done at school, directly correlates with achievement in all subject areas.
Author Interview
Check out this interview with Gene Luen Yang, author of one of my library's most popular books, American Born Chinese. In it, he talks about getting kids out of their reading comfort zones.
Unit 6--What to Expect
In addition to our usual routines of blogging, independent reading, and Class Reads, in this unit, we'll be exploring poetry--both writing our own and curating a collection of published poems on a student-selected theme.