Mrs. Driskell: 7th Language Arts

During our poetry unit, we will be looking at different sound devices, figurative language, and forms of poetry.  The students will study a particular form or device, and then will write poems using that concept.  At the end of the unit, we will put all those poems together into a poetry journal.  The individual poems will be graded as a daily grade, and the poetry journal will count as a test grade.

The students have a book jacket report due on Wednesday, January 25.  They were given these guidelines and the paper for the book jacket on Friday, Jan. 13.

I hope everyone had a great Christmas break.  It is time to get back to learning, and I just want to remind you that we are still in the 1st semester.  The new semester will start on Wednesday, January 11th, so there is still time to bring up low grades.

I wanted to wish all my students and their families a very Merry Christmas!  I hope you all get to spend some quality time with your families over the break.

The students are reading a biography or autobiography.  They are to either dress up as the person, or make a puppet of the person.  On December 13th they will present their book report.  You can find the requirements in the handout section.

Please remember that your book talk is due on Thursday, Nov. 17.  You must turn in your green form at the beginning of class.  If you do not give your book talk on Thursday, you will give it on Friday.

This week the students will be given the guidelines for the book talk.  This will be due on Thursday, Nov. 17.  We will also be having a DGP test on Friday.  They will be able to use their notes for the test.

I received many good essays on Friday, and was able to submit 30 of them to the DAR essay contest.  It will be a couple of weeks before I can get all the essays graded, I have about 100 to grade.  I am looking forward to reading the students’ work.

We finish the War of 1812 essay this week, final copy is due at the end of class on Thursday.  We will continue with the novel study next week, and book reports will begin the next week.  One book report will be due every three weeks, be looking for a schedule to be coming home and on this website.

As a side note, we have a couple of civic projects going on.  The social studies classes are collecting canned goods to take to the food bank, so check with your child about this.  We also are doing our 5th annual soldier project where we collect items to be sent to a group of soldiers in Afghanistan for Christmas.  Your child has been given a list of items, and the list is also on the middle school webpage.

Last week we started a research project.  The students are writing and essay on The War of 1812.  This essay will be submitted to an essay contest sponsored by the Daughters of the American Revolution.  I always use the essay contest entry in my class each year as a project because it meets several of our standards.  I have included the handout with the details on the handout page.  This paper is due on Oct. 21st.  We will be working on this in class until that time.