Middle School English

 

         

JWeb

      Students have completed a few different articles this quarter to understand the variety that can be found within article writing and journalism. This week, we began a photo editing project to learn more about how Photoshop works and different editing styles, which can be further utilized in fields as students continue their education. While all students were given the same initial photo, they will select two photos of their choice to edit in the same style that they were randomly given.

Communication Arts and Debate 

     An important point of clarification is that in this debate elective, students do not need to prepare for a final exam. Instead, this week, we will close our work together with a video project wherein students reexamine our most exciting debates from this academic year.

 

8th Grade Directed Studies: 

     Directed Studies - Grammar Review - During our final few weeks , we are going to be reviewing verbs along with the use of the verbs and complements. We then will review clauses - independent and subordinate along with the (4) kinds of sentences according to clauses.  

    

7th Grade Directed Studies

   Students are embracing weekly coding challenges. These STEM activities are engaging and thought provoking. We will continue balancing grammar and STEM throughout the fourth quarter. We are finishing a chapter on pronoun cases (nominative, objective, and possessive). Additionally, we will study capitalization, punctuation, and spelling during the closing weeks of the quarter.

     

     

7th Grade Honors
     This week, we will begin preparing together for the final grammar assessment in the In our final week of classroom instruction, we will turn our attention to one new grammar topic: the proper usage of commas, colons, and semi-colons. This new addition to our grammar studies results from common feedback to students’ mechanical errors on their BEN Talks. Questions about these punctuation marks will not appear on the Semester 2 grammar test this week, but the final exam will include them.

     Last week, we began practicing for the Semester 2 grammar test. The week prior to that, students received the study guide for the assessment. This test will be the last time students will be assessed on their sentence diagramming skills this year. The part of the final exam that pertains to grammar will not ask students to diagram.

     This week, we will begin preparing for the final exam together too. In class, we will conduct practice of essential course skills ahead of the exam. Most of these skills focus on literary  analysis, especially the analysis of poetry. Students are invited to continue working with each other outside of class to build their confidence for the final exam.

     Some other procedural items we will address this week are discussing the summer reading requirements and creating writing portfolios for all students ahead of their Upper School experience in two years.

7th Grade College Prep 

6th Grade 

     Students have collated their materials–comp checks, graded vocabulary assignments, and reference sheets-- and they have completed and corrected the review packet in preparation for the test on The Odyssey unit.

     The English final exam (Odyssey test) is Monday, 18 May at 9:00.  

     To be as prepared as possible, we recommend that students really studying the vocabulary. Students have made flashcards and have study lists in their packets. 

     In addition, students must know the terms and their definitions. Terms are glued into the front of their epic, and students have a copy of the terms in their review packet. 

     We also recommend studying the poem, “The Face that Launch’d a Thousand Ships” by Christopher Marlowe. Students can find it in their poetry journals and in the review packet. They must know how to track meter, identify types of figurative language, and explain allusions

     Lastly, it is important for students to read over the comprehension checks. Questions are often pulled from previous assessments. 

     We wish everyone the best on this final sixth grade assessment.