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Happy Holidays

To be honest, I don’t know the last time I posted.  As I’m sure many of you can relate, the busy-ness of the season has certainly overtaken me!  And I know I say it often, but this site has been extremely s-l-o-w, so I’ve had little patience waiting for it to load so I can […]

Poetry

Students in my 8th grade English class have begun working on a collection of poetry.  We will be completing 8 different kinds of poems for students to compile and illustrate in a hardbound published book. So far students have done a fair job of working at this genre.  Some have really taken to it and […]

Children’s Storybooks

Last week students drafted their stories after brainstorming several topics they could write about.  We looked at several examples of picture books, though most students had an idea already floating around in their mind.  Your students are writing original children’s stories that will be published and illustrated.  The understanding for the assignment is that the writing […]

It’s been too long!

I’m embarrassed by the fact that my last post was nearly a month ago!  It seems impossible that time has passed so quickly.  I hope that what few readers I managed to attract haven’t written me off as a lost cause (which is a round about way of asking you to leave me some feedback […]

Goin’ Live!

I hope this will work…we recorded our discussion today in First Hour and since several of my 8th graders are going to be on a field trip this afternoon, I thought I would post the discussion so they could hear it… Try this link to listen to our reenactment of the rumble scene from The […]

Pleasant discussions on “Nicenet”

Last week we tried taking our literature discussions to the technological-level by using wikis, which didn’t turn out to be a user friendly for synchronous (at the same time) discussion.  Fortunately for both me and my students, I remembered learning about nicenet.org – an Internet Classroom Assistant. For two days this week, students have engaged […]

Greasers are tuff, ya dig?

I still remembering reading The Outsiders back when I was in eighth grade.  It was one of my all-time favorite books, though I do still think the names are kind of corny (Ponyboy, Sodapop – what gives?).  The thing that really struck me about it was the way that it seemed so real, so true.  […]

Where has the time gone?

Have you ever had one of those months weeks days that has gone by in a blur? Here I am, in a computer lab full of kids who are slightly hyper but doing remarkably well considering that today is the first dance day of the year, and I just realized that the first quarter of […]

Oh What Fun….

it is to read with a pillow in our room, Hey!  Ok, so it’s a bit early for Christmas carols, but yes I am one of those put-your-fake tree-up-the-day-after-Thanksgiving people anyway.  But the point of this post is to report the resounding success we’ve had with our Teen Read Week celebration. Sadly, my life has […]

Do the Dance

The thing I l-o-v-eabout middle school is the incessant change!!  This constant state of limbo is pretty scary, but can also be a lot of fun.  This week, we’ve spent nearly every minute of English class taking the fabulous M.E.A.P. test (she said facetiously).  What I’ve noticed during these testing sessions are the ways in […]

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