SEPTEMBER NEWSLETTER

WEEKLY AND DAILY REGULAR ACTIVITIES FOR THE SCHOOL YEAR

1. DOG (Daily Oral Grammar): This activity practices the skill of editing writing with proper proofreading marks. It meets many of the state standards for the sixth standard covering language conventions.
2. GRAMMAR MINUTE: This activity practices the parts of speech, as well as capitalization and punctuation.

3. DIAGRAMMING: This activity practices breaking down sentences into their individual parts of speech. After a week of practice, there is a quest covering the skill learned that week. (standard 7.6.4)
4. DQ (Daily Questions): Each day the students answer brief questions covering grammar, writing, sentence writing, and handwriting.
5. 6+1 EVALUATION: This activity involves the students evaluating a piece of writing for the 6+1 Traits. They also work to improve many pieces as well. (standard 4 covering evaluation and revision)
6. JOURNALS: In order to prepare for larger pieces of writing, we write three minute journals to brainstorm ideas for a future rough draft and final draft. (standard 4 covering organization and focus of writing)
7. WEEKLY REMINDERS: Each week the students take a note about a frequent error in writing. These are gathered and at the end of the trimester there will be a quest. (covering standard 4 on evaluation and revision as well as standard 6 on language conventions)

6th GRADE
GRAMMAR:
*This month we'll cover Chapter 27 on capitalization. There will be many workbook pages, worksheets, quizzes, and a test at the end of the chapter. (standard 6.6.4)
WRITING:
*We will partnering with art to write a research paragraph about a person in Indiana history. By doing this paragraph, we will be learning how to cite sources in a works cited. (standard 6.5.3)
*We will also be creating a Coat of Arms and composing a paragraph for one section of the Coat examining the section answer more closely. (standard 6.5.2)

7th GRADE
GRAMMAR:
*This month we'll cover Chapter 26 on punctuation. There will be many workbook pages, worksheets, quizzes, and a test at the end of the chapter. (standard 7.6.6 and 7.6.7)
WRITING:
*We will be working on a persuasive paragraph advertising for a new technologically advanced toy. (standard 7.5.4)

8th GRADE
GRAMMAR:
*This month we will be working on Chapter 20 covering simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentence types. Depending on how easily this material is understood, we may move onto phrases which is another section of the same chapter. (standard 8.6.1 and 8.6.3)
WRITING:
*We will be writing a letter to our future selves. We will address the envelopes, and then in four years, I will mail them out to the students so they can reflect on what their thoughts for their futures were from 2011. (standard 8.5.1 and 8.5.7)